How can I find information about the Lost Colony of Roanoke?

Question

I need this for a project in History. I'm making a documentary and I need to create a script and video clips.

Answer 1

There is plenty of infromation on the internet and in the library. From indepndent sources and government sites. I listed a few it is enough to get started. Good luck.

Answer 2

The video clips I think would be the most difficult but there is information on the Lost Colony of Roanoke

http://www.coastalguide.com/packet/lostcolony-croatan.shtml
http://www.nationalcenter.org/ColonyofRoanoke.html
http://www.nps.gov/archive/fora/search.htm

This is a good site for younger people with many links
http://www.kidinfo.com/American_History/Colonization_Roanoke.html

Answer 3

Do a a re-enactment of what could have happened!

http://www.coastalguide.com/packet/lostcolony-croatan.shtml

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roanoke_Island (about the colony)

http://www.nps.gov/archive/fora/search.htm (about the search for the colony).

http://www.pbs.org/saf/1203/segments/1203-1.htm (recent discoveries).

Answer 4

www.ask.com and www.google.com

Answer 5

Video clips:
http://www.nps.gov/archive/fora/search.h...
http://www.coastalguide.com/packet/lostc...
http://www.nationalcenter.org/colonyofro..


Roanoke Island is an island near the coast of North Carolina, United States. About eight miles (13 km) long and two miles (3 km) wide, the island lies between the mainland and the barrier islands in Dare County, with Albemarle Sound on its north, Roanoke Sound on its east, Pamlico Sound on its south, and Croatan Sound on its west. The island contains the town of Manteo at the northern end and Wanchese CDP at the southern end. Fort Raleigh National Historic Site is on the island. There is a land area of 17.95 square miles (46.48 km²) and a population of 6,724 as of the 2000 census. This Colony was run by Ralph Lane after Sir Richard Grenville, who had transported the colonists to Virginia, returned to Britain for supplies. These colonists were ill-prepared and not particularly clever, because, although they depended upon the local Indians for food, they also antagonized the Indians by such tactics as kidnapping them and holding them hostage in exchange for information. Unfortunately for the colonists, who were desperately in need of supplies, Grenville's return was delayed. As a result, when Sir Francis Drake put in at Roanoke after destroying the Spanish colony of St. Augustine, the entire colony returned with Drake to England.

The Roanoke Colony was the first English colony in the New World. (St. John's in Newfoundland was claimed in 1583 by Humphrey Gilbert but no settlement was attempted.) It was founded at Roanoke Island in what was then Virginia.


Portrait of Sir Walter RaleighThe enterprise was financed and organized by Sir Walter Raleigh, who had received a charter for the colonization of Virginia from Queen Elizabeth I of England, specifying that Raleigh had ten years in which to establish a settlement in North America or lose his colonization rights. Raleigh and Elizabeth intended that the venture should provide riches from the New World, and a base from which to send privateers on raids against the treasure fleets of Spain (with whom the English were perennially at war, see Anglo-Spanish War). With that in mind, an expedition was sent in 1584 to explore the eastern coast of North America for an appropriate location. The expedition was led by Phillip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe, who chose the Outer Banks of modern North Carolina as an ideal location from which to raid the Spanish, and proceeded to make contact with local Native American tribes. They then returned to England to report their finds: samples of local flora and fauna, and two natives: Manteo and Wanchese.

The following spring, a colonizing expedition composed solely of men, many of them veteran soldiers who had fought to establish English rule in Ireland, was sent to establish the colony. The leader of the settlement effort, Sir Richard Grenville, was assigned to further explore the area, establish the colony, and return to England with news of the venture's success. The establishment of the colony was initially postponed, perhaps because most of the colony's food stores were ruined when the lead ship struck a shoal upon arrival at the Outer Banks, or due to punitive action taken against natives. After the initial exploration of the mainland coast and the native settlements located there, the natives were blamed for stealing a silver cup. In response the last village visited was sacked and burned, and its weroance executed by burning.[citation needed]

Despite this incident and a lack of food, Grenville decided to leave Ralph Lane and approximately 75 men to establish the English colony at the north end of Roanoke Island, promising to return in April 1586 with more men and fresh supplies.

By April 1587, relations with a neighboring tribe had degraded to such a degree that they attacked an expedition led by Lane to explore the Roanoke River. In response he attacked the natives in their capital, where he killed their weroance, Wingina.

As April passed there was no sign of Grenville's relief fleet. The colony was still in existence in June when Sir Francis Drake paused on his way home from a successful raid in the Caribbean, and offered to take the colonists back to England, an offer they accepted. The relief fleet arrived shortly after the departure of Drake's fleet with the colonists. Finding the colony abandoned, Grenville decided to return to England with the bulk of his force, leaving behind fifteen men to maintain both an English presence and Raleigh's claim to Virginia.

The end of the 1587 colony is unrecorded (leading to its being known as the "Lost Colony"), and there are multiple theories on the fate of the colonists. The principal theory is that they dispersed and were absorbed by either the local Croatan or Hatteras Indians, or still another Algonquian people; it has yet to be established if they did assimilate with one or other of the native populations. The Lumbee, an indigenous people living to the southwest of Roanoke Island in present-day Robeson, Scotland, Hoke, and Cumberland counties, North Carolina, were purported to be the descendants of some of the Lost Colony settlers. Members of the Lost Colony had carved a single word into a tree: "Croatoan" (also spelled Croatan). Despite John White's difficulty in locating the settlers, about fifty years later, the Croatan people were reportedly found to be practicing Christianity.

Writing in 1891, Stephen B. Weeks opined that "their language is the English of 300 years ago, and their names are in many cases the same as those borne by the original colonists." Weeks, however based his report on a theory that was then being widely disseminated by Hamilton McMillan, a conservative Democrat who represented Robeson County, North Carolina, in the late 19th century. McMillan wanted to split the Post-Reconstruction pro-Republican Indian/Black vote in his county. The Native Americans of Robeson County had suffered egregiously at the hands of white Robesonians both before and after the American Civil War. During Reconstruction, the Indians of Robeson County were politically allied with the county's Black population. By championing Indian interests, McMillan hoped to draw them into his party's fold and establish a Democratic majority in the county. In all probability, McMillan also confused the oral traditions of some ancestral Lumbee families who spoke of migrating from the Roanoke River and Neuse River basin during the mid-18th century where groups of Saponi and Tuscarora had settlements. However, contemporary anthropologists and historians posit that these particular oral traditions belong to families whose ancestors were Yeopin, Potoskite, Nansemond, Saponi, and Tuscarora--peoples who had incurred devastating loss of life and land in the wake of the Tuscarora War in the early 18th century. Anthropologists and historians contend that they may have joined with the migrating Hatteras of Roanoke Island as well as with Cheraw families on Drowning Creek, now known as the Lumbee, or Lumber River.

A similar legend claims that the Native Americans of Person County, North Carolina, are descended from the English colonists of Roanoke Island. Indeed, when these Indians were first encountered by subsequent settlers, they noted that these Native Americans already spoke English and were of the Christian religion. The historical surnames of this group also correspond with those of the Roanoke Island settlers, and many exhibit Caucasian racial features along with Native American features. Others discount these remarkable coincidences and classify the Indians of Person County as an offshoot of the Saponi tribe.

On the other hand, American anthropologist Lee Miller, in Roanoke: Solving the Mystery of the Lost Colony [1] [2] proposed that the expedition was sabotaged from the beginning by Sir Walter Raleigh's rival at court, Elizabeth's "spymaster," Francis Walsingham, while other theorists contend that the colony moved wholesale, and was later destroyed. When Captain John Smith and the Jamestown colonists settled in Virginia in 1607, one of their assigned tasks was to locate the Roanoke colonists. Native peoples told Captain Smith of people within fifty miles of Jamestown who dressed and lived as the English. Captain Smith was also told by Powhatan, weroance of the Powhatan Tribe, that he had wiped out the Roanoke colonists just prior to the arrival of the Jamestown settlers because they were living with the Chesapeake, a tribe that refused to join Powhatan's confederacy. Powhatan reportedly produced several English-made iron implements to back his claim. However, this might be unlikely because of the fact that no bodies were found.

Still others speculate that the colonists simply gave up waiting, tried to return to England on their own, and perished in the attempt. When Governor White left in 1587, he left the colonists with a pinnace and several small ships for exploration of the coast or removal of the colony to the mainland. Another claim suggests that, with the region in drought, the colony must have suffered a massive food shortage.

There are those who theorize that the Spanish destroyed the colony. Earlier in the century, the Spanish had eliminated Fort Caroline in Florida as well as a French colony near present-day Jacksonville. The theory however is unlikely since the Spanish were still looking for the location of England's failed colony as late as 1600, ten years after White discovered that the colony was missing.