The Lost Colony of Roanoke - A Historian Reacts (and what I think happened)

welcome back everyone to another reaction video well the patrons have spoken and uh we put it up for a vote last week what our next reaction would be and uh the vote was pretty one-sided there were two that were way ahead of all the others one was about napoleon that came in second but this was by and uh far and away the favorite and it was the lost colony of roanoke by lamino i hope i'm pronouncing that right he also has a video on jack the ripper we're going to get into at some point in history for me the two mysteries that i find myself the most fascinated by happen to be ones that he's done videos of one of them is the story of jack the ripper it's something that you've heard me talk about before that i'm very interested in the other one's a lost colony of roanoke it's a fascinating historical subject there's a lot of debate and a lot of discovery going on even to this day and i actually at least theoretically and i'll talk about this later on may have a family connection to this lost colony and i'll talk about what that is because uh there's actually some theories about what happened to the lost colony and some of them involved some of my ancestors in a group called malenjans so we're going to talk a little bit about the millenniums and where they might have come from at the end but first i want to see what he talks about because i haven't seen this video so i don't know how much is going to get covered about theories at the end and things like that so i'll save that for the end so stick around for that let's dive in just let me know near the end of the 16th century a man by the name of john white embarked on a transatlantic voyage [Music] his destination was the island of roanoke along the southeastern coast of north america on this island white had established an english colony some three years before and he was now returning to resume his position as governor after a long and difficult journey white finally reached the site of the colony only to find the more than 100 men women and children he'd left behind and disappeared now he maybe they'll talk about this so i might be getting ahead of myself he didn't intend on it taking three years for him to get back the colony was established in 1587 well 1587 is a pretty big year in england because that's the year that mary queen of scots is executed and the following year 1588 then is the year that the spanish decide that they're going to invade in response to that uh and overthrow protestant elizabeth in favor of a catholic monarch uh and so he had planned on coming back early the next year 1588 and got held up for three years because there were no available ships because of everything that was happening and that just must have been a desperately difficult time for him to know he needed to get back but couldn't a secret message carved into a tree was one of the only clues left behind at the scene before white had a chance to conduct a more extensive search the ship returned to england and in its wake it left a mystery what happened to the lost colony of roanoke [Music] [Laughter] before we can tackle the lost colony we first need to understand the events leading up to its disappearance the story begins in 1584 when two ships sailed across the atlantic to scout for a suitable location for the planting of the first permanent english colony in america in mid-july they made landfall on a string of barrier islands known as the outer banks the english quickly developed friendly relations with the local native americans and were soon invited to their village on roanoke island so to this day you know living here in northeast ohio probably more than any other place in the world the outer banks is probably our number one tourist destination from northeast ohio it's a about a 10 hour drive 8 10 hour drive so it's accessible you can drive there in a day it's um it's on the ocean it's a nice place a lot of people from where i live go there in the summer for vacation after about the month the scouting expedition returned to their ships and sailed back to england upon the expedition's return in late september the man in charge of the enterprise walter raleigh immediately began preparations to plant a permanent colony somewhere along the outer banks raleigh was soon thereafter knighted by queen elizabeth the first and the new land was to be named virginia in honor of the virgin queen so raleigh raleigh north carolina is named after him and uh he's knighted by elizabeth the first and then her cousin her successor james the first has him beheaded long story maybe we'll get into that one sometime in april of 1585 a fleet of seven ships departed england with a compliment of roughly 600 men and loaded with enough provisions to sustain the colony for about a year the fleet reached the outer banks at the end of june but was soon faced with a crisis navigating the waters of the outer banks can be notoriously treacherous as indicated by these sinking ships in fact one of the ships that end up sinking off the coast of the outer banks much later in history is the uss monitor the union's very first ironclad to go into combat that famous monitor versus merrimack monitor versus virginia is what it really was but later that year in 1862 it sinks off of cape hatteras in north carolina and when the flagship passed through one of the shallow inlets it struck a shoal and was nearly destroyed as the flagship carried the bulk of the provisions and most of it was now spoiled by seawater the scope of the colony had to be dramatically reduced [Music] about 100 men far fewer than initially intended were stationed on roanoke island and with the natives approval they began construction of what was to become the roanoke colony so you might be asking yourself why is it that we always say that jamestown was the first colony in america english colony in america well technically it wasn't it was the first permanent english colony in other words it was the first one to be established that was never abandoned you know so roanoke for example this is 20 years earlier than jamestown but these series of colonies that are established at roanoke none of them last so that's why we remember jamestown as the first the island was primarily chosen for its strategic value it provided quick access to the ocean while still making the colony invisible to spanish patrols you see spain had already colonized the late claim to much of what the english now called virginia so if you're spanish and you're going by the outer banks you're seeing these islands and you're thinking okay there's nobody there but just on the other side of this island and some more water is then the colony and so yeah it's shielded by the outer banks so they had to be careful not to attract any unwanted attention a second wave of supplies and reinforcements was expected to arrive before the winter but unbeknownst to the colonists the resupply mission had been countermanded by the queen to deal with more pressing concerns back in england as such once the colonists ran out of food they had to rely on the generosity of the natives however the natives only had so much despair and struggled to meet increasing demands by the colonists this over dependence quickly began to strain their relationship what did they say um fish and guests stink after three days yeah it's cool at first we're welcoming we're glad you're here let's be at peace let's get along but now you're like sapping our resources you're getting really dependent on us and we we've only got so much to go around so you're getting a little bit annoying meanwhile people had begun to notice a disturbing trend every time the english visited a native american village many of its inhabitants would inexplicably collapse and die the natives believed the english could kill from a distance by shooting invisible bullets and they were not too far off while unknown at the time the english were carrying deadly pathogens to which the natives lacked immunity and thus an epidemic was unwittingly unleashed upon the indigenous population so this is not something they could have possibly fully understood at the time in the with the benefit of almost 500 years of hindsight we understand that uh over time you can build up natural community uh immunities to things that then are completely un uh unknown and not a part of the native american uh immunity but it worked both ways the natives also carried some things that they were immune to that they gave to the colonists just not nearly in the numbers that happened with the colonists giving things to the natives the two leaders back on roanoke colonial governor ralph lane and indian chieftain win gina eventually grew so suspicious of one another that co-habitation was no longer possible when gina decided to remove his people from the island and retreated to a larger village on the mainland meanwhile lane came to believe that when gina had formed an alliance with other tribes that they were plotting to launch an attack against the colony whether he was paranoid or not lane decided to take pre-emptive action on the 1st of june 1586 lane and his men made their way to the mainland village and massacred its people one of the englishmen chased after and decapitated when gina and his head was later impaled outside the porch now again with hundreds of years of 2020 vision to be able to look back on these events it's easy to look back and think man that was brutal and unnecessary you went in and slaughtered a bunch of natives just because you were afraid of them well yeah it it makes no sense to us today but at the time it was the thing to do i'm not justifying i'm not defending it but you have to put yourself in the mindset of these people and likewise put your mind yourself in the mindset of the natives and what they would be thinking you know at some point they may be thinking hey these people are here there's probably more of them that are going to come they're sapping our resources they're taking our land at some point they're going to be a problem we need to strike now before it gets worse and the the english are thinking the same thing these people are going to do that to us so we've got to hit them first it's just a powder keg that is just rife with this kind of tension that leads to these kinds of events and this is hardly the last time it happens of the colony a week later a large english fleet commanded by the renowned sea captain sir francis drake dropped by the outer banks on its way back to england given the lack of food and violent clashes with the natives it was decided to abandon the colony the colonists were hastily evacuated off the island and then after nine long months they all returned home all except three who were not located in time for the evacuation and so the fleet left them behind so imagine being those three guys they i think they were sent out on like a foraging expedition go and try and find some food go and try and find something and uh francis drake's expedition shows up and they're like hey free ride home everybody get on board what about those guys uh we can't wait we gotta go now while the weather's good well we got the winds favorable sorry those guys are just gonna have to fend for themselves and they were never heard from again they were never heard from again if the scouting expedition of 1584 had been a resounding success the colony of 1585 was a categorical failure relations with the native americans had completely fallen apart the severe lack of food had made life miserable and they had failed to track down rumored sources of gold and copper which could have made the venture worthwhile in spite of all this at least one man was eager to return his name was john white white was a painter and artist by trade and many of the maps and sketches that you've seen so far were either drawn by him or based on his work somewhat ironically however there are no surviving portraits of white himself white's participation in these earlier voyages is slightly ambiguous he may have been part of the scouting expedition in 1584 but he was definitely part of the voyage in 85 what is a bit unclear is whether he stayed behind at the colony or returned to england with the outbound fleet for instance white's name is not included in a surviving list of all the colonists but some historians believe this is merely an oversight and that he was in fact part of the colony cool thing about john white and i'm sure we'll get into this is that his granddaughter will be the very first english person to be born in north america virginia dare it was his daughter's daughter and and becomes part of one of the mysteries of all of this in the aftermath in either case sir walter raleigh was eventually persuaded by white and others to attempt a second venture unlike the first colony which had been more akin to a military outpost the second would include women and children including white's pregnant daughter eleanor dare after a long struggle to secure the necessary funding a fleet of three ships commanded by white who would also serve as the governor of the colony deported england in late spring of 1587. [Music] now you would think why would they go back to roanoke uh when obviously relations have soured with those natives and my understanding is they went to roanoke i think to stop and see what they could salvage from what had been left behind with the idea that they were going to then proceed to the chesapeake bay and establish a colony in in the area that the jamestown ends up being established 20 years later but some things get in the way and we'll talk about that the misfortune of the first colony did not end with its evacuation in 1586 only days later a ship filled with provisions sent by sir walter raleigh arrived at the outer banks the crew spent some time searching for the colonists but when they found no sign of them including the three men that had been left behind they returned home the same thing happened two weeks later when an english-bound fleet loaded with supplies and reinforcements also found the colony deserted unwilling to leave the colony vacant however the captain left 15 crewmen on roanoke before the fleet resumed course for england john white had been told about the 15 crewmen before he departed so when his fleet approached the outer banks in late july of 1587 he intended to pay them a visit but this is where things get confusing you see the second colony was never intended to be established on roanoke after all the long list of complications encountered by the first colony made it clear that roanoke was far from an ideal location and here's the other thing and this is one of the things i don't understand about this and i'm sure there are reasons that i i haven't done enough research to figure out why are you going in the middle of the summer why do you not go i'm sure probably part of it has to do with traveling when the weather's bad in late winter and early spring but why don't you get there in spring so you can plant crops and you can actually have food to get to get you through the winter instead of having to rely on natives and rely on hunting which can be hit or miss i don't know instead the second colony or the city of raleigh as the man in charge and so immodestly named it was to be planted somewhere along the coast of chesapeake bay this made a lot more sense the water was deeper to allow for larger ships and not nearly as precarious as those around the outer banks there was plenty of open space the soil was more fertile and all around it seemed an improvement to roanoke island but the fleet's portuguese navigator simal fernandez had other plans fernandez had also been the navigator of the two previous expeditions and was a far more experienced sailor than white so even though white was officially the captain it seems much of the crew respected the authority of fernandez as such when fernandez decided to ignore the plan about chesapeake bay and instead simply dumped the colonists on roanoke white did nothing to challenge his decision and that's a fatal mistake right there um shouldn't have done that should have insisted on this but he doesn't and fernandez just dumps him on roanoke and leads to the disaster that'll follow the rest of the crew quickly fell in line and soon enough everyone disembarked for roanoke upon reaching the abandoned colony there was no sign of the 15 crewmen they had come to assist instead they found a pile of bones that appeared to be the remains of one of them white suspected the men had been attacked by eventual indians and any doubts he might have had were soon to be raised after only a few days on the island a colonist by the name of george howe was attacked by a group of natives who pelted him with 16 arrows before caving in his skull with a wooden club a brutal yet unmistakable message the english were no longer welcome no and roanoke that right there should have been enough to say okay you know what let's find somewhere else to go even so the colonists were not without allies you see when the scouting expedition returned to england in 1584 two native americans named one cheese and mantio were brought along with them one cheese was from roanoke while manteo was from a neighboring village on the island of croatoan when they were fighting and there's actually i don't know if juanchi's has a town but i know for a fact there's a manio north carolina in the outer banks that's named after him finally brought back to north america in 1585 they had developed vastly different opinions of the english people as soon as they made landfall one cheese returned to roanoke with nothing but resentment for these four and invaders meanwhile mantio was fascinated by everything the english had to offer he became their trusted guide and a mediator of sorts to smooth out relations upon first contact so following the death of george howe white reached out to the croatoans and they confirmed what he'd initially suspected a large group of indian tribes had indeed attacked the 15 crew men stationed on roanoke this coalition was spearheaded by none other than juanji's at least two of the crewmen had been killed in the attack while the rest escaped in a small boat never to be seen again roanoke had become a much more dangerous place to live simal fernandez remained anchored near the outer banks for about a month before he decided to return to england in the meantime the colonists had grown concerned about the long-term survival of the colony if the colony were to be truly self-sufficiently argued they would require more people and more food as such they implored governor white to return to england with fernandez so that he could bring back supplies and restock the colony white was initially hesitant to leave as he feared he'd be accused of desertion if he returned to england alone not to mention he would have to abandon his daughter who had recently given birth her daughter of her own named virginia on this remote and precarious island but in time he was persuaded to go and as the fleet departed in late august of 1587 he could not have known he would never see any of them again after a long and difficult voyage john white returned to a country at war by orders of the queen no ship were to leave england until the threat of a spanish invasion had passed imagine how quickly things changed after the execution of mary queen of scots now you've got the threat of the spanish armada coming to not only to um destroy the the english fleet but to land troops in england and overthrow queen elizabeth and so they'd drop off this colony at the absolute worst time i mean if they'd had known this is all going to happen they probably would have waited to send the colony so he comes back thinking he's gonna do a quick turnaround he's gonna load up supplies he's gonna come right back a few months later they'll still be getting established there's no way anything really bad could have happened uh in just a couple of months time and it ends up being three years before he can get back that just must have been desperate for him this was bad news for white his daughter efforts notwithstanding he remained trapped in england for three long years it was not until the spring of 1590 with the help of sir walter raleigh that white finally managed to book passage in a convoy bound for america upon reaching the outer banks in mid-august plumes of smoke appeared to emanate from roanoke island two boats were quickly dispatched and the crew fired the ship's cannons to make their presence known the men could see a great fire as they approached the island but white never clarifies whether it was natural or lit by people once ashore they made their way to the west end of the island and found a set of footprints they appear to be fresh but there was no sign of those to whom they belonged the search party then headed north and happened upon a tree where someone had called the letters c-r-o upon reaching the entrance of the colony they came across a second inscription it was the word croatoan engraved into a wooden post the post was but one of many that now formed a defensive barrier around the colony the colony itself was deserted and clearly had been for some time given the overgrowth of grass and weeds that said nothing of any value was missing i mean like there were jewelry that was left behind uh there were supplies that were left behind it seemed like people had left in a hurry but that the place hadn't really been attacked because there weren't bodies around i mean it's this is where the mystery really begins the houses had been taken down and stripped the valuables all they found were bars of iron a few cannons as well as five looted chests there was no trace of the roughly colonists nor the small boats left in their possession as far as anyone could tell no one had lived here for quite some time the story of so he says that things have been stripped of valuables to an extent that's true but like i said a lot of things that were considered valuable and especially would have been considered valuable to the colonists like things like jewelry were still there so it seemed like they probably only took what they could carry um or maybe there weren't as many of them left and only some of them were able to do it so the lost colony is often centered around the two engravings and without the full context it's easy to see how an author might imbue these inscriptions with intrigue and mystery in truth the carvings are some of the more well-understood elements of the entire story at least john white had no doubts about their meaning white explains in his notes that before he left in 1587 he and the colonists had come to an agreement if they decided to abandon the colony before the governor's return they were to leave behind a secret token of their destination furthermore if this abandonment was forced upon them they were to include a cross to signify distress because no such cross had been found white was confident the colonists had safely relocated to the island of croatoan thus white swiftly returned to the ship and convinced the captain to set cores for croatoan but while the crew prepared for departure the anchor cable snapped and without the spare anchor the captain felt it was too dangerous to continue in the end white never made it to croatoan and it was the last time he ever ventured across the atlantic do you imagine that this man's daughter and granddaughter were in this colony this isn't these aren't just friends of his these aren't just colleagues of his this is his family and he's that close and he's con he's confident that they're fine they're just down down the outer banks a little bit let's just go check and make sure they're okay let's give them the supplies we brought no can't do it oh i mean the helplessness that this man must have felt just had to have been ridiculous while an unsatisfying conclusion it seems relatively safe to assume the last colony of roanoke simply relocated to the island of croatoan case closed well not quite you see while explaining the meaning of the inscriptions white revealed another interesting yet puzzling detail with a single sentence white explains that before he left in 1587 the colonists were preparing to move 50 miles into the mainland while croatoan is about 50 miles south of roanoke it's also an island distinctly not part of the mainland as such this lone sentence introduces if but a modicum of doubt to white's version of events perhaps croatoan was not their intended destination after all if so where could they have gone breadcrumbs indeed 20 years after the roanoke colony was lost the anglo-spanish war had come to an end john white faded into obscurity and sir walter raleigh had been found guilty of treason for conspiring against the crown yeah i know it's a whole other thing anyway renewed interest in america saw the plantation of a third colony in 1607 the jamestown colony was established within the borders of a vast confederacy of native american tribes ruled by a man the english called powertan one day powhatan captured the future governor of the colony john smith and told him about the who did not have a relationship with pocahontas she married a guy named john rolfe place where men wearing european clothing lived then after his release in 1608 smith drew a rough map of virginia and this is one of the notations [Music] unfortunately this claim and others just like it were never properly investigated so we can never know if this was anything more than a rumor but like he said there starts to be a lot of breadcrumbs and you know in a court case sometimes all you have is what you call circumstantial evidence but if you've got enough circumstantial evidence it does tend to point to something if it all points to the same thing and you can make a case if the jury buys it i was told when i was i was the foreman of a jury years ago we were told if circumstantial evidence is all you have but you feel it's compelling you can convict based on that uh and likewise i would say that there's a lot of circumstantial evidence that some of these colonists survived and assimilated into the native american tribes uh and i'll see how much of this he covers but then we'll kind of add to that there's a lot of that circumstantial evidence out there another unconfirmed report was that all but a few of the colonists had been massacred by powhatan the survivors of this slaughter at roanoke had then supposedly scattered across the region the problem is white did not report any human remains or signs of a battle when he returned to roanoke in 1590 even so an acquaintance of john smith later wrote that powhatan had confessed to the massacre after smith was captured smith himself however makes no mention of this alleged confession and he was not exactly known to shy away from embellishment if there had been a massacre the only way you can explain away not finding any remains there is that not all of them had been killed and that the survivors had been allowed to bury the bodies somewhere um but it seems more likely to me if there had been a massacre it probably didn't happen on the island at the colony of roanoke it probably happened somewhere else in pocahontas other reports included sightings of native american children with unusually pale skin and blonde hair which led many to suspect they could be the descendants of the lost colonists there were also descriptions of natives with gray eyes uh we're talking about natives that had certain features that look like they were mixed and that even spoke in english which we'll get into when we talk about the millennials here in a little bit what they had no way of knowing at the time however was that albinism is far more prevalent among native americans than europeans a more solid lead emerged a full century later when the english explorer john lawson made contact with a tribe known as the hatteras the hatress occupied the same land as the crawtowns but the island was now much larger and known as hatteras island after a storm had closed one of the inlets the hatress explained to lawson that some of their ancestors had been white and able to read several members of the tribe also had grey eyes a unique trait of the hatred according to lawson they also spoke of a local legend about the ghost ship which they referred to as sir walter raleigh's ship hearing all this lawson grew convinced the hatress was in fact the descendants of the lost colony much like john white lawson believed the colony had been relocated to croatoan and over time the two peoples had become one yep i think that's what happened i don't have two sources over a century apart arguing for the same version of events john white says they went to coratone because carvings john lawson says they went to croton because grey ice and ghosts not the most decisive evidence perhaps but it does make for a compelling argument following lawson's encounter with the hattress in 1701 nothing of significance would be uncovered for centuries that is until the late 19th comes the thursday a series of peculiar stones suddenly brought the mystery back to life now to be fair there's one stone and then there's all the other stones i think all the other stones have been clearly proven to be forgeries based on the first one there's still some question about the veracity of the original stone though the stones had been inscribed with messages supposedly written by eleanor dare the daughter of john white unfortunately they all turned out to be fake not all well all except the first there we go whose authenticity remains in doubt this stone features a message from dare addressed to white in which he describes the tragic death of her husband and child the composition of the stone makes it well suited for inscribing a message but a poor choice for a forger as they would have had to chemically age the fresh markings to match the weathered surface it would not have been impossible but quite difficult to do so in the 1930s on the other hand the man who supposedly found the stone was never heard from again and the precise location of its discovery was conveniently kept secret that said if you're gonna go inland 50 miles like they said they were thinking of doing this does seem like a natural place to do that you're still on the main waterway right here it makes sense the credibility of the writing is equally contested and there's just no consensus on what to make of it modern archaeological research has also been plagued by uncertainties excavations at roanoke have mostly confirmed the presence of a 16th century english colony but have done little in the way of determining its fate meanwhile excavations on hatress has yielded a mix of native american and european artifacts including the hilt of a light sword but nothing that can be definitively linked to the lost colony to make matters worse much of the evidence may now be underwater due to centuries of shifting sands and erosion of the islands it was partially out of frustration for this lack of progress that researchers made a remarkable discovery in late 2011 while inspecting white's map of virginia a member of the first colony foundation took note of these patches and there's a i think it's on youtube but i might have seen it on something else there was a whole documentary done about this discovery on the map the x that they found historically patches like these have been used to correct minor mistakes so no one had ever given them a second thought this time someone did and had the patches carefully examined underneath the lower patch they found exactly what you'd expect minor corrections underneath the upper patch however they found this this four-pointed star is a typical representation of a fort a comparable symbol can be seen on this map from the early 17th century the paint used to draw the symbol matches the paint used elsewhere on the map including the corrections drawn on top of the lower patch suggesting it was drawn and concealed by white himself more puzzling still a slightly smaller four-pointed star enclosed by two concentric squares has been painted with invisible ink on top of the patch this symbol can even be faintly discerned with a naked eye meaning it's been hiding in plain sight all along see what i mean about how interesting this story is and how amazing it would be if some discovery was able to point definitively to the fate of these people this is not just a simple case of the colony was wiped out by natives end of story something happened to these people they went somewhere some of them survived i'm convinced of this and i think they ended up living with the natives and i am of the opinion that the dare stone the original one is real i am of the opinion that they did go to hatteras and then later went to the mainland uh that they marry intermarried with the natives that they had descendants some of whom spoke english could read had white features and to this day there is some evidence of that that keeps popping up so it's fascinating stuff finally this fort is situated on the mainland approximately 50 miles west of roanoke and the dare stone was found right here just across from there so maybe they made it here but then were attacked and carried off by the natives the location of the concealed fort was quickly named site x in reference to the expression x marks the spell that's why i kept i kept calling it an x on the map but it's called site x it wasn't an x on the map while the fort itself has yet to be found presuming it was ever built archaeological digs have uncovered a few items of interest fragments of pottery and bits of metal are indicative of an english presence but much like the findings on hatras an indisputable link to the lost colony has yet to be established that being said the research is still ongoing and the smoking gun whatever it may be will perhaps have been found by the time you're watching this presuming this is the intended location for the city of raleigh one has to wonder why was it concealed with a patch tempting as it may be to envision some elaborate conspiracy there is a very simple explanation remember how in 1608 john smith sent this rough map of virginia back to england well this is not the original map but an enlisted copy a copy made in secret by the spanish ambassador and covertly passed along to the king of spain so england had good reason to work on sensitive information such as the location of a fort being intercepted by enemy spies another example is how the colony on roanoke was concealed through a mission we still don't know the precise location or layout of the colony because it was never indicated on any of the surviving maps while it continues to be a source of aggravation among historians and archaeologists this secrecy did serve a purpose as it prevented spain from ever finding the colony in fact spain continued to search for the colony long after it was lost so it's unlikely they had anything to do with its disappearance on the other hand if the fort was never built the patch may be precisely what it was always assumed to be nothing more than a correction then again the near invisible symbol drawn on top of the patch strongly imply concealment as opposed to a simple vision i agree ah fast going through all the available evidence this is what i'm thinking so john white left roanoke in 1587 when he failed to return the colony was split into two groups one decapped for sight x while the other went to live with the friendly croatians i can buy that the governor's return the region is known to have suffered a severe drought just off the white left so the relocation may not only have been motivated by diminishing supplies and hostilities but also by a lack of water and crop production yeah you have to remember like jamestown for example half those people died within a year or two of getting there so even the successful successful colonies like jamestown and um and plymouth suffered heavily from attrition in their first years and many of the people died so it's impossible to think that the majority of these people wouldn't have died even if left and stay if they'd stayed there and been able to keep the colony going many of them in fact maybe most of them would have died anyway so especially if they split if they were native american threats it's likely that the majority of them died years turned into decades the colonists may have started families with and thus become inseparable from the indigenous people amongst not only would this explain the disappearance but also the croatoan inscription the 50 miles into the main as well as the grey eyes of the hattress while i'm still leaning towards it being fake i do find it interesting how the dare stone was supposedly discovered just a few miles north of site x after all if you're a hoaxer and you and let's say this yeah the hoaxer didn't know about site x and if the powhatan uh if powhatan is responsible for this um then you have to think okay they're up here that's where that confederacy is so if they came and attacked site x and hauled off the survivors that's the direction they would have been going and it makes sense she would have left that that stone as close to the site as possible you want to convince 1930s america that this stone is genuine why claim you found it so far away from roanoke one should also keep in mind that much of the evidence relies solely on the words and paintings of one man parts of white's account could easily be a misinterpretation or exaggeration so depending on what evidence you regard as credible other solutions are equally plausible for instance some believe the colony went ahead with the original plan and relocated somewhere along the coast of chesapeake bay others believe they were all lost at sea after a failed attempt to return to england but these solutions are about as helpful as saying the colony vanished into thin air without a more localized place of interest to search for corroborating evidence there is virtually no hope of resolution so with all that being said many questions remain what happened to the three forsaken colonists and the 13 crewmen why did zimao fernandez disobey orders and dump the colonists on roanoke why was one of the two engravings left incomplete why was everyone named john as for the most important question of them all well if there is an answer to that question chances are it lies buried somewhere at site x just waiting to be found it could be that's my first of his videos i really like his presence presentation style i like the animation i like the black and white thing he's got going on really well done i've watched a little bit of his jack the ripper one and and what i've seen of it uh is one of the best if not the best presentation on jack the ripper i've ever seen so we're definitely going to get into that at some point let me know what you think i've put the link in the description below to the original content but i want to talk about i promised you i'd talk about the melungeons and how they might fit into all this so let's take a look at them for a minute so my family my ancestry primarily comes through eastern kentucky southwestern virginia northeast tennessee and western north carolina now that area is rife with very interesting racial mixes because of course you had slavery in that area you had the cherokee native americans in that area you have white people in that area and you have lots of different mixes of those people there's a group of people called melunjans that come primarily from that region uh originally had or originated in north carolina but it ended up in like hawkins county tennessee primarily but all over that region and uh the cumberland gap area they're called a tri-racial isolate group because they're not you know like biracial for example so you have mulattos who were part black part white you have mestizos and you know different groups like that who are different combinations of different races and so this is a combination of three races and people understand it typically to be white european uh sub-saharan african and native american sometimes cherokee sometimes not and one of the claims by malunjan descendants i'm a malungen descendant through both of my parents but i don't necessarily claim this but it's an interesting theory is that the uh the melungeans are descendants of the colony of roanoke and here's uh for example ncpedia.org uh talks about this says melunians are a descendant of people of mixed ethnic ancestry who before the end of the 18th century were discovered living living in limited areas of what is now the southeastern united states notably in the appalachian mountains near the point where tennessee virginia and north carolina converge and and most of the census records they're listed as free persons of color that's how they get listed in the census uh malungen skin tones varied from dark to light reflecting their mixed heritage they would often have uh like dark skin but white features it's very interesting they claim often to be a mix of portuguese and native american things like that but here it says they have been identified at various times as having portuguese spanish french welsh and turkish ancestry some theories even claim they are descendants of members of roman oak islands lost colony of 1587. most modern researchers have concluded that their ethnicity is tri-racial with european native american and african lineage their earliest ancestors may have been explorers seamen or colonists stranded along the atlantic coast before permanent settlement had begun who later intermarried with indians and africans or they were the survivors of the lost colony of roanoke who intermarried in that way um so uh there's a whole uh background there's been books i've got several books about the lunges have been written it's a fascinating part of my ancestry my grandfather uh through whom i have one of my malungen descents does have a tiny bit of iberian peninsula dna uh as well as sub-saharan african both of my parents have uh sub-saharan african ancestry so it's a fascinating thing to think about it's a possibility it's just one more theory to throw out there but let me know your theories about what you think happened to the lost colony use the comment section below and if you have suggestions for other videos you'd like to see me check out let me know thanks for watching

Channel: Vlogging Through History

Views: 79,543

Keywords: historian reacts, the lost colony of roanoke reaction, lost colony, history reaction, lost colony of roanoke, the lost colony of roanoke, reaction video, roanoke colony, lemmino reaction, lemmino roanoke, virginia dare and the lost colony, virginia dare, unsolved mystery, virginia dare descendants, virginia dare death, john white

Id: OTY0nN9dbRY

Length: 46min 38sec (2798 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 04 2021