Maxwell S.
Now even though many years have passed I can still remember the day I learned about Roanoke in the fourth grade. It was an idea that fascinated me, a booming colony that vanished in less than a year, the loan skull left to rot in the dirt, and the carved tree only bearing the words “Croatoan� when it had once been a tree in the center of a new town. I remember coming up with theories and ideas about how they vanished with my friends. But was this truly the biggest vanishing act ever or was it just a lost answer?
What was Roanoke? Roanoke was one of the first European settlements in North America. When it first came to be, it was a colony lead by a man named Ralph Lane and Richard Grenville. It was Chartered by Queen Elizabeth I and she gave them seven years to establish a colony or else she would take back the rights to the area. When they arrived in the area they lived in the boats and started to look for a place to build the town. During this time they were met by the local Indian tribes the Croatoan. They were not the happiest about the settlers coming to where they lived. This was caused by another settlement. The settlement had accused the Croatoans of
stealing a silver cup which caused the death of two of the Croatoans in the process. This caused the Croatoans to dislike the new settlers. The new settlers explored the land and decided to build their settlement on the northernmost area of the land, and while the people in the settlement set up the town a group of eighty to ninety-five people on the Tiger to England to get materials and tell the Queen that they had established a colony. About a year passed until they came back to the area they had founded. Eventually the people sent to get supplies came back only to find no town in sight, a tree trunk with the word Croatoan carved into it, and only one human skull half way buried in the soil.
How did they get there? Five ships lead by Lane and Grenville were sent to America. Those five boats were called the Tiger, the Elizabeth, the Dorothy, the Roebuck, and the Red Lion and were all paid for by the Queen in high hopes that the settlement would be successful. All was well until a storm separated the Tiger from the rest of the fleet, but they had come up with a place to meet if any of the ships were separated from the rest of fleet. That place was Puerto Rico. The Tiger was the first ship to arrive in Puerto Rico, so while it waited for the other ships to arrive, it built a mission where it had landed to work as a temporary mission for the people there. This was not a liked idea because a lot of the people on the boat had came to live in a new place that they were told about, and the people living there did not like the idea of people from a different part of the world living on their land. Eventually the Elizabeth landed in Puerto Rico. They waited until the Grenville decided that they should go to what would be Roanoke. When they arrived at the sight of Roanoke they found the Dorothy and the Roebuck weighting for them. The Red Lion had dropped of passengers but had left to explore new found land.
What happened? The mystery of Roanoke is that they disappeared and left nothing other than the skull and the tree with Croatoan, but many people have no idea what actually happened to the colonists. The scientists that have been searching for years have now found that the colonists may of moved to a different area of the new found Americas and became a lesser known tribe that died out before the England bound ship came back, but before the tribe could die out a few of the colonists went to live with the Croatoan Indians, they believe this is the reason the word Croatoan was carved into the tree. This was figured out when they found a map that was owned by Ralph Lane. This map had never been checked out with modern day technology, but in 2012 a nonprofit organization called the lost colony foundation noticed two white patches that were on the map. They then decided to X-ray the map and see what was under the patches. Under one of the patches was water and under the other was a red and blue cross that was believed to be the place where the colonists moved to. This area is now known as site x. The reason they believe the supply ship never remembered the area is that Ralph Lane forgot that the patch had the location under it and also forgot the colony moved.
What did they discover? When the lost colony foundation discovered this lead they rushed to the site of the blue and red cross and have been doing a three year excavation of the area. During that time they have found many artifacts in the ground from what they believe is the second place the colony was living. The first thing they found in the ground was a wooden marker to show this was where they lived. This was in the ground due to wind and water slowly bringing mud over the stake until it had vanished from plain view, but this was not the only thing the team found they also recovered shards of pottery, wood and leather work, and even a early version of a nail. They also found a tree that closely resembles an Indian tree. This tree is special because when they cut it down they found a mark in the trunk of the tree where the tree had regrown after an axe had been chopped into it. Site-x is said to be one of America's best archaeological discovery in the twenty-first century. Sadly the excavation has destroyed about one hundred acres of woods and is expected to destroy about one hundred fifty in total, but it is giving us details America never knew about Roanoke.
Bibliography-
Dollaghan, Kelsey Campbell. "New Discoveries Could Explain What Happened to the Lost Colony of Roa noke." Gizmodo. Ria Misra, 9 Sept. 2015. Web. 05 Nov. 2015. Foundation, First Colony. "Archaeology -- First Colony Foundation."Archaeology -- First Colony Foundation. First Colony Foundation, 20 June 2009. Web. 05 Nov. 2015. <http:// .Staff, Hisory .com. "Roanoke Colony Deserted." History.com. History.com, 18 Aug. 2010. Web. 5 Nov. 2015. .Stahle, David W. "Unearthing Secret America." PBS. PBS, 17 Sept. 2002. Web. 05 Nov. 2015. .