Original subtitles

♪

Tonight, one of America's oldest mysteries.

They're gone. The entire colony

is just gone.

A group of English settlers vanish without a trace,

leaving behind only cryptic clues.

The houses had been dismantled, taken down...

And the letters C-R-O carved into a tree.

Now, we'll reveal the top theories

behind their potential fate.

He admits that he had

a group of English colonists killed many years ago.

They could've perished on the small boat.

The colonists survive and they're in Georgia,

taken in by natives.

Can advanced technology finally provide answers?

Something was covered up here.

A small detail that may be hiding a big secret.

What really happened to the Lost Colony of Roanoke?

♪♪

July 25th, 1587...

just off the coast of present-day North Carolina,

three ships

carrying English settlers

land on Roanoke Island.

About 115 men, women, and children,

along with John White, the governor,

arrived off the coast of North Carolina.

Their goal was to create

the first permanent English settlement

in the New World.

Two years earlier, the English sent

a group of mostly soldiers

to try and colonize Roanoke.

But it ends in disaster.

With severe food shortages,

attacks from the hostile

Native American population there,

many die, and they barely escape

just getting back to England.

Governor White is determined to do better this time,

and he has more than just his life on the line.

On this expedition was John White's

very pregnant daughter Eleanor

and her husband Ananias Dare,

among other colonists who are there who are

also ready to start their families and settle

in the New World.

On August 18th, 1587,

Eleanor Dare gives birth

to her daughter, Virginia.

The first English child born in North America.

Unfortunately, there's no time to celebrate,

because the colony is running dangerously low

on supplies.

You'd think they would've learned from their last

expedition, but as they start to take inventory,

they realize they're not gonna have enough provisions

- to last through the winter. - The plan had been:

start growing their own crops

and farming livestock,

but there's just not enough time.

So, someone has to go back to England

and secure more provisions.

On August 27th,

barely a week after his granddaughter is born,

White volunteers to make

the transatlantic crossing himself.

It was quite a journey, took him two and a half months

to get back.

When they finally arrived back on English soil,

it was November.

Governor White quickly loads five ships with supplies.

They are pretty much ready to sail.

But the problem with this is,

there is a stay of all shipping

commanded by Queen Elizabeth I,

because the Spanish Armada are making

the most untimely arrival.

England is on the brink of war with Spain.

That means that Queen Elizabeth's hands

are tied and her money is more focused on war efforts

than a failing colony.

White has no choice but to stay in England

indefinitely.

Meanwhile, at the colony, they expect White

to return in six months, and, of course,

they don't know about the war news,

but you can imagine their sinking feeling

as six months go by

and then a year and then two years.

Ultimately, it takes White three full years

to return to the coast of North Carolina.

When he does, it's August 18th, 1590,

the third birthday of his granddaughter,

Virginia Dare.

But Governor White doesn't return to his family.

He returns to a mystery.

They're gone. The entire colony

is just gone.

At some point in the previous three years,

everything and everyone

had just disappeared.

There's no evidence that there was

any kind of battle, there's no evidence

of bones or bodies

that might indicate an altercation

between the colonists and the indigenous people.

What's weird is that there's basically nothing left behind,

and the town isn't so much abandoned,

it's been dismantled. All of the buildings have

been carefully taken apart.

The tools, the boats, the provisions,

it's all been taken away.

The big mystery is where did they all go?

White and a few men spend hours searching the site.

They turn up only two clues.

Carved into a fencepost,

White and the English see this word, "Croatoan."

And then carved into a tree,

three letters, C-R-O.

When White sees the word "Croatoan,"

he was actually quite jubilant.

He knows exactly where the colonists have gone.

The Croatoans are a tribe located

just directly south of Roanoke.

John White assumes this was a full-scale

relocation by the colonists

to live with the tribe.

Now, you might think, based on those carvings,

that there's another option.

That the colonists were attacked by the Croatoans.

But John White doesn't think so.

First of all, there's the careful

dismantling of the town, and you don't do that

if you're under attack, and secondly,

White and the colonists have a plan for what to do

if they are under attack.

Prior to leaving, John White gave

explicit instructions to the colony.

If they were in distress or if they were in danger,

to carve a Maltese cross on a tree.

But there's no Maltese cross.

White returns to his ships,

intending to sail south, to Croatoan.

White has come with two boats,

the Moonlight and the Hopewell.

But the crews are very antsy, and they don't wanna spend

any more time in this hostile territory than they have to.

Imagine it from their perspective.

These are people who'd signed up

on a resupply ship to come over to a place

that they thought was going to be safe.

These people had not been hired

to go in search of Lost Colonists

who, as far as they knew, might've been held captive,

might've been in the midst of a war,

so they had much less enthusiasm than John White.

At first, they're willing to give White

another day or two.

They plan to head to Croatoan

the next morning, August 19th.

But they run into problems.

The Hopewell's anchor cable breaks,

and there's no way that they can risk

going out into the treacherous waters

of the North Carolina inner banks.

The waters are very shallow.

The ship could be shipwrecked

and cause an extreme danger for the crew

and others on board the ship.

A desperate White appeals to the crew

of the Moonlight.

The crew of the second ship, the Moonlight,

are not willing to risk their lives

in order to find the Lost Colonists.

They don't have as much invested in this as John White does.

Certainly he's thinking of his family.

They're just thinking about making it back to England safely

before the brutal Atlantic winter sets in.

So the Moonlight goes back to England,

but White is able to get a small team to agree

to repair the Hopewell,

sail to the Caribbean

for the winter and then return

to North Carolina in the spring

to resume the search.

But it's as if this guy was cursed.

After White and the crew repair the Hopewell,

they set sail for the Caribbean,

but then a freak storm comes up,

they get blown way off course,

and they're forced to return to England.

White attempts to raise the funds

for another search and rescue mission but fails.

One can imagine how devastated John White must've felt.

He's so close to finding his family.

He's only 40 miles away,

but he can't make it to them,

and after three years, he passes away,

never to return, and never to know the fate

of what happened to the colony.

News of the Lost Colony spreads throughout Europe,

and while White is never able to find out what happened,

ships begin to visit the area again

some seven years after his death.

Occasionally, other European ships

visit the outer banks during the 1600s.

But once we reach the 1700s,

it's a pretty heavily-traveled area.

And no one ever actually sees the missing colonists.

But they do find evidence that perhaps

they have blended in with the local tribes,

just as White believed.

One expedition reports Native tribespeople

with European features.

Fair complexions, light-colored hair and eyes,

and some even claimed to have European relatives.

Additional proof can be found in architecture.

One expedition reports a Native village

with timber houses built in the English style.

It seems likely that these tribes had

English settlers living amongst them,

working together, inter- marrying, having offspring.

Now, all of this is hearsay, but it is potential evidence

that the Lost Colony moved in with the Croatoans.

The Croatoan Archaeological Society,

led by historian Scott Dawson,

has been excavating the area since 2009.

So, the archaeologists who have dug

on what is now Hatteras Island have found

fascinating artifacts that definitely are made

in the time of the Lost Colonists.

They found the hilt of a rapier that is

a kind of sword that was used during Elizabethan times.

They found fragments of pottery and dishes,

a copper ring, a brass gun,

and European coins.

But can we say that's absolute proof

that the colonists moved in

with the local indigenous people?

Genealogist Roberta Estes thinks it's possible

and is using cutting-edge technology

to try and prove it.

What she's doing is tracing

Y-chromosome DNA,

analyzing people in the area of Hatteras Island

who may have mixed Native / European ancestry.

And who share surnames with the Roanoke colonists.

Estes has turned up a number of intriguing candidates.

These people may just have the right background

to be descended from the Lost Colony,

living proof that the colonists survived

and mixed with the Croatoans.

But the problem with this is

that an absolute match would

have to identify a matching family

back in England.

If Estes can find a match--

a confirmed descendant of a Lost Colonist

and a Croatoan native, that'll be it.

It won't be the Lost Colony anymore.

But for now it remains just a theory.

When 115 colonists go missing

from Roanoke Island in 1590,

the English are eager to re-establish

a presence in the New World,

but it takes them nearly 20 years to try again.

In 1607,

England finally manages

to establish a settlement on the James River

in Virginia.

They call it Jamestown.

Like its predecessor,

Jamestown is also plagued by misfortune.

The English can't seem to catch a break.

Once again, they don't have enough to eat early on.

They arrive too late in the year to plant crops.

The English are starving.

Food shortages get worse and worse and worse.

The English resort

to some fairly...

terrible behavior.

First they slaughter and kill their own animals.

This is not a very good strategy for long term,

since they need those animals to survive.

And when those run out, they turn to eating

rats, mice, and snakes.

Then they boil and eat their shoe leather

for sustenance. There is even some evidence

they may have resorted to cannibalism to survive.

Within three years,

only 60 of the original 214 Jamestown settlers

are still alive,

including a well-known figure in American history,

Captain John Smith.

John Smith was such a fascinating guy.

He served as a mercenary,

he was captured by the Turks,

sold into slavery, and then eventually

made his way to England by way of Russia.

Then he ends up in the New World

and becomes the leader of the new colony at Jamestown.

He is the first English explorer to map the Chesapeake Bay.

He then explores the coast of New England

and gives the region its name.

His books and maps aid English colonization efforts

for decades to come.

While he's struggling to keep his colony afloat

in Virginia, he's also got a burning curiosity

to solve the mystery of the Roanoke colonists.

And it doesn't hurt that England's King James has

issued an order to launch an investigation.

Smith works with the Jamestown colony's secretary,

William Strachey.

In his journals, we can see

William Strachey's research into the case.

Operating on the assumption that Native American tribes

might be the only people left who know what happened,

Strachey dives deep into a nearby

local indigenous population called the Powhatan.

The Powhatan are led by a man named Wahunsenacawh,

more commonly known as Chief Powhatan.

Chief Powhatan has

a love-hate relationship with the English.

On one hand, he views them as a threat

to his people and their way of life.

[gunshot]

But he also thinks

the English would be useful allies

in the ongoing conflict

between himself and the other tribes.

Today, Chief Powhatan is best remembered

as the father of Pocahontas.

As the legend goes, Powhatan's men

capture John Smith and order him put to death.

But the quite extraordinary thing

about Pocahontas was she does seem to have been

quite smitten with John Smith,

and she actually pleads with Powhatan

to spare his life.

And so consequently he did.

But Chief Powhatan may not have always been so lenient.

Because, according to Smith and Strachey's investigation,

he might be responsible

for the destruction... of the Roanoke colony.

Chief Powhatan speaks to William Strachey,

and he admits that he had

a group of English colonists killed

many years ago.

According to him,

instead of migrating south to live with the Croatoan,

the Roanoke colonists head north,

and they stay with a different tribe

called the Chesapeake.

The Chesapeake are rivals with the Powhatan,

because they refuse to bend the knee

to Chief Powhatan's authority

and join the Confederation.

So, when he gets word that the colonists

are possibly allying with the Chesapeake,

he claims that this fulfills a prophecy he's received.

He's been warned that a great nation from the East

is coming to overthrow his empire.

Unless he kills them first.

So that's exactly what he does.

After John Smith hears Chief Powhatan's confession,

he digs deeper.

Smith asks Chief Powhatan

to prove his bold claim, to essentially,

"Show me where the bodies are."

But Chief Powhatan can't.

Powhatan couldn't show him where the bodies were.

But what he did do is show him items

from previous colonies.

And he showed them a mortar and pestle,

and a couple of other objects,

but again, these could not be confirmed

as coming directly from the Lost Colony.

But when Smith sends back his report to King James,

the evidence is enough to convince him

that this is what happened,

and if that's what the king believes,

then case closed, right?

The Powhatan theory becomes the official version of events

for the next 200-plus years,

but today's historians question its accuracy.

Some argue that the settlers that Chief Powhatan

boasts of killing aren't the Roanoke colonists at all.

Instead, he's referring to a different set of people,

and the confusion happens because of the language barrier.

Smith was specifically talking about the colony

of the 115...

the last Roanoke colony that was established.

But Powhatan could've easily been talking about

the previous colonies that had come

a couple of years earlier.

Remember, there was a 1584 expedition too.

Just male soldiers, 15 of whom

were left behind when that expedition failed,

and that might be who Powhatan killed.

It's certainly true that

a lot of blood was spilled

in this particular chapter of history,

both Native American and English.

But despite Chief Powhatan's account,

we still can't prove that any of it belonged

to the Roanoke colonists.

North Carolina's island-dotted coast

is now an idyllic

and popular tourist destination.

But 400 years ago,

it was largely inhospitable,

as Roanoke's colonists discover.

When John White leaves in 1587,

conditions among the colony were dire.

Food was limited, and the farming was

not taking hold as they had hoped.

There was a famine going on.

There was clearly a great deal

of bad weather, and they're

struggling with skirmishes

with Native American Indians.

We know they're not there

when White returns three years later.

So pretty much every theory about what happened to them

starts with a relocation; they have to go somewhere else.

But Roanoke is an island.

So, if they want to flee,

they'll have to cross a body of water.

Luckily, while they don't have enough food to eat,

they do have a boat.

The colonists originally arrive with three ships.

One returns to England immediately.

One is taken by John White,

and one still remains.

The boat they have left is called a pinnace,

which is a small, nimble, flat-bottomed boat,

mostly used for short trips and errands.

You use it when your main vessel is

too cumbersome, or the water's too shallow.

When White finally arrives in 1590,

in addition to finding the community dismantled,

the pinnace is gone.

He presumably would've thought

the colonists had gotten on it

and went somewhere.

Where, he wouldn't've known.

The point of them having this boat is

for fishing or island-hopping.

Foraging or small-scale exploration.

It's not meant to be a long-haul ship.

But in a dire emergency,

with no other options,

this has to be their Plan A.

It's either get on the boat, or die.

And this is where the theorists really start speculating,

about where they may have gone on this small boat,

but this fails to take into account

one other possibility,

that I think is definitely an option,

that they could've perished on this small boat.

This is very noteworthy.

So far, throughout history, really,

all 400-plus years,

searching for the Lost Colonists

has been largely limited to land.

But I think it's just as likely

that the answers are in the water.

Unfortunately, this theory makes

finding evidence almost impossible.

First of all, you're not gonna see

any trace of what happened,

unless somebody's randomly diving

or scanning the bottom of some body of water,

and lucks into...

a one-in-a-billion discovery.

It's complicated to even know where to begin

to look for wreckage for the colonists.

We don't know where they left from.

We don't know how far they sailed out.

We don't even know where they're going.

If the colonists had decided

that it was time to sail somewhere,

the most logical place to go would be--

to sail back to England.

They could've taken a short trip

to some other spot in the New World,

but the New World isn't working out for them,

so they valiantly try to go home.

Think about it.

You are stranded with no food

and no hope in a violent, strange new land.

What do you do?

You try to make it back home,

to a place you're familiar with.

Even if it means risking death.

They had survived the crossing one way.

Maybe they had what it took

to make it the other way.

Another European colony also famously made the voyage home,

against even worse odds.

The Roanoke colonists

might've been aware of a very well-known story

published in Europe 25 years prior.

There was a group of marooned French colonists

that shares many similarities to the Roanoke adventure.

It's the kind of story that would've gone viral today,

but even back then, it managed to spread far and wide.

In 1562, the French set out

to establish the Charlesfort settlement,

in what would become South Carolina,

but by the following year,

these colonists also run out of supplies.

Their leader, Admiral Jean Ribault,

sails home for more provisions,

leaving two dozen people behind.

Unfortunately, upon returning to Europe,

Ribault is unexpectedly detained,

leaving the settlers to fend for themselves

in a strange land.

Just like Roanoke.

But unlike Roanoke, this colony has

a much bigger obstacle.

These French settlers don't have access to a boat.

So, in 1563,

the Frenchmen build their own boat.

And against all odds, logic, and reason,

they make it back to Europe.

Just barely, but they do make it.

The colonists are probably thinking,

"If the French can make it on a boat they built themselves,

then surely we can make it with a boat that we have on hand."

But the problem may lie in their numbers.

The population of the colony starts off

with just over 100 people.

And because the pinnace was so small,

it's unlikely that all the colonists

were onboard that ship.

But depending on when the colonists flee,

some months have passed without supplies.

Between starvation, disease, and native attacks,

there may be far less than 100 survivors

to board the boat.

Capacity might not have been an issue.

But stability is.

For any crew crossing the Atlantic,

it was challenging at best.

These colonists didn't have instruments,

they were facing rough waters,

and they also were facing challenging weather.

In addition to that, this is not a seafaring boat,

this is a shoreline boat,

and with rough seas and the complications

of the water surrounding the outer banks,

it would've proved to be very difficult and very hard.

If they made it back,

surely they would've returned to their families.

There would've been some evidence,

but there's nothing to say that they made it home.

Could the remains of the Lost Colony be

buried underwater?

So far, no such shipwreck has been found.

But some researchers remain optimistic.

To date, scientists have only been able

to explore about 35% of the U.S. coastal sea floor.

So there's a lot to go.

Maybe someday, with advances in technology,

we'll find the remains of the Lost Colonists

who make it off the island

but don't survive the journey home.

For centuries the search for the lost colony of Roanoke

turns up nothing but tantalizing clues

and dead ends.

Then, in the late 1930s,

a treasure trove of new evidence is unearthed,

and, if authentic, it could rewrite history.

By the 20th century, the leading theories

as to what happened to the colonists were that,

number one, they joined with the Croatoans to the south,

and number two, they had gone north to the Chesapeake,

where they were murdered by Powhatan's people.

Another possibility is quite simple.

That they tried to sail back to England.

There is just so little evidence.

There's almost nothing that has survived,

and we haven't even located the site of the colony.

Roanoke Island is about the size of Manhattan,

and we don't even know

where they lived on that island.

The primary surviving written source

for the bulk of the information that we have on the colony

is from John White's diary,

and, of course, he wasn't there for the disappearance.

But in 1937,

a new written account is found,

and it's a bombshell.

November of 1937,

near Edenton, North Carolina,

about 60 miles west of Roanoke Island,

a man named Louis Hammond

is hunting for hickory nuts

along the Chowan River, when he finds a large rock

that's covered in strange inscriptions

that appear to be Old English.

Hammond brings the rock to Emory University

in Atlanta to have a history professor

named Haywood J. Pearce

help him decipher what it says.

Pearce takes one look,

and he can't believe his eyes.

The carved stone purports to be a message

from Eleanor Dare, John White's daughter.

On one side of the stone,

Dare reports the sad fate of her husband,

Ananias Dare,

and their four-year-old daughter, Virginia.

They apparently both die in the year 1591.

Below that, Dare instructs whoever finds the stone

to bring it to Governor White.

She wants her father to know what happened to her family,

and making the stone carving

is the best way she knows how to do that.

On the reverse side, there's an even longer message.

Eleanor describes

the initial departure from Roanoke

and the route they've taken so far.

They travel west, about 50 miles,

and end up close to the spot

where the stone is found.

Next, she writes that,

after a miserable period of illness,

starvation, and violent attacks

from local tribes, the population of the colony,

which starts off with just over 100 people,

dwindles down to just seven souls.

I've looked at this stone in great detail.

It makes for a great story,

it makes for a very plausible story.

The problem is, is there's no record

of where they went.

But she does provide a hint of a clue.

After the seven colonists bury the remains of their peers,

Dare writes that she's inscribed their names

on a grave marker somewhere, along with further details

of recent events.

In other words, there may be

a second hand-carved message with more answers.

After reviewing it, Haywood J. Pearce,

the history professor, knows exactly

how important this rock is,

so he buys it from Louis Hammond

and launches this obsessive search

for the second stone.

Pearce believes finding the second stone

will authenticate the first stone,

effectively solving the Roanoke mystery

and earning himself a permanent spot

in the history books as well.

Professor Pearce offers a $500 reward

to anyone who can find the second Dare stone.

By today's inflation, that's $10,000.

During that time, the country was still

in the Great Depression,

so we know the hunt was on.

Soon enough, Pearce's plan works.

The next stone is found by Bill Eberhardt,

a backwoodsman from northern Georgia.

He brings a 21-pound rock to Emory University

that he claim he found in South Carolina.

Sure enough, it has the names of the dead

that Eleanor Dare mentioned that she carved into it.

But Eberhardt's find doesn't end there.

In total, within less than a year,

Eberhardt finds several dozen more stones.

Taken together, they finally paint a clear picture

of what happened to the Roanoke survivors.

It's an incredible tale.

They eventually make it to safety,

after a 500-mile journey...

...to Georgia.

Together, this evidence has become known

as the Dare Stones.

According to the Dare Stones,

the colonists survive and they're in Georgia,

taken in by natives, and Eleanor's husband passes away.

Eventually Eleanor Dare is married

to a Native American man in 1593.

Together, they have a daughter named Agnes,

and Eleanor dies in 1599.

After Eleanor's death, Griffen Jones

and Agnes Dare leave behind obituaries

for the other survivors as they die off,

but nobody knows what happens

to Agnes or Griffin.

And it's easy to say Professor Pearce was

very excited about these findings.

He hosts a scientific conference

in October of 1940, inviting 34 academic experts

to examine the stones.

A panel of these experts issues a press release

supporting the stone's authenticity.

Pearce submits an article of his findings

to the Saturday Evening Post.

When the article comes out on April 26th, 1941,

it's quite shocking, but not for the reason

Pearce expected, because, according to the article,

the fact-checkers find all kinds of problems with the story.

The Dare Stones are a hoax.

After examining the stones,

a linguist finds several flaws.

They used words which were

not in the English language

at the time, like "trail"

and "reconnoiter."

One of these stones even purports to list

names of people, but those names don't appear

on the ship's manifest.

They seem to be just fabrications.

Then there's the handwriting.

The 47 stones found by Eberhardt

don't match the handwriting on the initial stone

found by Hammond.

And they're carved into a different kind of rock.

It doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

The timing of the 1937 find

is also suspicious.

In 1937, it's the 350-year anniversary

of the Lost Colony. There's a lot of fanfare

built up around this anniversary and the celebration.

It's also an interesting time because the country

is in the middle of the Great Depression,

so it's a wonderful way to lift the spirits

- of the population. - In modern terms,

Roanoke could be described as having a moment.

So, if somebody were trying to make money

off some bogus artifacts,

this would be the time.

Is it possible that Eberhardt faked the Dare Stones?

This never occurs to Haywood Pearce.

Eberhardt to him is just some manual laborer

with a third-grade education.

There's no way he could produce

such authentic forgeries.

Come to find out, Eberhardt has a history

of forging and selling fake Native American artifacts.

While the 47 Dare Stones

forged by Eberhardt

have been officially declared fraudulent,

some still believe the original is genuine.

There's still a chance that the original stone

brought in by Louis Hammond

could be the 400-year-old work of Eleanor Dare.

Then again, Hammond may have just been looking

to make a quick buck and earn 15 minutes of fame

through a scam of his own,

which Eberhardt then took to an extreme.

Either way, apart from the Dare Stones themselves,

there's no evidence that the Lost Colonists

ever ended up in Georgia.

Across four centuries the writings

of Governor John White are the only clue

as to the final destination

of the Lost Colony of Roanoke.

John White leaves behind

a journal that's very extensive,

but just like the rest of us, he's in the dark

about what happened to the colonists after they leave.

Although he was governor of the colony,

he was first and foremost

a painter by trade,

and it's because of his drawings

and his incredible paintings that he produced

during his time on Roanoke Island,

that we know a great deal about

what life was like amongst

the Native American Indian population.

White also leaves behind

one other potential piece of evidence.

A hand-drawn map.

The Virginea Pars map is

arguably the finest piece of 16th-century

North American cartography there is.

There were three expeditions to Roanoke.

White made this map during the 1585-6

Sir Walter Raleigh expedition

a few years before the Lost Colonists.

The map shows Roanoke Island,

the colonists' eventual landing spot

and its surrounding areas in great detail.

It's incredibly accurate.

You can still look at that map today,

over 400 years later,

and define all of the key estuaries,

the lakes, the islands, it's a remarkable map.

In 2012, a research group

called the First Colony Foundation

examines White's map for new clues.

The First Colony Foundation, they don't even start

by actually looking at the original.

They go over a high-quality reproduction of the map,

and something jumps out at them.

A small detail that

may be hiding a big secret.

They see a faint brown shadow,

which seems to have been overlooked.

This could just be a topographical outline,

but the team thinks it might instead be a patch.

Something was covered up here.

Maybe a spot where John White

accidentally spills a blob of paint,

makes an error, and it's just covered up

with a piece of parchment. Or maybe it's something more.

There's only one way to find out.

They notify the British Museum,

which takes the original copy of the Virginea Pars map

and scans it

using advanced imaging technology.

And sure enough, under the patch is not

an errant paint blob

but what appears to be a large X symbol.

On maps of the era,

an X is often used to mark the location of a fort.

The question is, what does this image of a fort mean?

Was it, in fact, something that was built

on a previous expedition?

Or maybe it was an idea

that simply never came to fruition.

- We don't know. - But obviously John White

knows about it, and, in theory,

when he comes back with his Roanoke colony,

as their governor, he might've told

the colonists about the fort.

Could this be where they head

when things turn ugly on Roanoke Island?

The X is about 50 miles west of Roanoke inland,

along the Albemarle Sound.

This goes right along with the passage

in John White's journal where he instructs the colonists

to go west, in case of an emergency.

Did the colonists follow White's instructions?

A team is quickly sent to excavate the area.

The dig site gets one of the coolest names

you'll ever find in archaeology.

They call it Site X.

A reference to the pop culture idea

of buried pirate treasure.

And it's not long before Site X unveils

a treasure trove of new clues.

There are pottery shards and pieces of weapons

dating back to the Tudor era,

the exact period when this mystery begins.

English artifacts from the period

of the Roanoke colonists definitely exist at this site.

The problem is, which English group

did these artifacts belong to?

They can't be dated precisely enough to tell.

They could be from the Lost Colony

or the Walter Raleigh expedition

or various other smaller teams

that have visited the area before.

Archaeologists expand their search

to a second location nearby.

They name it Site Y.

At Site Y, there have also been finds

of European artifacts, but, again, the trouble is

trying to tell whether they belong

to the Lost Colonists or to later English settlers.

They're not yet definitive.

We need more evidence.

The First Colony Foundation continues their hunt

through annual digs, led by historians,

scientists, and archaeologists.

And whatever they find is fully analyzed

in a nearby laboratory. They're confident they know

where the Lost Colony of Roanoke ended up,

and it's right here. Now they just have to prove it

with that one elusive artifact that can establish the link.

We will know that we have a location for the Lost Colony

when we find something that is irrefutably

a personal effect of one of the Lost Colonists.

It has to be a necklace or a ring that might have

a name or note or something that positively identifies it

as a Lost Colonist's.

But until we find more evidence,

more hard evidence, we're essentially

looking for a needle in a haystack.

" CROATOAN."

A strange word found in a strange place,

carved into a tree near the abandoned

Roanoke colony in 1590.

But it may not be the only time

this word is tied to tragedy.

Believe it or not, there's a theory out there

that the word "Croatoan" turns up

in several desperate places in history.

Not just with the Lost Colony.

Not by a long shot.

The theory speculates that, when the colonists

carve that word, it's not a simple message

of their whereabouts; it's a cry of fear.

Because, in this case,

according to the theory, Croatoan doesn't mean

the friendly native tribe

or the name of an island.

It refers to some kind of supernatural force

that is out for blood.

John White assumes that the carvings "Croatoan"

and "C-R-O" means

"we've gone 40 miles south

to live with our indigenous friends."

He goes home devastated,

unable to find his daughter or granddaughter,

but we can assume that he has some degree of hope

that maybe they were able to survive

and perhaps even thrive with some help of the locals.

But John White might be very troubled to learn

what allegedly unfolds over the years,

because, according to some reports,

the next time "Croatoan" shows up in history,

it appears to be a dire warning.

The word seems to resurface in 1849.

Shortly before his death, the great author

Edgar Allan Poe goes missing.

He eventually shows up in a state of total delirium,

and what happened to Poe remains another great

historical mystery, but something at that time

causes him incredible distress

that may have even driven him mad

or may have contributed to his death.

Allegedly, one of the last coherent things he says

is the word "Croatoan."

There's another story about the word

tied to an alleged incident in 1888.

The old west outlaw Black Bart

is a notorious stagecoach robber,

and he's eventually brought to justice

and serves four years.

But before he gets out,

it's rumored that he carves the word "Croatoan"

into the wall of his cell,

and after his release in early 1888,

he's never seen or heard from again.

Is this word somehow killing people?

Making them disappear?

What's going on?

The parallels don't end there.

In 1921, a ship called the Carroll A. Deering

crashes off the coast of North Carolina.

The entire crew goes missing.

Not found dead. Just totally missing.

The ship was found abandoned,

and the word "Croatoan" was apparently

written in the logbook.

Ambrose Bierce is a famous horror author

who disappears in 1913 or 1914,

on his way to Mexico.

But one rumor has it that the last bed

he was known to have slept in

had the word "Croatoan"

carved into one of its posts.

And this is a doozy.

Amelia Earhart

famously disappears during

an ill-fated flight over the Pacific Ocean

in 1937.

But the Croatoan theorists

believe that she leaves behind

a journal with the word scribbled in it.

It's unclear how or when this rumor started,

but it continues to be widely reported.

could there be an ominous link between these incidents?

In the mythology of the colonists'

Native American neighbors,

"Croatoan" is the name of a vengeful spirit

that inhabits their island

and punishes those who displease him.

He can transform them

into animals, trees, or rocks,

or just kill them.

Is this what those other

historical references mean?

Is there some vengeful spirit

called Croatoan that has been out there

transforming and killing people

over these past 400 years?

Of course, the idea of an evil spirit

associated with the word "Croatoan,"

causing all these problems,

is regrettably still a legend.

Besides, if the spirit did transform

the Lost Colonists, why did it then bother

to dismantle their houses?

Much more likely the colonists flee on their own.

But what happens to them next is still anyone's guess.

It's the oldest

missing persons case in America,

and yet today,

there are more people

dedicated to solving it

than ever before.

They're searching land, sea,

and even DNA

to find the answer.

Perhaps one day soon,

the lost colony of Roanoke

will finally be found.

I'm Laurence Fishburne.

Thank you for watching

"History's Greatest Mysteries."

♪♪

White's first mission is