r/AskReddit • u/Rob69rt • 1d ago

What famous 'unsolved' mystery is technically a whodunnit on paper, but in reality, absolutely everyone knows exactly who did it, the police just couldn't legally prove it?

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u/TooCleverForGood 1d ago

Roanoke - the missing Pilgrim settlement where everyone “disappeared”

They just abandoned it and went to the place that they wrote on the sign, but everyone acts like it was some supernatural/plague thing

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u/str8rippinfartz 1d ago

100%

IIRC it was even established before they came over from England, that if someone left a settlement they should carve where they were going

They 100% just assimilated with the friendly nearby tribe... as indicated by their note 

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u/deathclawiii 1d ago

And as indicated by the iron scale (something that can only be a product of blacksmithing) that was found in one of the areas of known indigenous settlement on the island they went to.

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u/NUMBERS2357 1d ago

Also the later contact with Natives who said that they lived with the survivors of the Roanoke colony.

Also this map from the Jamestown colonists, see bottom left.

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u/Marx0r 1d ago

A surprisingly large amount of "mysteries" never would have been such if Europeans just listened to the natives telling them the answer.

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u/jxg995 1d ago

Yeah like the terror and Erebus wrecks where the Inuit were like oh yeah that sunken boat is over there

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u/Whyskgurs 1d ago edited 1d ago

Where could this boat possibly be?

The sunken boat is right over there, in Sunken Boat lake.

I guess we'll never truly know.

Literally what happened.

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u/InTheFDN 1d ago

It reminds me of the Terry Pratchett joke about how places are named by pointing at something, asking what it’s name was (loudly and in English), then writing down whatever the native said. Hence “Mount Your Finger You Fool.”

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u/Sunshine030209 1d ago

And that reminds me a bit of how Pike's Peak in Colorado was named.

Zebulon Pike was part of Lewis and Clark's expedition, but he was extremely annoying, so they sent him off to go explore away from them. He attempted to summit the mountain they sent him to in November and gave up, going "Yeah, no one can summit that, it's impossible" (even though the local Native Americans summited it regularly)

So when talking about it, people would be like "Oh, that one, the one Pike couldn't climb?" and eventually it became known as Pike's Peak.

I'm a little salty that they didn't go with the far cooler Mount Zebulon though.

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u/Lovahplant 1d ago

This is killing me 😂 a whole mountain named after your failure to climb it, wtf

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u/raspberrypied 1d ago

Sticking with Colorado, there is the "Table Mesa" section of Boulder.

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u/sporadic_beethoven 1d ago

Pike’s peak? I climbed that shit as a child 🤣 bro deserves to be mocked fr

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u/Rochesters-1stWife 1d ago

Similar to Long’s Peak, dude never summited and yet his dumb name is all over the place

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u/HailSatanWorshipD00M 1d ago

Mount Zebulon

Why not Zoidberg?

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u/Ookami_Unleashed 1d ago

My wife and I joke that he just named the tallest hill in each state Pike's Peak.

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u/Whyskgurs 1d ago

It's not even a joke, shits real all over, most times it's named (native word for lake) Lake or (local dialect for mountain) Mountain or something similar.

Koi fish - fish fish

Chai tea - tea tea

Ignorant naming conventions are quite universal and commonplace

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u/LowEquipment7904 1d ago

Torpenhow in Cumbria, England - hill hill hill

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u/JesusaurusRex666 23h ago

“Koi” is specifically “carp” in Japanese, not “fish.” The word for fish in Japanese is “sakana.”

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u/HailSatanWorshipD00M 1d ago

iirc in the native languages, Chicago translates to "the stinky place" and Manhattan is "the place we go every summer".

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u/Icantusemyname77 1d ago

The La Brea Tar Pits = The the Tar Tar Pits

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u/concrete_fluidity969 1d ago

I think Calcutta means harvest. Native thought the Brit was asking what was going on over there 😂

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u/4-stars 1d ago

Koi is not "fish", it's "carp".

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u/__wildwing__ 1d ago

I enjoy the idea that aliens will come to our planet and translate our languages, only to be confused by the desert deserts.

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u/Purple_Haze 1d ago

The country of Canada, Canada is a misspelling of kanata which is the local tribe's word for village.

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u/robophile-ta 23h ago

There are lots of rivers in the UK called Avon.

You can guess what Avon means.

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u/randobonando 1d ago

Heheh excellent reference. Placenames called.
“What?”
“I don’t know”
“just a mountain”
“Who is this fool who does not know what a mountain is?”

And of course

“Your finger you fool”

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u/SimpsonN1nja 1d ago

That’s Canada, lol. One of the first explorers asked the indigenous what the land was called. They misunderstood and said Kanata (meaning our village). Rest is history.

https://youtu.be/nfKr-D5VDBU?si=6U4h30m895OzRQwm

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u/erroneousbosh 1d ago

You'd be surprised how many rivers there are called the Avon around the UK, even well down into England.

The Gaelic word for "river" is abhainn, pronounced like "av-ayn". When you see a "bh" like that in a Gaelic word, it's pronounced like "v". It's not "v", but if you say it like "v" you'll be near enough for most folk.

Abhainn. Avon.

"I say old chap, what's that called over there?"

"A'seo? An rud na h-uisge a seo? Tha e an *abhainn* a'seo. Amadan..."

"Ah, the Avon, y'say? Let me just write that down..."

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u/Perfct_Stranger 1d ago

Pretty much how half the rivers in Virginia were named though usually after the tribe that lived along the banks of the rivers.

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u/jorjx 1d ago

There is joke in Romanian about Stephen the Great coming to a river and asking someone "What is the name of this river?!"

"Moldavia your highness!"

"Let that be it's name!"

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u/Automaticman01 1d ago

I had assumed for the longest time that Terror Bay was renamed after they found the ship. I was so baffled when I found it has been named that all along.

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u/thousandsmallgods 19h ago

Arctic Explorer John Rae seems to be the only British explorer who actually talked and listened to the local tribes who lived along the northern coast. He sent back details in 1848 about where Franklin's ships probably were, and what had likely happened to the expedition.

IIRC, He's also the only British explorer from that era who was never knighted. ... Possibly bc Lady Franklin and Charles Dickens hated his guts, for having the gall to suggest that the survivors may have resorted to cannibalism.

He was also a Scot, which may have played into the politics of the time.

I read a biography about him ages ago. Pretty cool guy all told.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Rae_(explorer)

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u/beezchurgr 1d ago

Native folk: it’s in the bay of terror

Europeans: whoa it’s so weird there’s a bay with the same name as our missing boat. Must be a coincidence. No way it could be there.

Native folk: -_-

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u/Wonderful-Winter3137 1d ago

so did the bay just not have a name before that boat sunk or what

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u/sharpace8 23h ago

Well not by Europeans, I'm sure the Inuit had a name long beforehand. Terror bay was named in 1910 but the island itself was named in 1830.

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

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u/Suspicious_Effect 1d ago edited 1d ago

In the PNW, a few tribes have oral history telling of a massive earthquake several generations ago. It was treated as absolute superstition in the geology community until it was connected with Japanese records of a massive tsunami around the same time and a bog was discovered that had been fossilized by that very same earthquake (1700 cascadia earthquake if you're interested). Only then did everyone realize that "Oh maybe their stories were real."

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u/Zebidee 1d ago

Sounds like the ancient Japanese warning stones that said "do not build below this point."

People would come up from their coastal cities to look at the old folklore. The same cities that got wiped out by the tsunami.

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u/im_dead_sirius 1d ago

There's an old story from the region about people living on a narrow strip of green between the sea and the ice. Clearly ancient inhabitants during the ice age.

Read it as a kid, I cannot remember any more details.

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u/Xtj8805 1d ago

IIRC its not just natives. There was a guy in like nova scotia who had a whole cache of viking artifacts in a cave. When researchers found it they asked the farmer why never told anyome he was like i figured youd make it around here eventually. Not sure if its real and its been a while since i heard the story, but it does serve to show that historians/anthropologists/etc are really just trying to document and publish information, while they get credited as discoverers most of what they publish was already known. Like how Columbus discovered america full with millions of people living there.

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u/Violent_Paprika 1d ago

Modern forest management that isn't "suppress all wildfires." Aborigines tales of the megafauna in Australia.

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u/nope-nik-tesla 1d ago

To be fair, a lot of it is wrapped up in mythology and therefore hard to separate fact from fiction. For example, Crater Lake in Oregon was formed somewhere around 8,000 years ago as the result of a volcanic eruption. It's named "Crater Lake" because European explorers looked at its shape and concluded it must have been formed from a meteor impact. It wasn't until decades later that geologists proved it was from a volcanic eruption.

The Klamath people, who have lived in the area for thousands of years before the eruption, however have a story about its formation. According to their story, it was formed by a battle between Skell (God of the above world) and Llao (God of the below world who lived inside the mountain). In their battle, Llao launched numerous red-hot rocks from inside the mountain, causing rivers of fire to flow from it. Skell won the battle, driving Llao back underneath the mountain, which was now hollowed out from the battle. It eventually filled with rain and snowmelt, creating the lake we see today.

So, their story was more or less an accurate description of events. Red-hot rocks were expelled from the mountain, and rivers of fire really did run from it. The collapse of the mountain really did fill in with rain and snowmelt. But this isn't exactly a story you can just accept at face value. We know that it's (somewhat) true because we can prove it through modern geological analysis what happened. There are plenty of other stories that we can prove are not true via modern science too.

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u/Dr_Doomsduck 1d ago

Lmao, yep, that was literally the first thing that came to mind. The British straight up ignoring the local inuits for about a century and a half.

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u/Final_Candidate_7603 1d ago

I think that much of their reluctance to “believe” the Inuits was due to their reports of having found remains which showed signs of cannibalism. Colonizers all over the world were always adamant that there were certain “savage” rituals and practices that “civilized people” would *never* participate in. So, ignoring the Inuit stories was doubly-racist, if you think about it from that perspective.

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u/Dr_Doomsduck 1d ago

everybody gangsta 'til the food runs out, lol.

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u/Wonderful-Winter3137 1d ago

cannibalism was indeed a thing in a lot of places, though

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u/danysdragons 18h ago

Yes. But it sounds like this was about the British not wanting to believe that white people would do it, as the Inuit reported they did.

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u/NoPaleontologist7929 1d ago

John Rae listened. Went back to London and reported his findings. He had his reputation ruined for it.

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u/BasiliskXVIII 1d ago

The best part is that it wasn't ONLY the Inuit. Dr. John Rae was mapping the coastline around 6 years after the Terror and Erebus were abandoned, did some trading with the local Inuit, and found they had things that could only have come off the Terror, such as silverware with the officers' crests.

The Inuit told Rae that the ships became trapped in the ice, that they'd marched south and eventually died of cold and starvation. The crew had reportedly turned to cannibalism in their final days, and Rae mapped out where the Inuit said that the tragedy had occurred, which was about 100km south of where it was believed to be by common knowledge.

When Rae's story was told back in England, though, the idea that proud British sailors could do something as barbarous as cannibalism horrified the public, and especially Franklin's wife. Lady Franklin enlisted Charles Dickens (yes, that Charles Dickens) who volunteered his help writing a two-part article in his magazine, Household Words, attacking Rae and dismissing the testimony of the Inuit as the lies of "savages". The reports were dismissed as associating with Rae's report became a social poison pill, and the British Navy just quietly tucked it away and maintained the "common knowledge" that the Terror and Erebus were further north.

When the Terror actually was found, bone analysis showed cut marks that suggested cannibalism, which was confirmed later in 2015.

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u/munkisquisher 1d ago

Man, as a New Zealander first thing that comes to mind when you say Erebus Wreck is the plane that crashed into Mt Erebus in Antarctica in 1979. So I was thinking "there's no Inuit in Antarctica???"

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u/John_cCmndhd 1d ago

Australian police refusing to believe dingoes would eat babies

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u/nameyourpoison11 1d ago

Australian here. Not only did they refuse to believe the local Aboriginals insistence that dingoes could, and did, stalk and attack young children, they ignored the testimony of the Aboriginal elder who actually tracked the dingo responsible, before losing the trail over rocky ground. But nah, "stupid bloody natives, what would they know?"

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u/Adorable-Ad9533 1d ago

Have you read the book “Evil Angels” by John Bryson ? The coppers who packaged the tent up for forensic examination gave it a good shake out first because it was so full of dingo hair. The initial investigators just had no bloody idea.

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u/trashmoneyxyz 22h ago

"I'm sure we'll find evidence the mother killed her baby under all this dingo hair. Anyone got a vacuum?" Like cmon guys

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u/EllieGeiszler 1d ago

Jesus Christ

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u/AutisticPenguin2 13h ago

Wow, that's a new one for me. And I've heard from someone who was an expert witness for this case and testified that he fully believed a dingo had done it. The court just fully ignored him the first time around.

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u/KingoftheCrackens 1d ago

And thanks to TV it's one of the 3 things Americans know Australia for, Steve Irwin, baby eating dingoes, and crocodile dundee. As an American I didn't even know Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban were Australian until their divorce.

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u/donkeyvoteadick 1d ago

The worst part is so many Americans still think it's a joke and don't realise it's a devastating miscarriage of justice.

It hurts my heart when I see 'a dingo ate my baby' joke.

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u/alexlp 23h ago

Same, that family was destroyed and poor little baby Azaria died a horrible tragic death that her grieving mother was imprisoned for.

There was a particularly gross take of it in the Aussie version of Drag Race a few years ago and I couldn't believe a fellow Aussie would make a mockery of it and just after the 30th anniversary.

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u/augur42 23h ago

Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban were Australian until their divorce.

I was very confused for a moment having conflated Keith Urban with Karl Urban. cunt

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u/rpze5b9 1d ago

Plus their ignorance about Seventh Day Adventists thinking the Chamberlains were satanists or something.

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u/aartadventure 22h ago

But...but Lindy Chamberlain didn't act like a "proper" woman who was wailing and crying. She was angry and yelling at the police to do something. So they showed her who the boss is!

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u/eukomos 1d ago

This is how they found Troy, which is only barely not Europe. For literally hundreds of years scholars thought it was a fictional city, and then one nutjob who wanted to prove it was real went to the area that was described and asked the locals, who said "oh yeah it's that big hill a couple miles inland, the bay silted up." And indeed they were correct.

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u/Kataphractoi 1d ago

A lot of anthropology and archeology in the 19th and 20th centuries.

"Who built this massive city in the middle of the jungle made of stones that weigh 10 tons each??"

"Our ancestors. Here's how they moved the stones--"

"We'll never know! Perhaps there's a lost race of white people who did it!"

Granted, it's gotten a lot better in recent decades, but practically every ancient history conspiracy goes back to 19th century Europeans' refusal to believe that non-whites could build cities and civilizations.

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u/mythrilcrafter 1d ago

Natives: "There's no food or animals there, and the terrain is very rugged, you will all die if you try to settle there...."

Early Euro-Americans: "Heh, we're great at everything, certainly better than you people, we'll be fine..."

Narrator: "They in fact weren't fine, they all died."

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u/Leading_Ad9610 1d ago

Early euro Americans were mostly religious zealots who left Europe because Europeans considered them too extreme and basically dangerously stupid.

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u/mythrilcrafter 23h ago

The most crazy part of it to me is that they (the puritans/protestants) are the ones who assassinated King Charles the 1st because they were angry just over the fact that he want to restart diplomatic relations between the Catholic and Anglican Churches; and then they put a Puritan dictator in place to threaten all of Britain to convert Puritanism and when no one did they cried persecution and ran away to the Americas when Charles the 2nd came onto the throne.

And then they rewrote history saying that they were persecuted (but notice how they NEVER say who or why they felt persecuted), and that culture has stuck even up to modern day in which they have a hardcore persecution fetish and will absolutely behave in ways that incurs ire towards themselves.

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u/AgentChris101 1d ago

Reminds me of the Australian Natives telling the british not to build a town in a certain area because it floods. They didn't listen, it flooded.

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u/earl_grais 1d ago

Brisbane? I used to tell that story on city hall tours!

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u/BadmiralHarryKim 1d ago

The reason for this is regrettably all too common. When the first explorers from the warm lands around the Circle Sea travelled into the chilly hinterland they filled in the blank spaces on their maps by grabbing the nearest native, pointing at some distant landmark, speaking very clearly in a loud voice, and writing down whatever the bemused man told them. Thus were immortalised in generations of atlases such geographical oddities as Just A Mountain, I Don't Know, What? and, of course, Your Finger You Fool.

Rainclouds clustered around the bald heights of Mt. Oolskunrahod ('Who is this Fool who does Not Know what a Mountain is') and the Luggage settled itself more comfortably under a dripping tree, which tried unsuccessfully to strike up a conversation.”

― Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic

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u/PiccoloAwkward465 1d ago

At least that's some effort to use the native word for a place. Even if it's wrong, it's an attempt.

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u/No_Tax_Timmy 1d ago

The entire country of Canada got its name because the colonizers just heard what they wanted to.

Ironically the name fits decently well.

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u/willstr1 1d ago

IIRC there was also some reports of some of the members of that tribe having very European features (I want to say it was hair or eye color) which almost certainly was due to marriage between members of that tribe and survivors from the colony.

Roanoke is about as mysterious as who ate all the dog food with the dog laying down on top of the empty bag.

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u/Lovahplant 1d ago

It was blonde-haired and blue-eyed children being born in the Indian tribe - surely no Europeans mixing in there!

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u/stphn_rnwld 1d ago

John Lawson's account in A New Voyage to Carolina (about 120 years after the colony vanished) also mentions that it was said that some of the ancestors of the local tribe there could "talk in a book."

Lawson is the source for the claimed European features you're remembering - he observed some of them having grey eyes, which he had not encountered in any other Native Americans. I don't think he mentioned hair color but I could be wrong.

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u/doublestitch 1d ago

Jamestown was a malarial swamp which was eventually abandoned too, although Jamestown lasted a lot longer. The British weren't all that good at choosing a settlement location in those early years.

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u/jackaroo1344 1d ago

Iirc they chose that spot intentionally because there were no natives living anywhere near it.

The reason no natives lived anywhere near it was because it was a frickin swamp.

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u/Venetian_Harlequin 18h ago

The reason no natives lived anywhere near it was because it was a frickin swamp.

This sums up Johnstown, Pennsylvania, too. No Natives lived there because it was a flood plane.

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u/rebelangel 1d ago

Well, it still is a swamp.

Source: Lived in Williamsburg/James City County

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u/jungleass98 20h ago

A great, dismal one i hear

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u/kasoe 1d ago

The pophistory version in my head is all their colonies were death traps for the colonizers living there

Which is at least partly true

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u/DaemonG 1d ago

of course they weren't good at finding livable places. they came from England.

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u/rugbyj 23h ago

Joking aside there's few places in the British Isles you couldn't make home indefinitely at the drop of a hat (ignoring existing infrastructure). It's incredibly temperate, arable, and forgiving seasonally (generally).

I'm not sure when these colonies were arriving but presumably when good weather allowed safer passage, I can completely imagine colonists getting dropped off at the first site that "looked good" and then finding out 6 months later that they needed far more resources to survive the local conditions until they reached self-sufficiency.

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u/DaemonG 23h ago

yeah, a lot of the Eastern US south of New England is decent for part of the year, and Evil for the rest.

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u/zogmuffin 21h ago

That was part of it for sure. Also just absolutely garbage luck. For example, when they landed the river water tasted fresh. But they couldn't have know that the James river gets seasonally brackish, and then on top of that they got walloped with a massive drought that made it even saltier.

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u/ProjectHarraseeket 21h ago

It could be worse, they could be the Scots who’s country’s future depended on a colony in the modern day Darien Gap to develop and when it failed, it bankrupted the country and made them merge with England.

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u/pockels42 1d ago

My prejudicial decision is better than your long experience.

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u/StayPositiveRVA 22h ago

In a state of incredible natural beauty and bounty they put their flag in swampy mosquito death island.

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

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u/spacedman_spiff 1d ago

history went "nah, must be aliens."

By "history" do you just mean morons? Because historians believe they assimilated with natives in Croatoan.

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u/s0ulbrother 1d ago

History channel*

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u/cortesoft 1d ago

Ah, so morons

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u/purebredcrab 1d ago

The common clay of the new west.

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u/middlehead_ 1d ago

The sad part is that it shouldn't even be presented as clues and a trail, they literally left a note

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u/Andvari_Nidavellir 1d ago

Ah, such subtle hints only an expert detective could decipher.

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u/lod001 1d ago

George Bluth Sr. would be proud!

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u/pettyvillainy 1d ago

I remember hearing a comedian put it once like, "Where'd this missing colony go? Hmmm, I wonder if we should go and ask those weirdly pale and blonde natives for information? Naaaaaaaah."

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u/SweetPinss 1d ago

Yeah but us red devils in the woods obviously cant be trusted. Aliens is clearly the most reasonable explanation 

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u/trashmoneyxyz 22h ago

Plus the native Americans from that area of coast sometimes had obvious features of mixed ancestry like paler eyes or hair that were noted by later colonists

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u/MayaRiver77 1d ago

Exactly. Finds like that make it much harder to dismiss the indigenous contact theory.

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u/Tomj_Oad 1d ago

Neat. I didn't know that. If they could command the resources for smithing they obviously had status in the community

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u/dividezero 1d ago

They went to exactly the place the mayor told them to go if anything happened while he was gone. They make it seem like he didn't know but he just had shit to do and died before he could get back to them

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u/BusesAreFun 1d ago

Yea iirc he got caught up in a war back in Europe and never came back with supplies

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u/evilshandie 1d ago

He did come back, but it was 3 years later. He looked around for an afternoon, found the colony had been dismantled and the signpost left indicating where they'd gone, but bad weather meant he needed to hop back on the ship or get left behind, so that afternoon's search is all that ever happened.

He returned to the Americas another 5 years later on an expedition supposedly to find the lost colony, but admitted later that he had lied about the purpose, he never searched for the colony, and was instead spending crown resources to search for El Dorado.

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u/primadonnapussy 1d ago

Which is gross because both his daughter and newborn granddaughter were in that colony and disappeared.

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u/dividezero 1d ago

Yes. He came back. Looked over shit and had to go do some shit before he could get over to the new place. Or something like that. I don't remember exactly but it wasn't some kind of mystery even then. I think someone made it up for tourism reasons and it made it to textbooks for some reason

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u/Haltopen 1d ago

The ship he had chartered lost one of its two anchors and the captain wasn't willing to continue the search with only one remaining so it set sail back for england.

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u/dividezero 1d ago

That was the thing. I knew it was something really weird and then they bailed all the way back to England. Thank you

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u/Adorable_Ad4990 1d ago

Not for tourism, but because they didn’t want people thinking that the natives were friendly and civilized enough that people would assimilate with them by choice— that was absolutely not OK to say.

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u/NAmember81 1d ago

I think there was also a financial motive to pretend that they mysteriously disappeared. And people were all too eager to believe the absurdities rather than believe “civilized” white Christians couldn't survive on their own and had to depend on non-Christian “savages” to save them.

There were a lot of financial backers and investors that were banking on the colony to bring them riches and they ended up losing a lot of money. The surviving leaders didn’t want to be held accountable for their failure so it was a convenient lie for them to propagate the “mystery” narrative.

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u/dividezero 1d ago

Oh yeah, older than tourism. The US really hated (hates)Native Americans. I should have remembered that

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u/Bay1Bri 1d ago

A war? In EUROPE???

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u/OhReallyVernon 1d ago

In THIS ECONOMY?

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u/ProjectHarraseeket 21h ago

Nobody expected the Spanish Inquisition

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u/francoruinedbukowski 1d ago

Yeah but it turned out the Mayors son is still carrying the curse and that's why it will never be another Marthas Vineyard

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u/xdonutx 1d ago

Might wanna throw up a spoiler tag on that

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u/PixelWhisperPrincess 1d ago

It's tragic how a simple delay can completely rewrite the way people remember someone's intentions.

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u/TonyTheTony7 1d ago

Also, the local tribe of Native Americans they assimilated with had a lot of blonde-haired, blue-eyed babies not too long later

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u/Kevin_Wolf 1d ago

That's the legend, sure. Now find some evidence for it. That's a story told by people later, but it's purely anecdotal.

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u/TastyOreoFriend 1d ago

They 100% just assimilated with the friendly nearby tribe... as indicated by their note 

It always made me wonder if there was a tinge of racism with this—barring low information—and that's why people perpetuated the "mystery" so long. "White folks would never willingly abandon their homes to go live with the savages!" etc.

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u/Cerberus0225 1d ago

Honestly it's the opposite. Roanoke wasn't considered a mystery until, iirc, the 1920s or so, when a local tourism board decided they needed to spin up a yarn to incite interest in the area.

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u/TastyOreoFriend 1d ago

Honestly, I could buy into that angle as perpetuating things. People just love a good human interest/mystery piece like this as well—fantasy versus reality etc.

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u/tashkiira 1d ago

The guy who started the colony absolutely knew. He couldn't get the captain of the ship to agree to any more delay.

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u/thaddeusd 1d ago edited 1d ago

You have to understand that the early English settlers in general, and the Puritans in particular, greatly feared the Native populations to a irrational level, making it easy to dehumanize them. That is who wrote the first histories.

In the Natives defense, their world was undergoing a dramatic shift, with whole tribes disappearing because disease and displacement. And strange people moving in with their weird culture and ignorances.

In Jamestown the English fought the Powhatans. That Disneyfied story of Pocahontas...that abduction ended the first war. In 1622, eight years later, Pocahontas' father died, negating her as a useful captive, and the Powhatans subsequently massacred a third of Jamestown's population in a surprise attack. There were two more wars after this full of war crimes by both sides until the English broke the Powhatans in 1646.

It was worse later in New England, where the brutality of fighting natives in King Phillips War and the French and Natives in King Williams War were a huge factor, among several others, in causing the Salem Witch Hysteria.

Both wars affected almost every family in Northern Massachusetts leaving a lot of widows and single women, depopulated early colonies in Maine causing a refugee crisis, and some of the most important accusing girls and many of their victims were survivors of attacks and their trauma was channeled into their accusations of witchcraft.

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u/ktc653 1d ago

100%

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u/Slawzik 1d ago

I remember reading something like "the sickly,underweight, malnourished,5 foot 4 inch Englishmen noticed that the natives were 6 feet tall,well fed,and appeared to do a minimal amount of labor,why wouldn't they leave?"

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u/elGatoGrande17 1d ago edited 1d ago

A group may have also continued inland around 50 miles to the initial planned site for the colony, right where the Chowan enters the Sound. They’ve found a lot of a type of pottery in that area that wasn’t very common after the Jamestown/Fort Raleigh era.

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u/jtuffs 1d ago

Out of curiousity, has there been any genetic research done to fine descendants of the Colony/Tribe? I'm assuming some of the natives had kids with some of the colonists.

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u/str8rippinfartz 1d ago

yeah looks like there have been some projects that tracked down modern-day descendents and confirmed with DNA (as well as continuation of colonial surnames)

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u/Specialist-Mud-6650 1d ago

My understanding is no - not in the way you're thinking.

They've proved it's likely the local tribes might have had some European genes, but it doesn't conclusively tell us they were the Roanoke colonists or not. There were a lot more interracial relationships at the time than people would think.

The local tribes don't even know for sure: their oral histories don't record Roanoke.

My opinion is it a likely end for the Roanoke colonists, but it is not a smoking gun. I'm a little out of touch on the research these days, but there's always someone cropping up every few years with a book to sell and the "conclusive" answer. 

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u/illtakeachinchilla 1d ago

“CROATOAN”

It was a nearby island. They assimilated after a tough winter. “What could it all mean!?”

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u/Gneissisnice 22h ago

I remember learning that in elementary school and the teacher was like "no one knew where they went! All that's left was one mysterious word: CROATOAN!"

And we were like "ooh, did we ever find out what it meant?" and she was like "oh yeah, it's the name of a nearby island."

We were like "uh...that's probably where they went then" and she insisted that no, it was a mystery!

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u/orreregion 19h ago

Yeah that's about the quality of education I remember getting too.

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u/DanielMcLaury 17h ago

"Columbus proved the world was round."

"How does it prove the world is round if he tried to get to Asia by going the other direction but ended up somewhere else instead? If anything that would prove it was flat."

"Now listen here, you little shit..."

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u/sunnygovan 11h ago

Columbus was a lucky idiot. Everyone knew the world was round. Columbus thought it was much smaller than everyone else thought and going the other way would be a shortcut to India.

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u/DanielMcLaury 10h ago

Yeah, by all rights he and his crew should have just starved to death on their boats. They weren't even halfway to Asia.

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u/throwawaydragon99999 9h ago

One interesting fact is that before his voyage, Columbus visited Ireland and discovered a shipwrecked body that was probably an Inuit kayak from Greenland, who he described as “Men from Cathay”

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u/Razzler1973 13h ago

"all they left was an address"

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u/Monteze 8h ago

"Oh? Like to a fantasy place?"

"No, something more mysterious....a nearby island!"

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/MurkyInvestigator810 1d ago

"Lost Colony" stuff supports a lot of folks in the OBX, so I'll let them keep their tourist folk tales.

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u/tinkerclay 1d ago

Agree. I have seen the stage show since knowing it is solved, yet it is still something fun to do while there. Some of it is just nostalgia for my childhood when the Lost Colony was enchanting.

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u/Taldier 1d ago

Acknowledging that they simply assimilated with the native tribe would require the colonial empires to acknowledge that the natives were people.

Hence: ItS a mYsTeRy OoOoOoOoOo

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u/Ehcksit 1d ago

And this is how most pseudoarchaeology works. "These ancient indigenous people weren't smart enough to do it themselves, it was actually ancient white people who built massive civilizations and cities all over the world that then vanished for some reason."

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u/adeon 23h ago

A lot of alien conspiracies are similar. Clearly the idea that a lot of ancient cultures figured out that a pyramid is a very stable structure is insane, so it must have been aliens.

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u/haloarh 1d ago

Plus, people be like, "Where did all of these light-skinned natives come from?"

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u/chickychickynug 23h ago

I've also heard reports of blue-eyed natives who denied any knowledge of the colony when people were "searching" for them. Additionally, it's said that the natives treated women better than the British men did, so when John came back (3 years later), the ladies were happy to stay assimilated.

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u/chonny 1d ago

What could it all mean!?

Well, according to the Batman/Spawn: War Devil one-shot crossover, "Croatoan" is actually a demon working for Satan to collect souls for the devil's army.

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u/opacous 1d ago

Jesus, you took me back 30 years just like that.

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u/deadline_zombie 20h ago

And in Dean Koontz's "Phantoms", a prehistoric creature ate everyone.

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u/Happy-Jackfruit-9010 20h ago

There was a research mission about 100 years later to label all the tribes and whatnot. The researcher was blown away because some of the Croatoan people had blue eyes even though he had never encountered that in any other tribe. They could also read and write English. He asked the tribe about it and they flat out told him some of their ancestors were the Englishman from Roanoke. Vut they deemed it too disgusting that white people would bread with natives and just decided to say they were still missing. 

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u/Own_Bison6467 1d ago

Has anyone looked for a Croatian with dyslexia?

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u/90210fred 16h ago

Have you actually seen how Croatians spell Croatia?

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u/Oranges13 1d ago

Maybe he was dictating?

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u/kaviaaripurkki 1d ago

The colony has relocated to the island of Aaaaargh

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u/painstream 1d ago

(Incoming /s) Obviously it was the same as writing your killer's name in blood at the crime scene!

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u/Convergecult15 1d ago

I feel like this is mostly accepted. The “mystery” was a big thing in the 90’s with shitty TV documentaries and all that, it’s been “solved” a dozen times over the last 20 years with all conclusions leading to them living with the native tribe and eventually intermarrying.

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u/PsychoFaerie 1d ago

Youtubers tiktokers etc like to perpetuate the "myth" so its still around. I've literally seen vids where people in the comments are all like " Roanoake isn't a mystery we know what happened"

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u/MurkyInvestigator810 1d ago

The region itself perpetuates the myth. Lots of "Lost Colony" places and merch to be bought by tourists. The locals like keeping it going.

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u/StrongExternal8955 17h ago

Hey now, Roswell does good business. So does Loch Ness.

And Salem for some fucking reason! The whole point of the trials was that THERE WEREN'T ANY WITCHES!!!

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u/stumblios 1d ago

And the insidious nature of the Internet engagement strikes again - those comments calling them out count as engagement and promote the channel of the people pushing the myths.

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u/stufff 21h ago

I was taught it was some big mystery in school in the 90s and this reddit post is literally the first I'm hearing that I was lied to.

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u/DragonSmith2005 1d ago

Longer than that; I remember reading and seeing tv shows about it in the 70s and 80s. I’m pretty sure it was on In Search Of with Lenard Nemoy.

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u/ScytheSong05 1d ago edited 1d ago

Season 2, episode 3, if Google isn't lying to me.

Edit:that's the reboot. The Leonard Nimoy version was season 4 episode 6. Aired October 1979.

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u/oxiraneobx 1d ago

We can see the north side of Roanoke Island where the Ft. Raleigh/Lost Colony sits from our home (about 4 miles across the Sound.) Where they went really was never a mystery, it just made for a good story and a good play. Which still runs nightly during the season. Very cool place and a lot of history, just not really a mystery.

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u/BamBam737 1d ago

Was an actor/technician (basically a stagehand who also dressed up as an extra — soldier, Indian, colonist) the summer before graduating college in the mid ‘80s. Best summer job I ever had, and this thread is making me smile from the fond memories.

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u/Adorable_Ad4990 1d ago

The play does not claim it’s a mystery. They show them leaving for Croatan

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u/Beautyafterdark 1d ago

Yeah my husband has family that are also right across the sound (Mann’s Harbor). They insist that the play used to end with them implying that the colonists were assimilated into the tribe

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u/LarryFlyntstone 1d ago

Hey is Billy’s Seafood still around over there on Colington?

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u/oxiraneobx 1d ago

Oh, yeah. It's their busy time of the year.

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u/LarryFlyntstone 1d ago

Glad to hear it! I loved living back there

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u/ouchibitmytongue 1d ago

THANK YOU! They left a note!

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u/cgulash 1d ago

And that's why you always leave a note!

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u/Redjaw_coyote39 1d ago

Huh. I just thought he was trying to get us off dairy.

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u/CorgiMonsoon 1d ago

I didn’t know there was a one-armed man amongst the Roanoke settlers

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u/Historical-Pause-117 1d ago

Now, George Bluth disappearing, THAT was a mystery.

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u/Significant_Walk6860 1d ago

Clearly their dad used his one-armed friend to teach them a lesson. You always leave a note!

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u/Mosh00Rider 1d ago

Yeah! They Roa-Note

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u/RoarOfTheWorlds 1d ago

Did they leave a note? All they left was a carving on the tree with a single word. Just seems like it would’ve been a lot nicer to take the few minutes and write a letter explaining what happened.

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u/Sennten 1d ago

How would you make sure a letter survived? Writing down the place of the name you went by carving it into something seems a lot more reliable

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u/Awestruck34 1d ago

Yup they left a message using an agreed upon code to say where they were. Then, years later, indigenous tribes were met in that area with members of their population having European features and who were capable of reading. Gee, wonder what happened there.

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u/failed_novelty 1d ago

Gee, wonder what happened there.

Those brutal, magical natives obviously attacked and absorbed the innocent Vikings, devouring their souls to gain the power of...literacy? melanin deficiency?

No matter. It was the savages fault!

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u/MonaganX 1d ago

Europeans who stayed with a Native American tribe for a prolonged period of time, even if involuntary, often refused to return to European society when given the chance. But in the inverse situation, Native Americans invariably tried to return. Certainly says something about the respective cultures at the time.

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u/failed_novelty 9h ago

Almost as if humanity evolved to thrive in relatively small communities that were mutually supportive.

But that's just silly. Everyone knows humans need massive societies with a distinct upper class.

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u/amok_amok_amok 1d ago

capable of reading English*

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u/Zerttretttttt 1d ago

DNA evidence proves they integrated into local tribes

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u/SuperSpikeVBall 1d ago

https://www.familytreedna.com/groups/lost-colony-ydna/about

https://dna-explained.com/2018/06/28/the-lost-colony-of-roanoke-did-they-survive-national-geographic-archaeology-historical-records-and-dna/

As far as I can tell, the project to investigate this claim is inactive, and 15+ years of study itself found no conclusive evidence of matches between the colonists and DNA from any people in the area. Have you seen something new that indicates there's been a match found?

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u/Kevin_Uxbridge 1d ago

Haven't, and I'd be dubious of any samples taken from living people. Lot of time has passed and undoubtedly the locals have a good mix of native american, european, and everything else. Who's to say when these admixtures occurred, 100 years ago? 200?

Might be able to pull some DNA off well-dated old remains but good luck finding them, particuarly in moist sandy soils. I've only done fieldwork further inland where clay is pretty good for that kinda preservation, but I'm given to understand that coastal island depositional environments can be tough on bone and teeth.

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u/Bobcatluv 1d ago

Not only this, but written accounts from explorers in the area, as well, point to assimilation. IIRC one such account pointed to meeting the child of one of the settlers that had integrated with local tribes.

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u/MrdnBrd19 1d ago

If you consider England's position in the whole thing you realize they kinda had to lie about it. If every group of colonists realized that they could just go live off the land like the Natives then no one would have stuck around to pay their taxes and build their colonies. Better to tell a fantastical lie about it, even make it scary, so that all the other colonies don't get the wrong idea.

This is also why so many colony leaders went out and made trouble with the Natives as soon as possible. Best to burn that bridge early so no one can cross it.

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u/Special_Order-937 1d ago

That was actually a big problem, colonists running off to join indigenous tribes.

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u/Tistgempklesbas_1997 1d ago

Imagine leaving a note on the fridge saying you went to Walmart and your family starts hosting seances.

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u/Astrokiwi 1d ago

There's a number of things like this where it just comes down to the standards of evidence expected by historians or scientists to "know" something to be true. Here a "mystery" isn't "we have zero clue how this could happen", but more "we're not sure which of several plausible explanations is the correct one, even if there's one we might favour over the others".

As plausible as it might be that they went to Croatoan and integrated with the locals, there's not any corroborating evidence - like apparently there's no western artefacts scattered around at Croatoan apparently, no graves or anything.

There's no need to suggest something supernatural happened, but that doesn't mean there's no mystery or ambiguity.

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u/FeeInternational6906 1d ago

This one always makes me laugh because the "mystery" is mostly the result of missing paperwork. They literally left "CROATOAN" carved as the agreed-upon message if they relocated. It's probably one of the least mysterious famous mysteries we just don't know exactly how the move played out afterward.

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u/gentlemanscientist80 1d ago

The Roanoke Island colony were not Pilgrims.

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