Trusted Writing on History, Travel, and American Culture Since 1949
John White
New ideas—and archaeological evidence—may provide answers to colonial North America’s longest-running mystery
After traveling to England in 1587 for supplies, John White returned to the Roanoke colony three years later. They found no trace of the settlers save for the word "Croatoan" carved into a post.
One hot august day in 1590, the heavily armed privateer Hopewell dropped anchor off the Outer Banks of North Carolina. John White had returned to resupply the 118 men, women, and children whom he had left on Roanoke Island three long years earlier. Read more >>
Four hundred years ago the first English settlers reached America. What followed was a string of disasters ending with the complete disappearance of a colony.
Roanoke is a twice-lost colony. First its settlers disappeared—some 110 men, women, and children who vanished almost without a trace. Read more >>
Why have Americans perceived nature as something to be conquered?
Most people who have reflected at all upon the known history of the Americas, particularly North America, have been impressed one way or another with its dominant quality of fierceness. Read more >>
No event in the history of Western man provided so profound a shock as the discovery of America
America was an experience man could only have once. Knowledge of China, knowledge of Africa, festooned as it was with the Spanish moss of myth and legend, had penetrated Europe from the days of Imperial Rome and beyond. Read more >>