In 1584, explorers sent to the New World by Sir Walter Raleigh returned to England with accounts of a land that "bringeth forth all things in abundance, . . . without toil or labor." The claims created a sensation. Raleigh won a Parliamentary patent to colonize the land he named Virginia, in honor of his unwed queen, Elizabeth I.
The following year, one of Raleigh's partners, Sir Richard Grenville, led 500 prospective colo-nists—all men—to the new homeland. The local Roanoke Indian chief, Granganimeo, invited the foreigners to stay on the northern end of Roanoke Island, about 100 miles south of the Chesapeake Bay. A fort was built, the colonists erected houses, and Grenville sailed away, leaving the 108 settlers who had chosen to remain.
Relations with the Roanoke tribe soon began to go downhill. The amiable Granganimeo died, and his brother, Wingina, forbade trading with the settlers. fearing that Wingina would attack, Ralph Lane, the leader of the remaining colonists, launched a preemptive strike in May 1586. The skirmish killed Wingina but made the settlement's position untenable. In June, a fleet commanded by Sir francis Drake arrived, fresh from devastating Spanish strongholds in florida. Leaving a detachment of 15 men to protect the fragile enclave, Drake took the others home.
In July 1587, a new consignment of colonists arrived, led by John White, the chief cartographer on the previous voyage. Among the group of 150 settlers in his charge were 17 women and 6 children, including his married and pregnant daughter, Elenora Dare. Expecting to be welcomed by the compatriots who had stayed behind, they found only silence. Soon after landing they came upon the bones of a settler who had been killed by Indians. The fort had been burned to the ground; the houses were unmarred but deserted. No trace of the other 14 colonists was ever found.
Despite this ominous beginning, the new band decided to stay on at Roanoke but send an expedition south
toward Croatoan Island, where earlier English explorers had befriended the Croatoan tribe. On July 18, 1587, Governor White's daughter gave birth to the first English child born on New World soil, a girl named Virginia. Less than two months later, John White returned to England for supplies, leaving 121 settlers behind. But, delayed by England's war with Spain and other difficulties, White did not return to Roanoke until August 15, 1590, where he found—nothing. On reaching shore, the relief party found the letters CRO carved on a tree. White was looking for another sign: a cross, which the settlers had agreed to carve in some promÃnent spot in case of trouble. There was no cross, but the relief group did find that the settlers' houses had been knocked down and replaced by a strong palisade. A tree that formed part of the crude fortress had the word CROATOAH carved on it. Inside the fort, a few objects lay scattered. There were no human remains and no signs of violent struggle.
At first, White was relieved. The word on the tree suggested that, as agreed upon before his departure, the colonists had left the name of their next destination. "I greatly joyed," White wrote, "that I had safely found a certaine token of their safe being at Croatoan . . . and the Savages of the Island our friends." But the refusal of his crew to explore further, and a series of storms, forced White back to England before he could confirm this fact. After what appears to have been a final, futile effort to return to America, he gave it up and ended in retirement in Ireland.
His failure to explore beyond Roanoke in 1590 sealed forever the mystery of the colonists, whose fate is still unknown. One theory holds that the group made its way to Croatoan Island and built a ship in which to return home, only to perish at sea. Although the fortification at Roanoke showed no signs of violence, some observers have speculated that Spanish invaders carried off the colonists. And there is evidence that the settlers moved north to the deeper ports offered by the Chesapeake Bay. There, according to the region's powerful Indian chief Powhatan, all remaining Europeans were killed by his warriors fifteen years later.
