Talk:Croatan

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[edit] Croatians and Croatans

The "Theory of Croatian origin" section I took out was as follows:

Many of the early European expeditions to the western shore of the Atlantic finished with shipwrecks. So was the case with some Croatian ships from Dubrovnik in the 16th century. It is interesting to mention that the Croatan Indians in the USA could possibly be the descendants of the saved Croatian crew, as authenticated by their name, brown hair, blue eyes and some of the words in their language. Two large islands appear on the Molineaux map of Virginia, USA (1599), with the names Croatoan and Croatamonge.
An American writer John Lawson in his 1714 chronicle wrote that among Croatan Indians of that time there was a legend of a 16th century shipwreck with mariners who saved themselves and stayed with Indians.
In attempts to find Walter Raleigh's Lost Colony inhabited by the British Empire in 1587 on the island of Roanoke (near the Croatoan island, North Carolina, USA), the searchers found a CRO carved in Roman letters on a tree in 1590. Another big tree had a bark peeled off, and carved on it in capital letters was the word CROATOAN.
At the Lost Colony, Ribuckon (same meaning in Croatian) meant in Algonquin Indian a fishing place or fish; Cipo was mullet fish; Cante-Cante (Croatian word for song and dance) meant to sing and dance and Sat (means time in Croatian) was time. There were many other similarities. Gray eyes and blondish hair amongst the Indians was noted for centuries. Gray eyes and light hair is found in Croatia in great numbers and not found in any other Mediterranean people.

The reference given was: Eterovich, Adam S.: Croatia and Croatians at the Lost Colony, 1585-1590. I'll try to give some of my reasons for removing this section:

  1. No real attempt was made in the section to back up any claim of a Croatian origin of the Croatan. All it really says is Croatan Indians supposedly had light skin, blue eyes, and that the English mangling of their name sounds/looks similar to a common name in many European languages for "Croatian".
  2. This is definitely not a mainstream theory
  3. Only one "source" was cited as a reference; the source itself does not cite or make reference to any primary sources of any kind, or any other studies of any kind with similar conclusions. The source also appears to be non-academic.
  4. You can't include any (for lack of a better term) crackpot theories in an encyclopedia just by calling them "theories". If no, or hardly any, academics or experts support the theory, then it's not worthy of inclusion unless the fact that the theory exists is widely-known and thus the theory, while not accepted, is notable. This is emphatically not the case here.

Those are my primary reasons for removing the section. You'd need to provide good-quality, academic sources which demonstrate the notability and worthiness-of-inclusion of this theory, I think, and references which justify some of the individual claims made. If only one or two people are making this claim, it's non-notable. --Miskwito 00:47, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

I'd like to add another note- it would be alright to include the "theory" if it could be demonstrated it was a very widespread legend, or had been very widely accepted at one point. That is not the case here.--Cúchullain t/c 21:50, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
Here is another reference from The Maryland Center for Civic Education web site. There are bunch of references all over the web about this theory. You just have to search for them. Even on Amazon you can find lots of books about this!

The Maryland CCE Web site

User talk:VelikiMeshtar 21:33, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Ah, I just found an online version of a journal article about this and some other related issues: here. I'm still reading through it, but it's well-sourced and was published in a journal, so I'm thinking it's a source I'm more willing to trust. I'll get back to you when I'm done reading it. --Miskwito 22:42, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
Logo of Croatan envelope factory
Logo of Croatan envelope factory
I just found out that one of the biggest paper envelope factories in Croatia is called CROATAN, and on logo you can find medieval croatian sailor with an envelope in his hand.

The Croatan factory Web site - in croatian (quite poor site)

--VelikiMeshtar 21:33, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Final thoughts

  • Okay. The site I linked to, which has the text of a well-referenced journal article, basically ends up stating that there are legends of Croatian sailors (from Dubrovnik) becoming shipwrecked off the American coast, but no actual evidence of any recorded incident, a legend around which there is apparently a good deal of uncertainty:
    • "A Dalmatian legend is that ships from Dubrovnik sailed westward around 1540..."
    • "What puzzles this writer is the question of why the Ragusan ships should have, sailed to unknown regions instead of sailing to Spanish America, where they had, as it is proved, frequent contact."
    • "Various authors differ in the claim that such ships from Ragusa may have been wrecked off North Carolina. Even when there is agreement on this point, there is disagreement as to the time of departure."
  • Furthermore, the story evidently given by the Croatan themselves concerning shipwrecks of Europeans was:
    • "Twenty-six years before, (in 1558) a ship was cast away near Secotan, manned by white people; ... some of the crew were saved, and preserved by the natives; .. after remaining some few weeks at Wocokon (Ocraoke) they attempted to leave in the frail craft of the country, which they had endeavored to fit for the purpose, and probably perished, as their boats were subsequently found stranded ,on the shores of another island not far from Wocokon; the natives added that these were the only whites that had appeared among them, and that they were seen by the dwellers around Secotan only."
  • A statement which seems to recur in many writings about this is something like "we can never know for sure". For example:
    • Hamilton McMillan, quoted by the article I've been citing, wrote, "What may have been the origin of the tribe, known to us through the English colonists as Croatan, can only be a matter of conjecture."
    • The article I've been citing also says: "The story that some Ragusan sailors were shipwrecked in the vicinity of Roanoke Island and subsequently absorbed by the Indians there is plausible. Lacking positive evidence to confirm this, we cannot, however, accept it as a historical fact."
    • "We may speculate, but no one knows the positive answer to this whole mystery."
Because of this, I'm worried that what's in the article now could constitute original research.
  • I still haven't seen any real evidence that this theory is even known to--let alone accepted by--more than a handful of historians (nearly all of them, as far as I can tell, Croatians). For example, the following quote from the article implies that the majority of historians never address this theory (which would mean it doesn't really deserve inclusion in Wikipedia):
    • "Most American historians while discussing the origins of the Croatans are concerned only with the question of whether the Roanoke colonists were absorbed by them and whether present day Croatans are descendants of those Indians and Englishmen. They completely overlook the fact, confirmed by the first English reports, that the traces of white race were found among the Croatans already before the arrival of the first permanent English settlers."
  • The Oxford English Dictionary has the first citation of the term "Croat" being used in English as 1702--over a century after Englishmen applied the name "Croat(o)an" to the American tribe ("Croatian" is attested from 1555, however, so this isn't very strong evidence).

The conclusions I draw from this are as follows. First, there is very limited evidence, beyond legends, of any actual Croatians being shipwrecked in the New World (the Croatan Indians themselves certainly didn't claim to be descended from Europeans shipwrecked in the area only a few decades before--something you'd think they might mention). Second, even the proponents of this theory of Croatian origin admit that there is such little evidence that we can never know the answer for certain. Third, very few historians apparently even address this theory at all--it's a fringe view held by a handful of people who are mostly Croatians themselves. Given these facts, my opinion is that the inclusion of this section in the article here violates, at least to some extent, WP:OR and WP:NOTE.

However, these are just my views, so for now I'm going to leave the section in the article. Hopefully others will give their opinions as well, and we can reach a consensus. --Miskwito 22:07, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

It's also worth pointing out that Ragusean sailors in 1540 would not have called themselves "Croats" at all, let alone spoken Croatian. They would have spoken the Romance Dalmatian language and called themselves "Ragusan". Dewrad 00:24, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
Actually, if they were Croatians from Dubrovnik, and not some of the minorities, they would most definitely have spoken Croatian. I'm not sure about calling themselves Croats though. Maybe they would have just referred to themselves as people from Dubrovnik.--Blancodio 18:51, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
I agree with the removal of the information. I don't see that it has all that much to do with the historical Croatan tribe, beyond speculating about the name.--Cúchullain t/c 04:37, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
It was a good decision to remove the theory since there is no scientific evidence to support it. However, I wonder if the linguistic similarities cited in that portion of the article are genuine, because if they are, that is a very interesting coincidence.--Blancodio 19:02, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

I want to congratulate Miskwito for his research on this subject. This turn to be very prominent discussion, but I can not agree with your thesis that only american researchers and scientists have something to say on this subject. It's a little bit selfish...

There are a lot of theories that found their place in Wikipedia with even fewer proves. So I don't see why this theory is not worth to be included in the worlds biggest encyclopedia.

I have to comment Dewrad claim on Dalmatian language as totaly not true one. If you observe Dubrovnik history you would see that people there were croatians who speak Croatian. And that was for centuries enclave of croatian suverenity on Adriatic coast, cause Ventians ruled rest of Adriatic (accept Dubrovnik)!!!

Ragusa is Venetian name of Dubrovnik, people from Dubrovnik certainly would not called themselves Rugusan!!!.-- VelikiMeshtar 18:51, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

I didn't mean to suggest that I think only American researchers'/historians' views in this area are important. What I'm saying is that a significant number of the historians and researchers in this area need to at least acknowledge or mention this theory for it to be included in Wikipedia. The only area where nationality makes a difference, I think, is if virtually only Croatian researchers mention this theory (which weakens the theory's claim to notability).
As far as the "other theories with less evidence are on Wikipedia" argument goes, I'll point you to the policies at WP:FISHING and WP:WAX. Essentially, these say that you can't use that line of argument to claim that something should/shouldn't be included on Wikipedia. --Miskwito 18:04, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Croatian "theory" is back

A user has been adding this material back in. I have very serious doubts about the material and the sources provided. First, the way s/he had it formatted, all the cites were backing up the claim that light skin and hair has been reported in Croatians. I highly doubt that sources such as American Indians in North Carolina says that. It's impossible to tell which sources are supposed to give which information, and so it can't be told if this "theory" has any real backing from experts. I for one, highly doubt that it does. It sounds about as likely as the Croatan becoming to Lumbee, except that that theory is widespread, while this one is not. Thoughts?--Cúchullain t/c 02:42, 24 January 2008 (UTC)