BUXTON, N.C. — The Lost Colony, a story many of us have heard, is about the apparent disappearance of 117 colonists in the late 1500s. Now, researchers tell WTKR News 3 that they believe their most recent discovery further reinforces their belief that The Lost Colony relocated to Hatteras Island.
"The Lost Colony went to Croatoan. I know they teach in school that no one knows what this word (Croatoan) means, but that's a lie. The colony had Croatoan men on the ship with them. There were several voyages before the colony from England to Croatoan, which is Hatteras Island," said Scott Dawson.
Scott Dawson is the president of the Croatoan Archaeological Society and runs The Lost Colony Museum in Buxton. He's worked for years alongside British archaeologist Dr. Mark Horton, digging and excavating sites around Hatteras Island.
"There's everything you could possibly find: tools, guns, their pottery, the red wear, the border wear, all that stuff. It's all there, and it's all mixed in with Croatoan material at a level that's pure 16th century that's dated every possible way that you can," said Dawson.
They feel their most recent discovery, made during a dig in Buxton, further reinforces their research.
“We found an entire blacksmith shop and the hammer scale and the slag and the vitriolized glass. All these byproducts of blacksmithing are there, which proves that they're living and working on the site," said Dawson.
It's research that University of North Carolina Chapel Hill professor of history and scholar of Native American history Kathleen DuVal says makes a lot of sense.
“It seems like it would be silly to doubt that they went to Croatoan. It seems like that is where they did go. That's where their allies were. They were with Manteo. That's where Manteo was from. And that all makes sense," said DuVal.
The Lost Colony play is a staple in the Outer Banks community. The Roanoke Island Historical Association executive director Chuck Still shared this statement about the years of discoveries:
“All these discoveries are great because they only renew and continue the interest in the Lost Colony. In the play, Paul Green made the assumption that they were going to Croatoan and that’s what they intended to do. We support all the information that comes out about the Lost Colony because it builds more interest in the story.”
For Dawson, the intention was never to make this discovery; He says their research has always been about preserving and promoting the Croatoan history, which he feels is overlooked in the story of the Lost Colony.
“Our motivation in doing this was not to find the Lost Colony, because nobody that has any academia at all considers them lost. What we did was prove what we already knew, so that hopefully we could reinstate these guys, and that textbooks would start teaching Croatoan is the old name of Hatteras Island and a tribe. There's 900 pages of documents talking about them. We know about their religion, their language, their culture, everything from the details of how they built a canoe to how they buried their dead. It's all there in the same document as Virginia Dare's birth," said Dawson.
“Whatever happened to that pretty small number of colonists, it had to do with with Native Americans, with their politics, their warfare, their trade, their economies. No answer is possible without learning more about Native history in North Carolina. And I think that's that should be the biggest message," said DuVal.
As far as what's next, Dawson hopes that Horton publishes the findings.
"Mark Horton saying we have the smoking gun evidence, he doesn't do that, right? He's a professional and we've been finding artifacts from the colony for over a decade, and he's never said that until we got the blacksmith shop, and now he's finally like, alright, that seals or that proves they're living and working here," said Dawson.
