Our thoughts at Thanksgiving turn to America’s early settlers. A few months ago, I traveled to North Carolina in search of answers to the 400+ year-old question: What Happened to the Lost Colony? From Roanoke Island, the site of the initial landing, to Site X, at the western end of Albemarle Sound, new artifacts are helping solve a mystery that predates the arrival of the Pilgrims.
Sharon Lyon
Editor, GeoLifestyle
The History Behind the Lost Colony
Looking across the Chowan River, North Carolina
In 1587, Sir Walter Raleigh sent colonists to the New World to establish a civilian settlement. Led by John White, 117 men, women, and children landed at Roanoke Island in Albemarle Sound, modern-day North Carolina.
The colonists included White’s daughter, Eleanor Dare, who gave birth to her own daughter a few weeks after arriving. The daughter, named Virginia Dare, was the first English child born in the New World.
White sailed back to England for supplies immediately after Virginia’s baptism.
Because of England’s war with Spain, White would not return to Roanoke Island for three years. When he returned, there were no signs of the colonists. Their longboats were gone. The word “Croatoan” had been carved at the entrance of their palisade.
White was unable to sail to the island known as Croatoan due to weather, so no search was made.
Sixty years later, hunters from Jamestown, Virginia, visited Roanoke Island. There were no signs of the colonists or any descendants.
The settlers became known as the “Lost Colony,” and their fate remains a great mystery to this day.
Read more on the excavations at Roanoke Island here.
Where Could the Colonists Have Gone?
One hypothesis is that the colonists moved further inland, along the Chowan River. White mapped this region during an earlier expedition in 1584 and had advised the colonists to prepare “to remove from Roanoake 50 miles into the maine” prior to his return to England.
White had corrected his 1584 map with two patches. It wasn’t until 2012 that curators at the British Museum looked underneath them. They discovered a large symbol for a fort and a smaller symbol for a Native village, located in an area along the Chowan. This suggests a possible location for an English settlement.
The Chowanokes, Algonquian-speaking Natives who lived along the Chowan River, were friendly to the colonists. A Chowanoke village, Mettaquem, was believed to have been situated along Salmon Creek, in the area indicated on White’s map.
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Shards of Native American pottery found near Site X
The area shown on White’s map, now known as Site X, is located 55 miles inland from Roanoke Island, where the Chowan River and Salmon Creek flow into the western edge of Albemarle Sound.
Site X geology: Located on the Coastal Plain’s Talbot Terrace, which marks a high sea level stand, the underlying strata are exposed along a nearby bluff.
The soils at the site, consisting of well-drained, loamy sands, were developed on Pleistocene sands and clays.
Below these surficial deposits, the upper Pliocene Chowan River Formation is composed of fine sand. The top of the formation contains large shells, and the base, right above mean high tide, is shelly with a coral thicket.
Why it matters: The area was well-suited for settlement.
The soil at the site would support cultivation.
Clay was abundant for sand-tempered Native pottery.
Poorly drained swamplands would provide cypress for canoes and reeds for mats, weirs, ropes, and nets.
Excavations: In 2007, archeologists evaluated the property at Site X in advance of a proposed residential development. The initial study and multiple subsequent excavations uncovered surprising results.
Mettaquem: Archeologists discovered a prehistoric Native site, identified as Mettaquem, dated at the late precolonial years of the Late Woodland Period (1000 CE to European contact). Artifacts found include:
More than 600 pounds of Native pottery
Multiple stone tools and stonework waste
Several buried midden pits
A curvilinear feature, indicating Mettaquem was a palisaded Algonquian village
English artifacts: No English fort, burials, or English buildings have been found at Site X. However, multiple artifactsgive evidence of an early English presence, such as:
Eight pottery sherds from a North Devon baluster jar. When found in early settlement sites in nearby Virginia, the jars rarely appear after the mid-17th century. This date overlaps with that of 40 sherds of green and yellow border ware, dating between the mid-16th to late 17th centuries.
An early style aglet—a long metal tip of a lace, for clothing (not shoes)
Two tenterhooks, L-shaped spikes hammered into posts or trees and used to stretch skins or sailcloth over temporary shelters
A lead seal with the symbol of a capital ‘A,’ which marked a bale of linen-cotton cloth from the German city of Augsburg. Production ended by the end of the 16th century, setting the date for the English occupation of Site X.
Why it matters: The artifacts found at Site X, 55 miles west of the original landing site at Roanoke Island, suggest that at least a few of the original Lost Colony settlers lived there. Because of these findings, the area has been preserved for future study as part of the Salmon Creek State Natural Recreation Area.
What it’s about: Experts present the evidence compiled in the search for the Lost Colony. Scientists will appreciate the discussion of methods, such as X-ray fluorescence, to examine old map pigments, remote sensing, and ground-penetrating radar surveys at Site X. Discussions of the age and significance of the artifacts found at the site help the reader visualize how the Chowanokes lived alongside 16th-century British colonists.
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