Roanoke by Shmoop

Hey, guys. I’ll be honest – I’m freakin’. I’ve lost my keys on occasion before, but this is ridiculous… …now I’ve misplaced an entire town. Okay, okay… I just need to go back to the beginning… My buddy Sir Walter Raleigh was tight with Queen Elizabeth the first… …and she granted him permission to establish a colony in the New World. England was falling a bit behind the Spanish, the Portuguese… even the bloomin’ French, of all people. So we needed this break… badly. This colony, called Roanoke, started with roughly 100 settlers, and what they thought was a sufficient amount of supplies. They thought wrong. I’m not sure who their stocking clerk was, but I’m pretty sure he lost his job. Anyway, those colonists were forced to tuck their tails between their breeches and head home to England. Take two – and this is where I come in. Raleigh wasn’t willing to admit defeat just yet, so he sent me to give it another go. I took a new batch of settlers, and we returned to Roanoke to meet up with the few people we’d left behind to hold down the fort, only… The fort was unattended. Needless to say, we were a little wigged out about it. Some of us suspected our neighbors, who weren’t exactly Fred and Ethel types. A tribe of Indians called the Croatoans were not our biggest fans, and vice versa. We were a little scared for our lives, to be frank, so I skedaddled. Not to run away, of course, but to sail back to England so I could scrounge up some people who would help us defend ourselves. We were having a little tiff with Spain that put a halt to seafaring voyages for a while… …so I wasn’t able to get back to America for three years. I just got back, and… nothin’. Nobody. Just a tree with the word “Croatoan” carved into the bark. I know what you’re thinking – obviously, the Croatoans killed all my buddies, and maybe you’re right… …only there are no signs of a struggle, nor any signs of a hasty retreat. And no dead bodies, which is great, because I’m a tad squeamish. So what in the New World happened to everybody? Did they move south to the island of Croatoan? Were they trying to throw people off their scent? Did they abandon their roots and join up with the tribe? I really have no answers, and it’s starting to get dark… …is anybody else as creeped out by this as I am? No? It’s just me. Okay. Cool.