Croatan

Croatan, also Croatoan, former island off the coast of North Carolina, south of Roanoke Island. The island existed at the time of the first English attempt at colonization about 1585. It has since been obliterated by the shifting of the sands and is now probably a part of either Hatteras Island or Ocracoke Island.

Croatan Island was thought by some to have been part of the mystery of the disappearance of settlers from Roanoke Island. Two attempts at colonization on Roanoke Island were undertaken at the direction of the English explorer Sir Walter Raleigh. The second was in 1587 under the leadership of John White, who returned to England for supplies soon after the colony was established. War with Spain intervened, and when White finally returned in 1590, the colonists had disappeared. The only traces of the colony were the letters CRO carved into a tree and the word Croatoan found on a post.

The ultimate fate of the settlers is a mystery; one theory suggests they took refuge with friendly Native Americans on Croatan Island and eventually became absorbed into the tribe. Interest in the fate of the so-called Lost Colony was renewed in the latter part of the 19th century, when a large group of mixed-blood Native Americans of Robeson County in southeastern North Carolina claimed that they were descendants of the vanished colonists and the Croatan people. Although this claim of ancestry cannot be substantiated, the group is officially recognized as the Croatoan Indians by the state government.