Croatoan Island is today known as Hatteras Island and is located near Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. The island’s history is associated with the Roanoke Colonists, the vanguard of English settlers who twice attempted (1585 and 1586) to found an English colony on Roanoke Island, Dare County in modern day North Carolina. In April of 1585, English soldier and poet, Sir Walter Raleigh, sent his first band of 100 colonists to establish a colony on Roanoke Island. The expedition was unsuccessful and occasioned a further attempt at colonization the year after. Raleigh entrusted the leadership of this second effort to his artist/soldier friend John White. White and his troupe were successful, but he was soon compelled to leave the colony and charged those left behind with instructions to leave some signal behind should they move the settlement.

The period of Croatoan’s second colonization effort coincided with the England’s sea battle with the Spanish Armada. White found, then, that on his return to England all viable sea-fearing vessels were being requisitioned by the Navy to face the Spanish. This meant that White was unable to return to Croatoan until 1590, at which time he found the colonialists gone and had left few traces of themselves behind. They had, however, left one small but significant clue to their whereabouts: the word "CROATOAN" had been carved into a tree in the town square. Given the colony’s friendship with the neighboring Croatoans, and especially with the Croatoan native Manteo, many have inferred that the inscription signifies that the Roanoke Island colonists fled or moved to the nearby island. A theory supported by explorer John Lawson’s encounters with the Hatteras Indians, who were descendants of the Croatoan Indians and whose members he describes as possessing European features and being able to speak in English.

Some are, however, unsatisfied with this conclusion and a number of competing theories have arisen that attempt to explain the mysterious disappearance of the colony in different terms. For instance, Hamilton MacMillan, a North Carolina resident who lived close to Pembroke, North Carolina, asserted that not only could the Pembroke Indians he had encountered speak English, but they also bore the names of the original Roanoke colonists, concluding, therefore, that the colony must have moved to the Pembroke region on leaving their original location.

Still others assert that the on John White’s departure, the majority of the colonists moved on to the place they originally intended to dock: Chesapeake Bay. A few colonists remained behind to inform White of their new location on his eventual re-arrival. However, it has been supposed that the diminished number of colonists invited invasion and they were forced to flee to their allies on Croatoan Island, amongst whom they were eventually assimilated.