When considering causes for social and demographic calamities, traditionally there are four general possibilities: war, famine, pestilence, and death. It is probable that all four brought Elizabethan Virginia to an end. We do know that the Spanish never found the colony, but fear of that threat may have caused it to move further west. White thought that a move “50 miles further up into the maine” had been intended. Also, the nearby mainland Indians were clearly hostile in 1587.
Soon after the civilians arrived, the body of an Englishman who went crabbing was found full of arrows and mutilated. This local threat was another reason to leave Roanoke.
We also know that Lane’s soldiers in 1586 faced a serious food shortage and that White in 1587 returned to England because the supplies had been ruined. The civilian colony had no real leverage to convince native tribes to share their winter reserves. Later, famine would cause the ‘starving time’ at Jamestown, when Indians there refused to sell food. North Carolina lacked a single, powerful native polity that might have supported the colony, so it is probable that it broke up into smaller groups, independently intent on survival. At Jamestown, disease even the Plague itself would again and again sap the strength of the young colony. Infectious diseases may have had a similar impact at Roanoke.
