CLUE #1

When Governor John White prepared to leave Roanoke Island in 1587, he instructed the colonists to leave some sort of sign if they intended to leave the island for any reason. He told them to carve the location in a tree and to leave a cross underneath it if they were being forced to leave, perhaps under some sort of stress (ie, attack, war, kidnap, etc.)

When White returned in 1590, the only clue he had to go on was the letters CRO carved into a nearby tree. There was no sign of a cross on the carving either. White took this to mean the colonists had willingly moved to the nearby island of Croatan. He ran into two problems while trying to figure out if that's where they went: 1. The island of Croatan was not very big and would not have been able to support the natives who already lived there, plus an additional 115 English colonists. 2. When later explorers visited the island of Croatan, there were no signs of the colonists and the natives there claimed to not now what happened to them.