Evidence shows ‘lost colonists’ moved to inland regions

Some historians believe that after North Carolina’s “lost colonists” abandoned Roanoke Island, a group of the English people may have journeyed a good distance inland in the late 1580s. 

One theory is that they traveled west through the Albemarle Sound to join the Algonquian-speaking Chowanoac (Choanoke) tribe that lived along both banks of the Chowan River.

 

“At the time of Sir Walter Raleigh’s colonization efforts at Roanoke Island, the Chowanoac were probably the most powerful of the Carolina Algonquians,” commented historian Philip S. McMullan Jr. 

Writing for PBS North Carolina in 2020, Frank Graff reported that the First Colony Foundation discovered “compelling evidence that settlers from the English colony lived at a site along Salmon Creek, near the Chowan River in Bertie County, for several years.” 

Excavations at two locations near Merry Hill found “ceramic pieces that archaeologists identified as Elizabethan artifacts used during the time the colonists were settling on the coast,” Graff wrote. 

A foundation spokesperson said: “We all agree that this is not the major relocation site of the Lost Colony, but a satellite site.” 

Another faction of the original colonists apparently traveled across the Pamlico Sound and up the Pamlico River to settle in the Chocowinity area of Beaufort County. 

About 1,100 people live in Chocowinity today, and about half of them have surnames associated with the English colonists, researchers point out. 

The prevailing “Lost Colony” story is that the first English colonists were taken under the wing of the Croatoans – Manteo’s people – and became united as a village at Hatteras Island. It is here that English and Native American cultures first merged, McMullan said. 

Hamilton McMillan (1837-1916) was a popular North Carolina legislator who believed that the Lumbee tribe of Native Americans in Robeson County descended from the Croatoans. This theory has some “soft spots.”

 

For one, it’s a long, long way from Roanoke Island near the Virginia border to Robeson County, which abuts South Carolina. Traveling by water, it’s a tricky journey. 

Historian David Stick (1919-2009) of Kitty Hawk gently questioned how the Croatoans could have “connected” with Lumbees.

 

“Though it’s possible that some of (the Croatoans) ended up in Robeson County, it is more probable that their destination was the Chowan River area,” Stick said. The Lumbees are more directly related to the Cheraw, Cherokee and Tuscarora tribe, he said. 

Dr. David Beers Quinn (1909-2002) was an Irish historian who theorized that the colonists moved north toward Chesapeake Bay, seeking to build a settlement near Lynnhaven, Va.

 

Most likely, Dr. Quinn suggested, the Englishmen were killed by native warriors under the command of Chief Powhatan, who “was the supreme ruler of most of the indigenous tribes in the Chesapeake Bay region.” 

Zebulon B. Vance, who represented North Carolina in the U.S. Senate in 1884, was the first to attempt to commemorate the Roanoke Island colony as a “national treasure.” He introduced a bill in Congress to fund the acquisition of a small tract at the site for the placement of a monument to Raleigh’s colonists. 

The bill died in committee, likely due to the concerns of Kansas Senator John J. Ingalls, a native of Massachusetts, who believed any emphasis on Roanoke Island “would detract from the attention paid to Plymouth Rock,” settled by the Pilgrims in 1620. 

In 1935, this marker was erected on Roanoke Island, one of the very first installed as part of the North Carolina's new state highway historic marker program.

In 1941, the National Park Service established the Fort Raleigh National Historic Site at Roanoke Island, and it is administered today under the umbrella of Cape Hatteras National Seashore.