Raleigh’s aim was to establish a colony so as to stake England’s claim to the largely unknown (to Europeans) landmass of North America and from which he could launch raids on the Spanish West Indies and annual treasure fleets. In late April 1584, he dispatched two small ships commanded by Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe on a reconnaissance expedition that arrived off the Outer Banks a few months later. Entering into the shallow waters of the Sounds (Pamlico Albemarle, and Currituck), they discovered numerous fertile islands covered with valuable timber and teeming with game. Local Indians were described as a “very handsome, and goodly people, and in their behavior as mannerly, and civil, as any of Europe.” One island in particular might turn out to be a suitable location for the first English colony: Roanoke, ten miles long and two and a half wide, which was inhabited by peaceful Indians who would be their friends and allies.

Whether on the southern shore of the Chesapeake Bay or in North Carolina, it is generally believed that many of the colonists and their descendants were killed by a large raiding party of Powhatan warriors sent in the spring of 1607 by the Powhatan paramount chief, Wahunsonacock (father of Pocahontas), to destroy the colonists and their Indian allies. Wahunsonacock apparently feared the possibility that the Jamestown settlers, who arrived in the Chesapeake Bay in late April, might develop contacts with the Roanoke settlers and peoples they lived with and thereby threaten his chiefdom. A few of the Roanoke colonists survived the attack, however, and fled up the Chowan River or found refuge with the Tuscarora people at a place called Ocanahowan on the Roanoke River, and to the south, possibly on the Tar River, at a town named Pakerackanick. Descendants of the small group of settlers who went to live on Croatoan Island also survived.