Lost Colony DNA Genotyping could answer a centuries-old mystery about a vanished group of British settlers

Anne Poole (left), Research Director for the Lost Colony Research Group, and Roberta Estes (right) sifting through the dirt for artifacts. Roberta Estes

The legend of the Lost Colony of Roanoke has haunted American history for centuries. In July 1587, a British colonist named John White accompanied 117 people to settle a small island sheltered within the barrier islands of what would become North Carolina’s Outer Banks. When conditions proved harsher than anticipated, White agreed to sail back to Britain to shore up the settlement’s supplies—a trip that should have lasted a few months.

When White belatedly returned in 1590, the colonists had vanished—more than 100 men, women, and young children, their shelters and belongings, all gone. According to White’s writings, the only trace they left behind was a structure of tree trunks, with a single word carved into one post: CROATOAN.

The creepiness of the Lost Colonists’ disappearance didn’t discourage future American settlement. Nor has the lack of clues about their fate discouraged professional and amateur historians from trying to figure out what happened to them.

Archaeological digs, weather records, historical writings, genealogy—none have fully answered the question of what happened during White’s absence. But Roberta Estes, who owns DNAeXplain, a company that interprets the results of genetic heritage tests, is looking to DNA for help. Her hypothesis is that the Lost Colonists survived, and that evidence of their salvation is tucked away in the mitochondrial or Y chromosomal DNA of living descendents.

“They were stranded,” Estes says of the settlers. “They knew they couldn’t survive there on the island.” The colonists’ solution, in her estimation, was to go native.

“Croatoan,” Estes explains, was a message to White indicating that the colonists had gone to live with the Croatan Indians who lived on nearby Hatteras Island. Estes’s volunteer organization, the Lost Colony Research Group, is recruiting people from the area to submit DNA samples and family histories to test her theory.

Studying patterns of short tandem repeats (STRs) on the Y chromosomes of living men can determine whether they are likely to share a common ancestor that was a member of the Lost Colony. For example, Estes can compare the STR profile of a man whose family history suggests that his ancestors lived on Hatteras Island in the 17th century against genetic databases to see if he’s related to anyone with a Lost Colonist surname, such as Dare, Hewet, or Rufoote.

Additionally, it’s possible to scan that man’s mitochondrial or Y chromosomal DNA for evidence of Native American heritage, creating a clearer picture of what became of the vanished colonists. “It is true that with Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA you can assign them unequivocally to different ethnic groups,” says Ugo Perego, a senior researcher at the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation. But, he adds, it would be difficult to tell exactly when the European ancestry was introduced.

Estes has amassed early land-grant records detailing who lived in the Outer Banks area a few centuries ago. Some of the putative Native Americans living there are thought to have adopted the last names of their European neighbors, she says. If Estes can show that the descendents of these Native American families have DNA matching families with Lost Colony surnames, that would suggest that the colonists mixed with the Croatan Indians.

Cont. here:

http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/31423/title/Lost-Colony-DNA-/


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Hatteras Dig Reveals Old and New World Artifacts pt. 2

Continued from yesterday: These artifacts discovered last spring on Hatteras Island are very important because this midden contained European and Native American artifacts in close proximity to each other, proving there was contact between the two cultures at this time. Imagine a midden in which not only were Indian artifacts found, but also a clay pipe and a thimble.

                                                    Photos property of Roberta Estes©







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Roanoke Island Trip - Day 5

Day 5 - August 20 – Thursday

by Roberta Estes

I’ve been looking forward to today for 2 years now. Anne and I are going to Hatteras Island which is where Croatoan is located. Croatoan, if you recall, is the location that the Lost Colony carved on the post and the tree at Fort Raleigh as a message to John White telling him where the colony had removed to. He found it on his return voyage in 1590 and was thrilled that the colonists were among the friendly Indians headed by Manteo, their friend who had gone with them to England twice.

John White was also greatly relieved by what he did not find; no cross. Their agreement was that if the colonists left under duress or in distress, they would carve not only their location, but a cross. There were no crosses anyplace, and the houses had been disassembled and removed, not ransacked, so their move was obviously orderly and planned, not hurried.

John White wanted to visit Hatteras Island, they called Croatoan, but a violent storm interfered with is plans, drowned some of the men, and nearly sank their ships. They had to abandon those plan and return to England. So close, yet so far away.

Anne and I retraced that journey today. After leaving Roanoke Island, we crossed the bouncing bridge and turned onto NC 12. NC 12 is the ribbon highway that runs the length of Hatteras land for more than 50 miles. The island starts out running North to South, but does a dog-leg turn in about 45 miles at Buxton and then runs East to West. The North to South portion is generally not inhabitable. Now of course there are a couple of tiny villages with a few hearty souls who must not need insurance who have built right on the sand dunes on the ocean on a tiny spit of land not more than an eighth of a mile wide in some locations. But these locations do not support any agriculture because there is only sand and no dirt. In fact, these areas are quite picturesque. The park service has erected sand fences in some areas to attempt to reduce erosion and the sand drifts around the fences. However, the road has been washed out many times and new inlets through the island are often created during hurricanes and other bad storms, letting us know indeed how fragile those islands truly are.

In some locations, maritime forest exists on the islands. While this is different than mainland forests, it’s still beautiful and often blocks the view of the ocean making the distance to the ocean from the road seem far greater than it is.

This site has beautiful photos of the Outer Banks. Take a look and share the unique charm and the stark beauty. You can see Maritime forest in many of these photos.

http://www.duke.edu/~jspippen/vistas/outerbanks.htm

We stopped in Buxton and visited Scott Dawson at the Croatoan Inn. Scott and his wife own the inn and Scott has a beautiful collection of Native artifacts found on the beaches and elsewhere on Hatteras Island.

http://www.thecroatoaninn.com/

Scott is a wealth of information about the history of Hatteras Island. He is passionate about the colonists who he believes assimilated with the Indians. Indeed, they told us they were going to Croatoan and Hatteras Island is Croatoan. This part of Hatteras Island is the first location between Roanoke and the end of Hatteras Island that can sustain a population and grown food, and the Indians have inhabited that island at least seasonally for thousands of years.

Scott has done a great deal of research on the topic and his book “Croatoan, Birth Place of America” is now in its second printing.

http://www.buybooksontheweb.com/product.aspx?ISBN=0-7414-5469-6

We had read the book and wanted to see the area for ourselves as well as some of the landmarks Scott discussed in his book. Even though he couldn’t leave the hotel and go with us, he was kind enough to tell us how to locate several items, including the Cora tree.

The Cora Tree and the coffins are in very close proximity. The coffins were, unfortunately, reburied many years ago, right after they were accidentally excavated by a drag line operator before anyone realized the significance of what he had stumbled upon. However, we do know the general area where the canal digging as going on and the Cora tree is in the same vicinity.

The Cora tree is quite interesting, although maddeningly inconclusive just like so much else about the Lost Colony. Recalling that the colonists were to carve the location of where they were moving on a tree or post, this tree is over 1000 years old, so even in 1600 or so it would have been remarkable. At that time it was already 600 years old, a substantial tree.

Did the colonists carve a second message to their hoped-for rescuers after they moved to Croatoan? Were they trying to tell John White where they went if they moved a second time? Is Cora similar to Coree? The locals tell the story that
Cora was a witch who was hung in the tree and lightening carved the name Cora in the bark.

From there Anne and I drove around the area where we knew the coffins to have been, and revisited the sites of earlier archaeological digs, although there have been very few on Hatteras Island, with most digs being focused on Fort Raleigh and that area. Earlier digs on Hatteras (Croatoan) were very successful, unearthing a gunlock and the Kendall family signet ring among other English items. In the 1930s, a man found a sword in that area as well. Again, while confirming the presence of the English on the island, it doesn’t confirm that the colonists themselves were there and that that they weren’t later artifacts. Kendal was in the 1585-86 military expedition, but not in the 1587 group, so we may be finding artifacts from the military expedition, not the colonists themselves.

How I would love to test the DNA of the skeletal remains in those caskets. It could potentially tell us a great deal about what happened between 1587 when the colonists moved to Croatoan and the next “sighting” we have directly of their descendants which is in 1701 when John Lawson visits the Hatteras Indians and reports that they have grey eyes and some have light hair as well. The Hatteras told Lawson that their ancestors were white people and talked in books. The Hatteras also tell of a ghost boat which appears on misty nights and is Raleigh’s boat which has come for them.

How many misty and foggy nights indeed did the colonists spend watching for any sign through the mists of their rescuers? Did they every give up waiting? At some point, had they assimilated so well into the Native culture that they no longer wanted to be rescued? Did they in fact survive to have descendants in the present generation, or did they survive only long enough to be annihilated by disease or warfare with other warring nations and the white settlers as well during the long and bloody Tuscarora War and preceding events?

After some artifact hunting on the beach, from which we turned up empty handed, we ate at a place that passes for fast food. Let’s just suffice it to say it took as long to get a salad, burger and piece of pizza as it would have taken to wait on a table at the nicer restaurant (20 minutes) and have ordered and eaten a dinner. Let’s just say that calling the food mediocre would be doing it a favor. That restaurant is definitely on my “never again” list.

Our drive home was in the dark, and it’s amazing just how dark dark is on the island. Of course, there are no street lights and in the areas with no habitation, there is also no ambient light. The mainland is often out of sight and if you look eastward of course there is just ocean and more ocean. Anne and I watched the ocean and wondered if Hurricaine Bill will cause severe rains and flooding, but this evening, and for a couple of more evenings, Hurricane Bill isn’t a problem. But one this is for sure on the Outer Banks, if this hurricane misses you, there’s always another one waiting in the wings. The surfers count on that.

We arrived home under the poplar tree quite late, for the last time for me. I packed and got my car ready to load in the morning. I slept restlessly trying to decide whether to risk the traffic by going north by Washington DC or take the longer route westward and up 77. By 4:30 AM or so, I had come up with a compromise plan which took me north to Richmond they west on 64 which should keep me out of traffic and rain with little backtracking. My GPS this morning was not happy with my decision. How I just love having a bossy woman in my car. I swear she sounds more disgusted with every direction of hers that I don’t follow. She gets confused sometimes and got herself all bolluxed up near Richmond, nearly sending me to Washington DC in spite of what I told her to do.

This morning when I woke up, I looked out the bedroom window to see condensation running down the window….and it wasn’t raining. It was just that humid. No need to dry your hair here, because it’s going to be wet again in 2.7 minutes. And makeup – only waterproof. But none for me thank you…..I got over that about the same time I got over staying up late.

As I was loading my car for my final trip across the bouncing bridge, Turkey Lurkey ran up and offered some parting advice….I’m not sure I understood her correctly, but I think it was something about not celebrating Thanksgiving this year.
























Read all posts in the Trip to Roanoke series:

http://the-lost-colony.blogspot.com/2009/08/report-from-outer-banks.html

http://the-lost-colony.blogspot.com/2009/08/live-blogging-from-roanoke-island-day-2.html

http://the-lost-colony.blogspot.com/2009/08/happy-birthday-virginia-dare.html

http://the-lost-colony.blogspot.com/2009/08/roanoke-island-trip-day-4.html

http://the-lost-colony.blogspot.com/2009/08/roanoke-island-trip-day-5.html

© History Chasers

Click here to view all recent Searching for the Lost Colony DNA Blog posts

Lumbee - Lost Colony Connection

In 1914, the Federal government sent special Indian agent O.M. McPherson to look into the Lumbee band.

After studying historical records and talking to county residents, he wrote, "At the coming of the first white settlers to what is now known as Robeson County (in the early 1700s), there was found located on the banks of the Lumbee River a large tribe of Indians speaking the English language, tilling the soil, owning slaves, and practicing many of the arts of civilized life."

McPherson concluded, "I have no hestitancy in expressing the belief that the Indians originally settled in Robeson and adjoining counties in North Carolina where an amalgamation of the Hatteras Indians with Gov.White's Lost Colony(took place)."

The Lumbees are regarded as Indians in North Carolina, and in previous decades have encountered overt discrimination. In the not-so-distant days of Southern segregation, there were three school systems in Robeson County-for whites, blacks, and Indians-three different washrooms and water fountains in the courthouse and three places for the races to sit in the movie theaters. There has been a long-standing tradition here that Lumbees should marry people of their own race and not "marry white" or marry blacks.

Lumbees say that there seem to be other Indian tribes mixed in their heritage, including Cherokees, Tuscaroras and the Eastern Siouan Indians such as the Cheraw and Keyauwee.

Another advocate of the Lost Colony theory was Caucasian historian Stephen B. Weeks, who wrote in 1891 of the Indians along the Lumbee, that "their language is the English of 300 vears ago, and their names are in many cases the same as those borne by the original colonists."

Proponents of the Lost Colony theory argue that the Indian-white group sought refuge in North Carolina swamps and that the forbidding nature of the landscape helped the group keep its identity.

The Lost Colony theory and the Lumbee seem quite well accepted among most of the 82,000-plus Indians, whites and blacks in Robeson County.

The relationship between Indians and whites seems to have been fairly harmonious here until the decades immediately before the Civil War when restrictive laws were passed against nonwhites in North Carolina. Tensions reached a high during the Civil War and the years immediately following when "the Lowrie War" wracked this Carolina swampland. Henry Berry Lowrie, the leader of the outlaw Lowrie Indian Band of this period, has been regarded as a great hero of the Indians here. He disappeared mysteriously in 1872.

The Lumbees have long disputed the contention of whites and some other Indian tribes that they are a mixture of black and white. While Lumbees acknowledge that there are some black ancestors in the group, they say that the overwhelming majority of Lumbee ancestors were Indian and white.

The Indians here bitterly resisted white efforts to treat them like blacks and refused to go to black schools in the 19th century. In 1887 the Indians opened the Croatan Normal School here.

The Croatan Normal School grew and in 1941 was renamed Pembroke State College for Indians. For a dozen years afterward it was the only state-supported four-year college for Indians in the country. Whites were admitted in the raid-1950s after the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed segregation. The name of the institution has now been changed to Pembroke State University.

Lost Colony was the First of the Tarheel Mysteries

The Devil's Tramping Ground

The legends and stories of North Carolina are infinitely fascinating. In 1946 and 1947, John Harden hosted a radio show called Tales of Tarheelia, in which he recounted many of the state's legendary stories and mysteries. Interest in that radio series and Harden's commitment to preserving these stories that could be lost forever if not put down in writing led to the publication of this book, The Devil's Tramping Ground and Other North Carolina Mystery Stories, in 1949. The stories collected here are mysteries as opposed to, say, ghost stories (of which North Carolina can boast of her fair share); these stories won't give you the creeps, but they will fascinate you and sharpen your interest in the history of the state of North Carolina.

When you talk about North Carolina mysteries, you must start at the very beginning - the Lost Colony. The first English settlement in the New World was made in the late 16th century at Roanoke, and it was here that the first non-native American child was born (Virginia Dare); when John White and the long-delayed supply ship returned to these shores, the entire colony had disappeared completely, leaving behind a single clue as to the colonists' fate: the carving of the word Croatoan on a tree. This, North America's first mystery, remains as compelling and unsolved today as it was over four hundred years ago.