In 1587, John White arrived on Roanoke Island, part of the Outer Banks of present day North Carolina. He was part of an expedition sent by Queen Elizabeth I of England to establish a permanent colony in the Americas. White was to be the governor of this new colony. But this wasn’t his first time on Roanoke Island. He had been part of an earlier expedition in 1585. An expedition that did not end well. And, spoiler alert, this new attempt would meet an even more disastrous end when as many as 116 men, women, and children disappeared entirely, going down in history as the mysterious “Lost Colony of Roanoke.” But did you know, there's a lot more to the story than what a handful of Englishmen recorded back in the 1580’s? A whole nother side to the story, that is mostly left out? Let’s fix that.
Sources:
- "The Head in Edward Nugent's Hand: Roanoke's Forgotten Indians" by Michael Leroy Oberg
- National Parks Service "Fort Raleigh"
- Coastal Review "Did Thanksgiving Begin Here?"
- Smithsonian Magazine "Did Francis Drake Bring Enslaved Africans to North America Decades Before Jamestown?"
- Washington Daily News "The People Left Behind"
- First Colony Foundation "The Roanoke Colonies"
- Documenting the American South "Ralph Lane"
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