Hatteras

Hatteras lies among the low barrier islands that shelter the sounds of the Carolina coast from the Atlantic. The Algonquian-speaking people known to the English as Croatoan lived on these islands when Raleigh's expeditions arrived in the 1580s. John Lawson later described the Hatteras Indians and a settlement on the sound side of the island. By the early eighteenth century the population of this village had fallen sharply.