Upon his return to Roanoke Island in 1590, Governor John White discovered the entire settlement he had left three years prior had completely vanished. Instead of finding signs of a struggle, he saw the colonists' housing had been carefully dismantled, and the more than 100 men, women, and children were gone. The only physical evidence left behind was the word "CROATOAN" etched into a defensive palisade, with the letters "CRO" carved into a nearby tree. This name referred to a neighboring island and a local Native American tribe, and was part of a pre-arranged code to signal a new location, but crucially, the agreed-upon distress signal of a Maltese cross was absent. A pending storm prevented White from investigating Croatoan Island, and the ultimate fate of the colonists was never definitively established.