The English head back to Roanoke despite everything that should have stopped them: broken alliances, recent violence, and the very clear message that the Secotan did not want them there. In this episode, we follow appointed governor John White and a small group of men, women, and children as they’re inexplicably deposited back into a tense Indigenous landscape shaped by power, memory, and hard-earned mistrust. With greed, optimism, and denial steering the ship, this return sets the stage for America’s first great mystery—not so much a vanishing act as a deeply puzzling decision to try again. 

The two major sources for this series of episodes are:

• The Secret Token: Myth, Obsession, and the Search for the Lost Colony of Roanoke, by Andrew Lawler, published in 2018 by Anchor Books
• The Lost Colony and Hatteras Island, by Scott Dawson, published in 2020 by The History Press

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