In July 1587, ninety men, seventeen women, and eleven children sponsored by Sir Walter Raleigh and Queen Elizabeth landed on Roanoke Island in Pamlico Sound on the North Carolina coast. Their mission was to create the first English colony in the New World. Soon after landing, the governor’s daughter gave birth to the first English child born in America, Virginia Dare. Because of hostile natives and lack of food and supplies, Governor John White returned to England that fall to resupply the colony. Due to various circumstances and the outbreak of war with Spain, White was unable to return for three years. When he finally reached the colony, it was deserted and the buildings dismantled. The word “Croatoan” was carved on the stockade and the letters C-R-O were carved on a nearby tree. But there was no carved cross, which was meant to signal that the colonists were under duress. White found no graves or other signs of foul play, and his search turned up nothing of interest. Croatoan presumably referred to a friendly tribe on the Outer Banks, but a storm was approaching and White was unable to travel there. No confirmed trace of the “Lost Colony” has ever been found, even though a lot of people have been looking for some 400 years.
This volume details the many attempts to answer, often with a touch of humor and irony, the question of what became of the colony by archaeologists, historians, hoaxers, actors, priests, Native Americans, and others. The author, Andrew Lawler, is a free-lance science writer who has more than thousand newspaper and magazine articles (including in American Archaeology) to his credit. He chases clues from the Mid-Atlantic to London and encounters a cast of characters worthy of a great novel, including serious scholars and cranks. He visits archives and archaeological digs to get first hand impressions from the experts. Everyone has a theory of what happened to the Lost Colony, but no smoking gun of evidence is forthcoming.
This is also the story of Virginia Dare, the first English child born in the New World. Lawler documents how her compelling story drives the search for the Lost Colony, how she became a symbol for feminine innocence and white Americans subjected to the cruelty of people of color.
The Secret Token is a highly readable story of myth and history, science and fraud, and of mystery and adventure. It is a book that is hard to put down. The mystery of the Lost Colony may never be solved, but it is intriguing to explore. —Mark Michel
