Poll of the Day > What do you think happened to Roanoke colony?

(+) Yeah! (+)

The colony that vanished when people from England came to check on them a couple years later

Personally I think the simplest explanation is that natives killed them. If they went willingly they would have left a written letter. That one word carved in the tree might not even be anything. For all we know a kid did it and the actual meaning has nothing to do with the mystery

Aliens abducted them

aliens
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obviously it was a shitty colony and they wandered off with the natives for survival. did they not prove that already?!
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No. Nothing can ever be proven outright. Maybe if it had just happened. But too much time has gone by

They were gnomes and turned into trees
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You would think the non-whites killed the whites, ok?
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ClarkDuke posted...

You would think the non-whites killed the whites, ok?

The main issue for me is the lack of a proper message left behind. Whatever happened to them was against their will. I just do not believe they all decided to run off together and break all contact forever.

For a good story about Roanoke, read Phantoms by Dean Koontz. It is about a modern town that has the thing that happened to Roanoke happen to them. It might have been made into a tv mini series maybe I am not sure

So you want me to read fiction?
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ClarkDuke posted...

So you want me to read fiction?

Yes

I think this reasoning you're presenting l is the furthest from the logical, ok?
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Rad_Chad posted...

obviously it was a shitty colony and they wandered off with the natives for survival. did they not prove that already?!

They have proven that the natives in those areas had children with whites around the same time that colony would have been around, but I guess technically they didn't prove it.

ASlaveObeys posted...

Rad_Chad posted...

obviously it was a shitty colony and they wandered off with the natives for survival. did they not prove that already?!

They have proven that the natives in those areas had children with whites around the same time that colony would have been around, but I guess technically they didn't prove it.

This. Plus most evidence that had been found points to the residents leaving peacefully and becoming part of one of the tribes further inland.
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ugh....I just can't get over them not trying to leave a note or something.

if it wasn't for that, I would say they went to live with the natives. but the note thing is just a big huge thorn to me. I can't get over it. it makes zero sense to me that they didn't put any real effort to leave a messae behind explaining themselves. or try to come back someday and reconnect. even if they wanted to stay, send 1 guy as a messenger to run over to a town and say what happened

to me, it breaks the story when they don't explain their fate. that's why I think that it must have been against their will, whatever happened. that's why I suggested being murdered. not cause I think all native americans are killers. but it's just something that makes more sense than a bunch of people running into the wilderness never to be heard from again

How do we know anything happened to them

Maybe they're all still there
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Zikten posted...

ugh....I just can't get over them not trying to leave a note or something.

if it wasn't for that, I would say they went to live with the natives. but the note thing is just a big huge thorn to me. I can't get over it. it makes zero sense to me that they didn't put any real effort to leave a messae behind explaining themselves. or try to come back someday and reconnect. even if they wanted to stay, send 1 guy as a messenger to run over to a town and say what happened

to me, it breaks the story when they don't explain their fate. that's why I think that it must have been against their will, whatever happened. that's why I suggested being murdered. not cause I think all native americans are killers. but it's just something that makes more sense than a bunch of people running into the wilderness never to be heard from again

People abandoned colonies and never returned fairly frequently. They probably didn't think anyone was coming back.

Haven't you watched American Horror Story?
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green dragon posted...

Haven't you watched American Horror Story?

I haven't seen that season. I have only watched Murder House, Asylum, Coven, like 60% of Freak SHow before I lost interest, and Cult. and planning to watch Apocalypse next week

I know it's all on hulu though. so I might try to catch up on the seasons I missed sometime

ASlaveObeys posted...

Zikten posted...

ugh....I just can't get over them not trying to leave a note or something.

if it wasn't for that, I would say they went to live with the natives. but the note thing is just a big huge thorn to me. I can't get over it. it makes zero sense to me that they didn't put any real effort to leave a messae behind explaining themselves. or try to come back someday and reconnect. even if they wanted to stay, send 1 guy as a messenger to run over to a town and say what happened

to me, it breaks the story when they don't explain their fate. that's why I think that it must have been against their will, whatever happened. that's why I suggested being murdered. not cause I think all native americans are killers. but it's just something that makes more sense than a bunch of people running into the wilderness never to be heard from again

People abandoned colonies and never returned fairly frequently. They probably didn't think anyone was coming back.

Once again, this. Plus, it took John White several years to make it back with the much needed supplies. The colonists left a sign just as he instructed them to do. There were too many tribes for him to try and figure out which one the colonist integrated with, in the time he was allotted to check for them.
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why was the sign just one word on a tree though? why not leave a note? a letter that tells the story of what happened? instead of one cryptic word on a tree

and when nobody ever came to find their tribe they were living with, after like 5 years...10 years...why not send someone out to make contact and say "hey....guys! we're over here!"

Number 5 (The second one down)

http://www.cracked.com/article_16671_6-famous-unsolved-mysteries-with-really-obvious-solutions.html
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Zikten posted...

why was the sign just one word on a tree though? why not leave a note? a letter that tells the story of what happened? instead of one cryptic word on a tree

and when nobody ever came to find their tribe they were living with, after like 5 years...10 years...why not send someone out to make contact and say "hey....guys! we're over here!"

Do you know how few people could read and write back then and they literally would have had no materials to write with or on, and carving a note wouldn't be easy.

One he told them to leave the sign. Not much supplies to leave a note that could also get lost. He didn't know how long he'd be gone for.

Many tribes were fighting with each other, so trusting outsiders is not a wise thing to do. Plus, looking at the history between some of the local tribes and colonist was not the best, to go to new comers and say, "Hey we're over here is not the wisest".

Also the next few colonist that came were part of a charter and had to do things a certain way as part of their agreement. Exploring inland was not the safest for them and really not suggested. It wasn't until many years that they explored further inland. At which point, whatever tribe the may have integrated with may also have moved further inland without any knowledge of new colonist arriving.
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Wii3Kings posted...

ASlaveObeys posted...

Rad_Chad posted...

obviously it was a shitty colony and they wandered off with the natives for survival. did they not prove that already?!

They have proven that the natives in those areas had children with whites around the same time that colony would have been around, but I guess technically they didn't prove it.

This. Plus most evidence that had been found points to the residents leaving peacefully and becoming part of one of the tribes further inland.

Basically. We know exactly what happened to them, because it wasn't even a mystery to the people at the time. Multiple documented sources exist that explicitly spell out what happened to the colony - it suffered from crop failure and disease, the remaining colonists went to live with the nearby tribe (the Croatoan tribe, who lived on Croatoan Island), and later inter-tribe conflicts resulted in at least some of them taken as slaves by neighboring tribes (some of whom may later have been integrated into the enslaving tribes, because that was a thing some of the native tribes did back then).

But the people in England who had access to this information went out of their way to cover it up a bit, because they didn't want it to discourage future colonization. So people forgot, and later generations of people delving through records started to wonder what happened, and a lot of bullshit and myth grew up around it because that's how humans work.

The only reason people still think it's a mystery at all is because it makes for a more interesting story, and because misinformation seems to travel more efficiently via rumor and hearsay than truth does. But we've definitely found a fair amount of documented evidence explaining exactly what happened (and there are multiple books that spell it out, that no one ever reads because the myth is more interesting).


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