The Croatan were a small Native American ethnic group living in the coastal areas of what is now North Carolina.

Upon death, the soul either enters heaven to live with the gods or goes to a place near the setting sun called Popogusso, to burn for eternity in a huge pit of fire.

The concepts of heaven and hell[clarification needed] were impressed upon the common people to encourage them to respect leaders and live a life that would produce rewards in the afterlife.

Tribes that maintained mutually beneficial contact with the settlers gained power through their access to and control of European trade goods.

While the English may have held great military superiority over the Carolina Algonquians, the Native Americans' control over food and natural resources was a much more decisive factor in the conflict with early settlers.

[6] In 1586, Wanchese finally severed his former good relations with the English, leaving Chief Manteo as the colonists' sole native ally.

Governor White finally reached Roanoke Island on August 18, 1590, three years after he had last seen them there, but he found his colony had been long deserted.

Before the Governor's departure, he and the colonists had agreed that a message would be carved into a tree if they had moved and would include an image of a Maltese Cross if the decision was made by force.

McMillan's hypothesis, which was also supported by the historian Stephen Weeks, contends that the colonists migrated with the Indians toward the interior of North Carolina and by 1650 had settled along the banks of the Lumber River.

John R. Swanton, a pioneering ethnologist at the Smithsonian Institution, wrote in 1938 that the Lumbees were probably of Cheraw descent, but were also genealogically influenced by other Siouan tribes in the area.

Contemporary historians such as James Merrell and William Sturtevant confirm this theory by suggesting that the Cheraws, along with survivors of other tribes whose populations had been devastated by warfare and disease, found refuge from both aggressive settlers and hostile tribes in the Robeson County swamps in eastern North Carolina.

These "free people of color" were mostly descendants of European men and African women who worked and lived together in colonial Virginia.

These connections have been traced for numerous individuals and families through court records, land deeds, and other existing historical documents.

[2] Researchers from the University of Bristol, United Kingdom, have also been excavating on Hatteras Island in conjunction with the Croatoan Archaeological Society.

[citation needed] Roberta Estes founded the Lost Colony Center for Science and Research which excavated English artifacts within the territory of the former Croatan tribe.

The center conducted the Lost Colony DNA Project to try to determine if there are European lines among Croatan descendants.