T 



JLhese last traces of the 

 Algonkian past have been threatened 

 by coastal development. Strip malls, 

 highways and golf courses have 

 granted them no asylum. Fortunately, 

 a new wave of archaeological re- 

 search, much of it led by David Phelps 

 at East Carolina University, offers a 

 crucial chance to deepen our under- 

 standing of coastal Native Americans 

 before bulldozers literally scatter the 

 last of their bones. 



Recently, I joined Phelps at one of 

 the most important archaeological 

 digs: the legendary village of Croatan. 

 Four years ago, Hurricane Emily's 12- 

 foot tidal swell exposed a section of an 

 Algonkian village in a dune ridge at 

 Buxton on Hatteras Island. That dune 

 ridge had been identified by archae- 

 ologist William Haag in 1956 and 

 again by Phelps in 1983 as the likely 

 site of the Croatan chiefdom 's capital. 

 So far, eight archaeological sites have 

 been discovered at Hatteras Island, 

 including an ossuary — a mass burial 

 — of the Algonkian nobility. 



First charted in a map by English 

 surveyor John White in 1586, the 

 Croatan chiefdom stretched from 

 present-day Buxton south to Ocracoke 

 Inlet. The capital village, also known 

 as Croatan, was located by an old inlet 

 (called Chacandepeco) that cut 

 through the island immediately north 

 of Cape Hatteras. It was one of the 

 few places on the Outer Banks with a 

 maritime forest extensive enough to 

 safeguard an archaeological site from 

 the region's winds and storms. 



The shelter of Buxton Woods 

 also explains why Croatan was the 

 only Algonkian chiefdom with a 

 capital village on the Outer Banks 

 when the English first arrived. The 

 Croatans had good soil for their 

 cornfields, orchards and gardens; 

 ample forest for fuel and hunting; 

 and certainly no shortage of fish and 

 shellfish. Phelps estimates that as 



many as 5,000 people lived 

 in the chiefdom. 



The Croatans played a 

 key role in English/Native 

 American diplomacy during 

 the Roanoke voyages of 1584 

 to 1587. Most famously, 

 Croatan may have been the 

 destination for the Lost 

 Colony, the first effort by 

 the English to colonize North 

 America. When the colonists 

 disappeared from Roanoke 

 Island in 1587, they left only 

 one clue of their whereabouts: 

 a gatepost carved with the 

 word "Croatoan." 



The fate of the Lost 

 Colony has been argued 

 heatedly for years. No wonder 

 that when Phelps concluded 

 (using geological records and 

 16th-century maps) that the 

 Buxton site was almost 

 certainly Croatan, scholars and 

 journalists worldwide began 

 to speculate about whether the 

 Lost Colony had finally been found. 



Even though I have never 

 participated in an archaeological dig, 

 Phelps, his ECU assistants and a 

 devoted group of Buxton volunteers 

 welcomed me with a warm hospital- 

 ity. Then they handed me a shovel and 

 put me to work. For two days, I dug in 

 a live oak glade along a sandy ridge 

 by Pamlico Sound. I sliced through 

 wax myrtle and poison ivy roots with 

 a razor-sharp shovel, then dug several 

 feet deeper into the sand. Working on 

 my hands and knees, I gently removed 

 layers of soil an inch or two at a time 

 with a tiny trowel, as the ECU 

 archaeologists taught me. Then we 

 sifted the soil for fragments. 



The earth has not forgotten the 

 Algonkians. Deep under matted roots 

 and barren sand, Croatan has been 

 imprinted into a layer of dark, shell- 

 laden midden 18 inches thick. We 



found copper 

 beads and pipe 

 stems, stone 

 flakes and tools, 

 shell piles and 

 deer bones 

 (ancient gar- 

 bage), and 

 shards of 



Colington-period (800-1650 AD) 

 pottery that was coiled, pressed and 

 tempered with oyster shell. Dark 

 shadows reveal where posts once 

 supported village buildings. 



We also unearthed European 

 relics: lead shot, gun flints, nails, 

 Delphic pottery. These artifacts, like 

 the Algonkian remains, date from the 

 early colonial period, roughly 1650 to 

 1715, several generations after the 

 Lost Colony. They had probably been 

 used as trading items between the 

 English and Croatans. 



14 AUTUMN 1997 



