In 1606, Captains Christopher Newport and John Smith, along with nearly 150 men, set out for North America. It took another 20 years, but England finally started to play catch-up. Naturally, England wanted in on the wealth. They’d formed trading posts, started settlements, and grown extremely rich from the land’s resources. Either way, the fate of the Lost Colony of Roanoke remains one of the most famous unsolved mysteries today.īy the end of the sixteenth century, Spain and France both had territories across North and South America. And a third group thinks the settlers were killed by the supreme chief of the Powhatan, a nearby alliance of Native tribes. Others believe that the colony was wiped out by England’s colonial rival, the Spanish. Some historians believe that the colonists joined the Croatoan people and assimilated into American Indian society. Croatoan was the name of an indigenous group in the area, the only one friendly with the settlers at the time. The only clue as to what may have happened? The word “Croatoan” was carved into a wooden post, along with the letters “Cro” carved into a nearby tree.
There, he found the settlement totally abandoned! There was no trace of any of the colonists-including his granddaughter Virginia Dare, the first English child born in North America. It took White three years to return to Roanoke.
He also instructed them to carve a cross symbol if they were in danger. He told the colonists that if they planned to leave Roanoke during his time away, they should carve their destination into a tree trunk so he could find them. White traveled back to England to secure more food and supplies. The voyage depleted their resources and the colonists were worried that they wouldn’t be able to survive the winter. Governor John White led a group of men, women, and children to Roanoke for the 1587 attempt. Both attempts failed-and the second one ended with the complete disappearance of all 116 colonists! In 15, Raleigh sent two separate groups of settlers to establish a colony off the coast of North Carolina (pictured). Two decades earlier, Queen Elizabeth I granted a private adventurer named Sir Walter Raleigh permission to create an English colony in the Americas. But it wasn’t England’s first attempt to settle on the continent.
When Jamestown was founded in 1607, it became the first permanent English colony in North America.