Early Europeans had considerable fear of Native American shamanic powers, which included the claimed ability to make rain and otherwise control the natural world. The first English colony founded in the United States was in 1587-1588 on Roanoke Island, North Carolina, and featured the first murder of a Native American chief by whites and the first birth of a European on American soil (Virginia Dare). When the British came back to the colony in 1589 to bring provisions and supplies, they discovered that all four hundred of the colonists had vanished without a trace, causing this to be referred to as "The Lost Colony." The second English attempt at colonization occurred in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607: only 38 of the original 104 settlers survived the first year, and another 4,800 colonists starved in subsequent attempts to colonize the area over the following seven years. But why?
Matthew Therrell, a tree-ring specialist with the University of Arkansas, studied rings of recently cut thousand-year-old bald cypress trees and found a startling anomaly, published in the April 24, 1998, issue of the journal Science. Between the years 1000 and 1997, there were two -- and only two -- massive and tree-withering droughts along the East Coast: during the years 1587-1588 and 1607-1614. |
