Missing: 90 Men, 17 Women, and 9 Children
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John White, governor of Roanoke Colony, recorded upon finding his colonist missing, " We passed toward the place where they were left in sundry houses, but we found the houses taken downe, and the place very strongly enclosed with a high palisado of great trees, with cortynes and flankers very Fort-like, and one of the chiefe trees or postes at the right side of the entrance had the barke taken off, and 5 foote from the ground in fayre Capitall letters was graven CROATOAN" (Shifflett 2000). Could it be that the colonists had abandoned their island and moved with the Croatoan Indians or could it mean something more? The disappearance of the Roanoke Colony is one of history's greatest mysteries and while historians are uncertain about the fate of the colonists, it is certain that The Lost Colony played an important role in the early settlements of America and the colonization of North Carolina.
