Croatoan Island

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Croatoan Island is an island near Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, USA. It is speculated that the Roanoke colonists might have fled there. Reasons given for this include the colonists' friendship with Manteo, a native of Croatoan Island, and a carving of the word "C-R-O-A-T-O-A-N" into a post of the fort (and "C-R-O" into a nearby tree), ostensibly to let John White know where they had fled. White was unable to search Croatoan Island because a hurricane hit the outer banks of North Carolina and blew his fleet to sea. After the storm abated, the fleet was low on provisions and decided to return to England.

Upon returning to England, White was never able to raise sufficient funds or provisions to return to America again. In 1709, English explorer John Lawson visited the Hatteras Indians, descendants of the Croatoan Indian tribe. Lawson had written a book where he described several of their ancestors were white people with light eyes and could "talk in a book as we do". In the 1880s, Hamilton MacMillan of North Carolina suggested another theory; he lived near Pembroke, home of the of Lumbee Indians, who claimed their ancestors came from "Roanoke in Virginia". According to MacMillan, the Pembroke Indians could speak Anglo-Saxon English and many of them had the same last names of the initial colonists. MacMillan's findings were published in an 1888 pamphlet.

Many historians now lend credence to yet another theory: After White departed, the colonists split into two factions with one faction moving into Chesapeake Bay to live in the southern side of the bay with the friendly Chesapeake Indians. Threatened by the presence of white men, the unfriendly chief Powhatan (it is unclear whether or not Powhatan was from a neighboring tribe of the Chesapeake) claimed to have killed most of the colonists, offering proof to White in the form of objects the colonists possessed. Some scholars believe the remaining faction was assimilated into the Croatoan tribe of Indians.

Croatoan has become an emblem of an intentional return to a more primitive way of life. In this sense, the phrase "Gone to Croatoan," has been used by Hakim Bey and, more generally, primitivists.