Roanoke Colony Theory

The Lost Colony of Roanoke is a conundrum that has baffled the world since 1587, when the colony perished. The “Lost Colony” went to live with the Croatoan Native Americans. This concept states that “the Lumbees are descendants of Sir Walter Raleigh’s Roanoke Island colonists.”7 The colonists settled amidst and intermarried with the kind Croatoan Indians. There is circumstantial evidence that supports this theory, in what actually happened to the Roanoke colony. “The theory was proposed in 1885 by Robeson County legislator, Hamilton McMillian and then later on by a North Carolina historian Stephen B. Weeks.” 6

For over a century the Lumbees have been trying to get federal recognition, but have not got it for several reasons. According to Cindy,

Second, the Lumbee don’t necessarily look, or act, like “Indians”. Many have white features, and the group has traditionally owned their own land, thus lacking the tradition “reservation” life. Third, in 1956, Congress recognized the tribe, but did not “acknowledge” them. The Lumbee were called Indians, but they were not “Indian-enough” to form a government-to-government relationship with the United States. Fourth the standards used to determine this were, and are, inherently arbitrary. Fifth, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and congress are caught in a never-ending circle about who can recognize the tribe.4 As anyone can tell the Lumbee Indians are certainly different than any other tribe. They were not “Indian” enough because most of them had white skin and blue eyes. The complexion of their skin was unquestionably a huge reason why the theory of them being descendants of Sir Walter Raleigh’s Roanoke Island colonists came to be. The Lumbee tribe did not have to endure the migration hardship that other tribes encountered. Due to their “mixed-race status and

A prominent supporter of the lost colony hypothesis is Adolph Dial a Lumbee historian whose book The Only Land I Know, co-written with David Eliades was written to detail the history of his people. In his book he wrote “the circumstantial evidence, when joined with logic, unquestionably supports the Lumbee tradition that there was a real and lasting connection with the Raleigh Settlement.” 8 The director and one of the foremost scholars at The University of North Carolina at Pembroke’s Native American Resource Center Dr. Stan Knicks, has matched surnames of the modern Lumbees with surnames found among the Roanoke Settlers. Having hereditary names in common is an evident reason why the Lumbee Native Americans are related to Sir Walters Roanoke colonists. Today the Lumbee Native Americans are one of the most affluent and educated tribes in the United States. The University of North Carolina at Pembroke was actually founded in 1887 as a school for The Lumbee Native Americans. The First Colony Foundation a non-profit organization founded eleven years ago in North Carolina, has come across astonishing evidence on John Whites map of the “Lost Colony”. “In 2012, a member of the foundation noticed two patches in a 425-year-old map of the coastline painted by John White, the leader of the colonists.” 5 Using modern technology the First Colony Foundation (with permission from the British museum) examined the map and found “beneath