Because their traditional forms of dress and ritual dimmed as they mixed with a variety of tribes and then with whites and blacks, the young men in the group drew on the clothing and sounds from the peoples of the Great Plains to reclaim their heritage. Lumbee became devout Protestants centuries ago, and many remain deeply attached to their Christian faith.
Chief Harvey Godwin opened the gathering. Speakers discussed indigenous spirituality in North Carolina prisons as well as a violent 1958 conflict between Lumbee and white supremacists (the unwelcome outsiders were sent packing). During a coffee break, I told Godwin the wide range of hair and skin colors in the conference room surprised me. “All the tribes were mixed, and everyone here is racially mixed as well,” said the chief, a burly man with a broad nose and a graying ponytail.
Like the Reverend Donald Lowery, Godwin grew up hearing the story that the Lost Colonists joined the tribe. “Some believe it and some don’t,” he said with a politician’s tact. When he visited the Outer Banks years ago, he recalled feeling “a connection to the place, and it could be a thread back to then,” referring to the sixteenth century. But he remained agnostic on the matter.
One of his late relatives, a UNC Pembroke historian named Adolph Dial, had revived McMillan’s theory in the second half of the twentieth century. “The survival of colonists’ names, the uniqueness of the Lumbee dialect in the past, the oral traditions, the demography of sixteenth century North Carolina, the mobility of the Indian people, human adaptability and the isolation of Robeson County, all prove the ‘Lost Colony’ theory,” he wrote. Dial believed that his unusual last name derived from Dare and that he was descended from Virginia. Yet as with McMillan, he failed to convince many of his academic colleagues of his theory.
Dial died in 1995, and the alleged link with the Roanoke settlers has since fallen out of favor. “It is so improbable,” Mary Ann Jacobs, chair of the American Indian Studies department at the university, told me as we walked to lunch in the college cafeteria. “How in the world would all of those white people have made it all the way here?” she asked. “Why would they stay here with us? Why would they come to this area in the first place? This was swamp then—not like now,” Jacobs added, gesturing at the manicured lawns, “and there were no ditches and canals.”
McMillan was vague about his sources in the Lumbee community and overstated how many tribal families share surnames of Lost Colonists, she said. Most of those names are common in Britain in any case. She added that later masters likely passed on their surnames to slaves, as was common in the South. Jacobs concluded that the link with Roanoke was more about nineteenth-century politics than Elizabethan history. “It made us look better in white eyes,” she said. “It tied us to what amounts to North Carolina royalty.”
At lunch I chatted with Vibrina Coronado, a Lumbee elder and amateur historian. “My maternal grandmother told us we were descendants of Manteo, the Indian leader, but we never discussed what that meant,” she said. “This grandmother had an uncle named Manteo.” Though the link with the Lost Colony fascinated her, she was skeptical. “I’ve never doubted that Lumbees in general and my family in particular were mixed racially and ethnically, but the story told about the tree carved with the word ‘Croatan’ seemed like the Disney version,” she said.
In the nineteenth-century South, Lumbees must have been a disturbing reminder that the region’s strict racial categories were arbitrary distinctions imposed by an anxious white majority. “Remember, there was no such thing legally as an Indian; you were white or colored,” said Jay Vest, an American Indian Studies professor at the college. The 1835 law attempted to build a wall between those who were white and those who were not, but the boundaries were too permeable. “Our bodies were evidence,” added Jacobs, a tall and light-colored woman with long brown hair. “Some of us have blue eyes and white skin, and there is a gradation of tone.”
I glanced around the campus sidewalks crowded with students as we strolled back to Old Main. No one seemed to fit into the usual checkerboard categories of the rural South, which tends to the extremes of dark and light. Skin shades varied from ivory to copper to dark chocolate, and hair ranged from straight to curly to kinky. “The Croatan today are undoubtedly one of the most heterogeneous groups ever brought together under one name,” concludes the sociologist Johnson.
The scene reminded me of an experience that flummoxed African American educator Booker T. Washington on a visit to Oklahoma: “The whole situation out here is complicated and puzzling, and if one attempts to understand it he is very deep into the intricacies of a social and political history so full of surprises that it reminds him of Alice in Wonderland.”
The Lost Colony link was a neat way for white legislators in Jim Crow North Carolina to accept the diversity of traits among Lumbee. They were seen as the result of a mixing of Native Americans and Europeans driven by utter necessity. For them, it was comforting to imagine that the colonists remained English enough to keep their surnames and language and taught Indians their European ways. That was more palatable than the image of colonists completely subsumed in the indigenous culture.
More than a century later, however, a new and controversial tool unavailable in McMillan’s day emerged that offered an opportunity to make sense of that Alice in Wonderland quality I encountered in Pembroke and, perhaps, resolve the Lost Colony mystery in an unexpected way.
* * *
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Historians hunt for long-forgotten documents in archives, while archaeologists seek the objects that people left behind. A new generation of Roanoke searchers is turning to the human genome as an entirely new line of evidence to track the colonists’ fate.
Gene sequencing recently moved out of scientific laboratories and into the world of genealogy. This effort is a particular preoccupation for Roberta Estes, a computer scientist from Michigan. After working in the tech industry for three decades, she grew intrigued by the new field of genetic genealogy around 2000. Suddenly people could sample their genes to determine their family heritage at a reasonable cost.
Estes eventually quit her high-tech consulting job to start a business designed to help individuals grasp the meaning locked within their DNA. “My goal was to put it all in terms people could understand,” she said.
In 2005, Estes read some chatter on a genealogy website about the Lost Colony and the possibility that genetic data could provide insight into the settlers’ fate. Her father is from northeastern North Carolina, and she has Native American genes on both sides of her family. The mystery of the Roanoke colony had long fascinated her. “I thought, well, can DNA solve this?”
Soon after, she helped found several Lost Colony–related genetic projects to collect data related to the vanished settlers, including one focused on today’s population on Hatteras, as well as among Lumbee. She also gathered genetic data on the Melungeons, an Appalachian ethnic group, some of whom claim descent from Lost Colonists. Those qualified to join the projects only needed a surname on the list of Lost Colonists as well as evidence of early settlement in eastern North Carolina.
She anticipated gathering enough data to find a link “relatively quickly and painlessly.” As historians and archaeologists already know, however, the Roanoke mystery does not give up its secrets so easily.
When I spoke with Estes, she first insisted on explaining the three primary forms of DNA genealogical tests. Each has its limitations. One test samples your autosomal DNA, the genetic material that you inherit, half from your mother and half from your father. Which half of your parents’ genetic material you receive is random. The further back you go in your ancestry, the fuzzier the data becomes. Individuals inherit an average of 6.25 percent of the genetic material from each great-great-grandparent. “Less than 1 percent is generally considered noise,” she said. “That happens between five and six generations. By then, DNA gets divided into pieces too small to associate with specific ancestors.
” As a result, autosomal DNA results can’t accurately capture ancestors from Elizabethan times.
Two other approaches can get around this limitation. You can test the Y chromosome in a man, the chromosome inherited father to son along with the surname, or the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) inherited mother to daughter (both genders get it, but only women can pass it on). Unlike autosomal DNA, these tests provide far more accurate information on the paternal and maternal lines, respectively, stretching back much further in history. “Y and mtDNA does not wash out over time,” explained Estes. “You can use it to look through a periscope that goes far back in history.” These tests are more effective in determining individual origins, she explained. But these tests also provide an incomplete picture, because they reveal a line through the father or through the mother but not both. If you are female, then your mtDNA won’t confirm your father’s story that you are directly descended from ancient Samoan royalty.
Estes’s initial task was to build up a database of potential Lost Colony descendants using as much DNA data as possible—autosomal, Y, and mtDNA. Yet even a massive database of likely candidates, no matter how complete, is not enough to point the historical compass to a Roanoke settler. Her primary challenge, then, is to find someone—living or dead—with whom to compare their genetic data. That means either pinpointing existing descendants of the Lost Colonists in Britain or uncovering bones reliably identified as those belonging to one of the settlers. The latter path would be the most direct, but it requires successfully sequencing (after first finding) DNA from old remains.
In the best cases, that is a difficult, expensive, and time-consuming process that only a few labs in the world can accomplish. But the technology is rapidly evolving. Just a few years ago, extracting genetic-material DNA from bones left in warm and wet environments like that of the Outer Banks was unthinkable. New techniques can now amplify tiny fragments and recover the genetic map of those long dead. Scientists recently sequenced the DNA of individuals buried in colonial Cuba and in a Bahamian cave. So what was once scientifically impossible is now conceivable.
That would, of course, still require bones confirmed to be those of Lost Colonists. No dig at Fort Raleigh or at Site X has uncovered human remains from the period. Mark Horton’s team did encounter a burial while digging at Cape Creek on Hatteras. It appeared just as a tropical storm bore down on the island. “We were finding pottery and other interesting stuff, and suddenly someone said, ‘This looks human,’ ” one of the team members told me, requesting anonymity because of the sensitivity surrounding Native American remains. “We found a mandible upside down that was definitely human.” A sudden storm forced a halt to the dig. Later, once it had passed, the team found the bones to be an intact single burial in a flexed position that is typical of Algonquian cemeteries. The excavators immediately alerted the state archaeologist, who in turn contacted Greg Richardson, the chair of the North Carolina Commission of Indian Affairs. “He said, ‘Rebury it,’ ” the team member said, and the excavators complied.
In 1990, Congress passed a law protecting Indian and Eskimo graves and cultural goods on state and federal land. The legislation sought to end the widespread practice of exhuming Indian remains for scientific study without the permission of their descendants. If archaeologists find Native American skeletons on state or federal land today, they must contact the likely next of kin before removing or analyzing them. In recent years, scientists and Native Americans have ended up in lengthy and acrimonious court battles over the use of scientific data gleaned from Indian bones.
The most famous case involved the bones of a nine-thousand-year-old skeleton dubbed Kennewick Man after the site of its 1996 find on the Columbia River in Washington State. After a bitter fight lasting more than two decades, his remains were returned to the Colville tribe and reburied when DNA analysis determined he was an ancestor of that people. Even if the remains are on private land, as was the case with Cape Creek, archaeologists today are increasingly reluctant to disturb Native American dead. And if bones of a colonist were somehow obtained, accurate dating would then be critical to ensure that the buried English man or woman was Elizabethan, rather than a later Jamestown trader. To determine if the person had living relatives today, an existing British relative would still have to be found in order to make a comparison.
The second approach is to match the Y DNA sequence of someone with a Roanoke surname in the United States with both early ties to North Carolina and a Native American background to that of a living Lost Colony descendant in Britain. No such living descendant, however, has yet been identified. There are only two known children of White’s settlers who were left behind in England, both siblings of Virginia Dare. The first was the daughter of Eleanor and Ananias Dare, Thomasine Dare, who died as a child within a year of her parents’ departure for Roanoke. The second was John Dare. He was the son of Ananias, and Eleanor was likely his mother, though it is possible he was from a previous marriage or was illegitimate. We know that he inherited his father’s property after a 1594 court decision declaring Ananias legally dead.
“So far, we have not found one family we can identify in England that is a colonist family,” Estes said. The week before we spoke, she had gathered DNA from a member of a Berry family who lives near Bristol. Richard and Henry Berrye from the 1587 voyage—the ones McMillan believed were related to the Lumbee Berrys—likely came from the area, though there is no definitive historical record linking them to this particular modern family. “We are left with uncomfortable speculations and leaps of faith,” she added ruefully.
Estes is hopeful, however, that old records from parish registers could still pop up to link Lost Colony relatives such as the Berry brothers with present-day individuals. If she can show a genetic link between the Berrys of Britain and the Lumbee Berrys, that might provide a clue backing up McMillan’s claims. Estes noted that the Robeson County Berrys trace their ancestry within the region to at least the early eighteenth century.
Gathering and analyzing Lumbee DNA, however, has proved another formidable complication in her quest. Some Native Americans see mining genetic data as the latest form of grave robbery by white people. That’s why the legislation passed by Congress and signed into law restricting archaeological work was put into place and hailed by Indians as an important victory. Native peoples also point out that they were more likely than Europeans to absorb outsiders—particularly women and children—in their traditional cultures, thereby mixing their genes while retaining tribal identity. Genetic tests, therefore, may offer skewed results.
For many Lumbee, the issue of DNA is particularly fraught. When I mentioned genetic testing to the Reverend Donald Lowery, he warned me away. “If you choose to wade into this one, you are entering a racial and sociopolitical minefield,” he said. “Good luck.” The results, Lowery added, can upset traditional ideas of identity and divide the community.
“It is one thing for Indians to discuss among themselves their varied ancestry, but they resent any outsiders doing so,” writes Karen Blu in her book The Lumbee Problem. “This is partly because, in the South, the terms ‘mixed-blood’ and ‘mulatto’ have usually meant a combination of Black and non-Black ancestry.”
Chief Godwin told me that genetic testing is not part of the admission test for the Lumbee tribe, which is based instead on cultural knowledge and ties to the local community. The tribe is still fighting for full federal recognition, and some Lumbee fear that DNA could be used to delay further or even reject this request. Others said they are troubled by the focus on genetics as a solution to identity. “I don’t have the desire to get my DNA tested—I probably have some African American blood—and I am sure many people do, many who identify as white,” Coronado said. “It just seems like a small bit of someone that is expanded to mean things it may not mean.”
Estes found herself treading through this minefield when she helped create the Lumbee DNA Project. “They woul
dn’t even talk to me,” she said of the tribe’s members, sounding both puzzled and annoyed. She did collect a modest number of samples from a few willing individuals who “feel they have Lumbee heritage” but “generally” are not members of the tribe. Her results revealed an unusually high percentage of European genes compared with other Native American groups—as much as 96 percent. She also uncovered a significant percentage of African genes among her subjects. In fact there was little sign of Native American genes at all. This may be a result of sample size, and Estes said she believes that a larger study would reveal further Indian DNA. “I don’t doubt that the Lumbee have some Native, someplace,” she said. The Indian genes would be in a line not tested. “The Berry line is the best bet for that,” she added.
In a 2009 paper, Estes wrote that the high percentage of European genes in her subjects could signal “either earlier European contact or a significant infusion of European Y-DNA, perhaps from the Lost Colony.” Because most of the Roanoke settlers were men, there’s a greater chance that they passed on their Y chromosomes to a line of male Native Americans. But, again, without a Roanoke colonist’s bones or a British family member to compare the data with, the link to the Lost Colony remains wishful thinking rather than a scientific conclusion.
The Reverend Donald Lowery, who is pale with a touch of red in his thinning hair, told me that he sent off a swab for an autosomal as well as a Y DNA test and shared the results with Estes’s project. Because his father was a full Lumbee, he anticipated a substantial percentage of Native American genes. Instead, in line with what Estes found overall, the data showed that approximately 85 percent of his genetic makeup is northern European, mostly centered on northwest Ireland. Most of the remainder was of West African origin. About 2 percent of his genes were Siberian, which may point to ancestors who began to migrate across the Bering land bridge at the end of the last Ice Age some fifteen thousand years ago.
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