[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] It is one of America's oldest unsolved mysterious, but a hobby archaeologist believes to have uncovered the truth behind the Lost Colony of Roanoke.
In 1587 a group of English settlers arrived on Roanoke Island to start a new life, but three years later more than 100 of the colonists vanished — leaving only the word 'CROATOAN' carved in a wooden post.
Scott Dawson has spent decades investigating their disappearance and stands firm on the idea that the group integrated with the Croatoan tribe on Hatteras Island - and has uncovered writings that support this theory.
John White, one of the settlers who returned to a deserted camp in 1590, wrote he was never able to search Hatteras Island because of weather and dwindling supplies, but his writings indicate he took solace in the message carved into the post.
'I greatly joyed that I had found a certain token of their being at Croatoan where Manteo was born,' reads the passage.
Manteo, a leader of the Croatoan tribe, befriended the Lost Colony settlers before traveling back to England with the explorers. 'They were never lost,' Dawson told PilotOnline. 'It was made up. The mystery is over.'
The settlers are said to have lived happily among the tribe and had mixed families that carried on for generations.
John Lawson, another English explorer, landed in what is now Charleston, North Carolina about a century after the lost colony and to his surprise encountered natives with blue eyes who could 'speak out a book,' according to his personal records.