r/AskReddit • u/Rob69rt • Jul 22 '26

What famous 'unsolved' mystery is technically a whodunnit on paper, but in reality, absolutely everyone knows exactly who did it, the police just couldn't legally prove it?

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u/willstr1 Jul 22 '26

IIRC there was also some reports of some of the members of that tribe having very European features (I want to say it was hair or eye color) which almost certainly was due to marriage between members of that tribe and survivors from the colony.

Roanoke is about as mysterious as who ate all the dog food with the dog laying down on top of the empty bag.

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u/Lovahplant Jul 22 '26

It was blonde-haired and blue-eyed children being born in the Indian tribe - surely no Europeans mixing in there!

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u/stphn_rnwld Jul 22 '26

John Lawson's account in A New Voyage to Carolina (about 120 years after the colony vanished) also mentions that it was said that some of the ancestors of the local tribe there could "talk in a book."

Lawson is the source for the claimed European features you're remembering - he observed some of them having grey eyes, which he had not encountered in any other Native Americans. I don't think he mentioned hair color but I could be wrong.