The 115 English Colonists Found Gone Without Trace From an Island Off North Carolina in August 1590 With Only the Word CROATOAN Carved on a Tree
John White returned to the Roanoke colony on 18 August 1590 — three years after he had left for England to resupply — to find the entire 115-person colony gone. The houses were dismantled, the heavier equipment buried, and the word CROATOAN was carved on a post. White assumed the colonists had moved to the Croatoan tribe's island 50 miles south. He never returned to confirm. Their fate is unresolved.
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