Local folks have a pretty good idea of where they went. The colony was more or less abandoned and survivors went native. Many of the local Indians have had surnames from the colony's roster and there were individuals among them that looked like Englishmen according to Jamestownians. Dare is a big name among the local Indian derivatives.
Isn't there some sort of DNA confirmation amongst the natives?
Within the last 10 years genealogists have started using the DNA samples of people now living to piece together information about common ancestors.
Proof that the survivors went native may be discovered as DNA research continues.
Are you suggesting that the English settlers who vanished from Roanoke Island went “native’ in the same way that sailors of the Bounty went “native” on Pitcairn Island?
That’s an interesting hypothesis and one I haven’t heard about before.
It does make some sense in that the desire for survival is a strong force among all humans and the natives may not have objected to their assimilation and could explain the reason for the lack of human remains at the settlement site.
But aside from some native Indians with surnames from the colony's roster and antidotal suggestions that some Indians looked more like Englishmen, what is the archeological or anthropologic evidence to support this hypothesis?
The English settlers who vanished from Roanoke Island could have just have reasonably died from a combination of starvation, disease and Indian raids.
The issue of surnames, if adopted in later times can be explained as having nothing to do with the original settlers as well as inter marriage among later English and natives could explain the “English” looking Indians. It could be a more recent phenomenon and not related to the original settlement.
Interesting theory though.