On September 10, 1570, Father Juan Bautista de Segura, a Spanish Jesuit missionary, splashed his foot onto a beach in Chesapeake Bay in modern day Virginia. He was there with nine jesuit companions to build St. Mary’s Mission, a basic settlement, and the first and last the Spanish would send without an accompanying military force. His party was comprised mostly of clerics, as well as a servant boy and another young man, a local who had spent the better part of the past decade in Spain. They built a two room hut: one room for living and the other for conducting Mass.
Don Luis, the local on the mission, had been captured about 10 years earlier by another Spanish expedition and taken to Spain. He was presented before the King as an example of Native Americans and then received a Jesuit education, making him the perfect guide for a mission such as Father Segura’s. Once back on his native soil he helped the Jesuits find a site for the mission, and then departed alone, ostensibly to find his former village and trade for supplies for the group. When he failed to return, three of the clerics followed him. They found him without too much trouble, but he quickly killed them and then led a group of natives back to the mission to massacre the rest of the party. They spared only the servant boy, who was later rescued by a Spanish resupply ship and relayed his story to the captain and eventually the crown. This would be the last Spanish attempt at colonizing the Chesapeake region.
Americans know their colonial past through names like Jamestown and Plymouth, which had their share of adversity, but ultimately survived and grew to serve as the seeds of today’s society. For each successful colony, however, there were many that failed. Perhaps the most famous failed colony was that of Roanoke in the outer banks of North Carolina, which stands as one of America’s oldest, and still unsolved, mysteries.
Initially established as a fort for trading and treasure hunting by Richard Grenville, the first settlers of Roanoke took up the offer of a passing Francis Drake and sailed en-masse back to England to escape the tough conditions there. When Grenville returned to the colony from England with his promised supplies, he found the fort abandoned and left a skeleton crew of 15 men to defend it while he returned to England to find his missing settlers. Meanwhile, Sir Walter Raleigh pieced together another colonization attempt for the Chesapeake, but upon arrival to America circumstances forced them into starting their colony at Roanoke. They found the fort abandoned by Grenville’s men and without any of the buildings they were expecting, and so almost immediately after arriving John White, the leader of the expedition, left his 100 settlers and sailed back to England to gather more supplies. Circumstance prevailed yet again in the form of weather and the Spanish Armada, ensuring that White wouldn’t be able to return to Roanoke with this supplies until 1590, three full years after he had left. Once he finally made it back, he found nothing. The settlers, including his daughter and grandchild, were gone, as were many of the buildings. There was no sign of struggle or conflict, and the only message left behind was the word “Croatoan” etched into a tree. To make it evenmore strange, everything suggested an unhurried exit from the colony. To this day there is no definitive answer to the question of what happened to the Roanoke colonists.
Because of a storm and other concerns, White was unable to stay and investigate further, or even sail to the nearby Croatan Island to see if the missing settlers were there. Theories abound as to their ultimate fate, including absorption into the nearby native american tribe, as well a misguided and disastrous attempt to sail their small, unseaworthy ships to nearby islands. There is also the possibility that they were massacred by the natives, as the relationship had been strained ever since Grenville’s men had burned a native village after accusing them of stealing a silver cup. While this doesn’t certify it a massacre, it does make the idea that they integrated into the tribe a little less likely. All we have is speculation, and with four centuries since the disappearance, it would seem all we’ll ever be able to do is speculate on the fate of the Roanoke Colony.
Not all failed colonies ended in such disastrous and upsetting fashion. In the fall of 1607, just as John Smith and his comrades were arriving in Jamestown, Virginia, George Popham led a group of about 100 colonists to a peninsula just across the bay from modern-day Portland, Maine. Their goal was chiefly economic: to set up a colony geared at harvesting American timber and turning it into English ships. They quickly built their village, but with winter fast approaching they had no time to plant and harvest a crop, leaving them with low food stores heading into an uncertain winter. In December, just about four months after arriving, around half of the colonists decided to return for England, a decision that likely saved many lives. The remaining colonists were able to survive the winter, even despite a fire in their storehouse and the death of their leader, George Popham, in February.
While their winter was rough, it was nowhere near as bad as the near 2/3rds loss of life in the Jamestown Colony 560 miles down the coast. Popham had been their only casualty thus far, and they had even managed to initiate a healthy trading relationship with the local Abenaki tribe, as well as construct their first ship from local lumber. The impetus for the drawdown of the colony came aboard a cargo ship in the spring of 1608. Raleigh Gilbert, who had assumed leadership of the colony upon Popham’s death, received word that his older brother had died and he was now heir to the family estate, title, and castle. While he may have tried to make it appear a more laborious decision, it was likely a fairly easy one. Gilbert agreed to return home to his castle and title, and the remaining colonists decided to return with him. The colony had lasted almost an entire year and had achieved its goal with minimal hardship. Perhaps, had it continued, the Popham Colony would stand in our history books as the shining example of a colony gone right.