Comment by derbOac

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".