Just as the fifth century era of famine, epidemics, and invasion saw tribes shift from region to region in Europe, so too did the proto-colonial period in eastern North America. Historians, anthropologists, and archaeologists have recorded such movements — and the all-too common finality of tribal extinction. For example, as late as the 19th century, accounts document that most of North Carolina’s Tuscarora departed Bertie County to join their Iroquoian cousins in New York state.

Barrier islands protected the Carolina Sounds, providing land and sea seasonal food for the Algonquian-speaking peoples of the coast. Unfortunately for them, this coast also attracted the earliest English exploration and colonization, and both activities brought often violent political upheaval, subsequent reduced food supplies, and virulent pandemics.

At the head of Albemarle Sound, Governor Lane recorded the Chowanoke tribe as the largest he visited in 1586, but by 1640 it had so diminished that the remnant had moved from the west bank of the Chowan River to the eastern bank, abandoning their homeland to aggressive ‘Mangoac’ Tuscaroras. The reduced Weapemeocs, in turn, quit the lower Chowan valley to survive for generations in a small area on the Yeopim River.

Similar tribal movements took place farther south, on Pamlico and Roanoke Sounds, though these are less well recorded. Tracing name references on maps of the sixteenth to eighteenth century, however, does provide sufficient clues to base a coherent hypothesis. When the English arrived in the 1580s, the Roanoke tribal population in Dasemunkepeuc was sufficient to raise harvestable crops. The same was true for the smaller village on Roanoke Island before that was abandoned in 1586. One year later, after a small war band from Damunkepeuc killed the settler George Howe, the Roanokes also left Dasemunkepeuc. Almost immediately, Croatoan families from modern-day Hatteras came for the crops, where they were mistakenly attacked by White’s soldiers. There is no record of the Roanokes ever returning to the area and no record of the Croatoans departing Dasemunkepeuc.

Before his return to England, Governor White had proclaimed Manteo of the Croatoan tribe as “Lord of Roanoke and Dasemunkepeuc,” the two localities recently abandoned by the Roanokes. On his brief return to Roanoke Island, he discovered the word CROATOAN carved at the deserted fort, which he assumed meant that his colonists had gone there, instead of their intended site, fifty miles to the west.

Less than twenty years after an Indian “emperor” guided Virginia traders to Old Fort Raleigh on Roanoke Island, the name “Croatan” appeared on numerous maps of the new Carolina colony. All these maps are from UNC’s historic map collection: https://web.lib.unc.edu/nc-maps/. On the 1671 First Lords Proprietors Map and Moxon’s map and the 1676 Speed map, Croatan was all the mainland east of Alligator River. But later, on the 1684 Thames School cartographers’ map, on the 1718 Maule survey of Roanoke Island, and on the 1733 Moseley map, the Croatan area was confined to the mainland northwest of the then un-eroded north end of Roanoke Island. This was repeated on the 1775 Mouzon map, though the 1738 Wimble “Chart of his Majesty’s Province” again depicts “Croatan Land” east of the Alligator River. Yet, as late as the 19th century, the 1808 Price and Strother map placed it at the dry ground of northern Manns Harbor, and it still survives as the name of the sound separating Manns Harbor and Roanoke Island. Throughout the two hundred years of the colony and early republic, this repeated and clear association of the Croatan tribe with that mainland location – and its simultaneous absence from the barrier islands – must indicate tribal movement, despite later claims and assumptions.

Cartographic study therefore suggests that a broad territory was attributed in the historical period to the remnant Croatoans, and that the likely location for their core habitation and Dasemunkepeuc itself lay northwest of Roanoke in the vicinity of modern Mashoes. Because no member of the Croatoan tribe had lived at their former location since the 1500s, the term Hatteras, on modern-day Bodie Island, was soon applied to the empty island to the south. It also supports the theory that members of the Coree tribe later came to occupy that island. The absence of Croatans there meant the new arrivals were thus labeled the Hatteras tribe. Over time, it seems that Croatan descendants disbursed though marriage among the various indigenous peoples of eastern Carolina, bringing genetic and familial memories with them.

In 1590 John White arrived off the former Croatoan coast in his effort to locate the colony. He expected to be welcomed by the Croatoan people but saw no sign of life there. He sailed on to anchor off the inlet leading to Roanoke. Despite the loss of an entire boatload of sailors in a storm-tossed surf, he found no one alive at Lane’s fort or settlement. The bewildered man would not have known that the CROATOAN carved on the fort there may well have referred to the mainland just a few miles away. Whether or not a few colonists remained with them, Manteo’s Algonquians would have known that the Lost Colony had moved to the fertile lands along the Chowan River and the protection of the Chowanoke tribe. But White could not stay long enough to ask them.

Eric Klingelhofer, April 2024