Gone to Croatoan

One of my favorite of history's mysteries because it is so vague and ominous. The vanished colonists of the Roanoke Colony on Roanoke Island in present day North Carolina. Sir Walter Raleigh attempted to establish a permanent colony there between 1585 and 1587 but after three years of being cut off from supplies from England, the settlers vanished, and Roanoke went down in history as "the Lost Colony."

It is still uncertain what happened to the original colonists. There was no trace left of them except for the words "Croatoan" scratched into the bark of one tree near camp, and "Kro" on another. They had been instructed to carve a maltese cross into a tree as a sign of forced relocation, but no such indication was ever found.

It is theorized they they were absorbed into the surrounding Native tribes, but the assimilation theory has never been confirmed nor denied. To this day they remain the Lost Colony.