Comment by derbOac
5 days ago
I have family in the area and my impression from archeological and historical news, articles and books from there is there isn't really one definitive moment where everyone in the colony just kind of up and left to the same place at the same time. If I had to bet, there was a kind of gradual process of degradation of the colony and some went one way and others went another.
This was interesting to read and it seems kind of definitive, and my impression is it's consistent with other things I've read. But if I recall correctly, there's also evidence from other sites that some from the colony also went elsewhere.
It seems reasonable to me to think that if things were breaking down, there might be differences of thought or preference about where to go, and that they might have also assumed they weren't totally cutting off contact from one another, being in the same area.
Where did they go?
Were there other settlements ?
I'm not really an expert, but in general there's kind of two or three main sets of theories for resettlement: The "Croatoan Island" theory, the "mainland" theories, and "combination" theories. Most involve assimilation into the different native populations in the area, or some assistance from them, but not all.
My memory is fuzzy but I think a few years ago they found in a site on the mainland some artifacts that seemed to be from that time period — the site was one that locals had kind of talked about for years and when they did an archeological study of it it turned out to have some substance. But what I remember was that there was no evidence of a permanent settlement and they couldn't definitively tell why the artifacts were there, so they couldn't tell if some of the colonists had been there, or how long, or if the artifacts had come from trade with natives, or had been washed there from elsewhere, or what.
The area involves a lot of ecological and geographic change over time due to hurricanes and is sort of a maze of inlets, islands, and marshes, so it's easy for me to imagine it being difficult to study archeologically speaking, or why people would "disappear".
There were native people living there (in ways that leave little trace in the archaeological record), I've heard it argued that many colonists may have chosen to join them.
Related, some good examples of this elsewhere during the colonies, with first person evidence cited in Tribe (http://www.sebastianjunger.com/tribe-by-sebastian-junger)
This may come as a surprise to you, but there were many settlements in America before Europeans ever showed up.
No other British settlements in the hemisphere, though. Failed expeditions did end up in other nations colonies, but this was never pleasant for either side. But they would have had to go hundreds of kilometers by sea to find other Europeans, without a proper ship and on meager supplies. Joining the natives was the best way to survive… but which natives?
Perhaps the one they had somewhat "okay" relations with and whose leader's son made several trips to Europe with John White.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manteo_(Native_American_leader...
The 1619 project touched on this well. Slaves and indentured servants snuck away and joined native settlements and even had fringe settlements of their own eventually.
Working in one of the colonies for some rich guy prioritizing tobacco to pay dividends over food wasn’t a fun time.