But most historians do not believe the myth of the Croatan Indians in North Carolina. No records exist of any English settlement inland of the North Carolina coast prior to 1703, when John Lawson explored the inner region of the territory. Butler claimed that Lawson had come across Native Americans who were tilling the land in the English style, speaking an antiquated English, having gray and blue eyes, and wanting Lawson to teach them how to "speak from a book" as their forefathers did. Mainline historians have found no evidence that any Europeans survived from Roanoke Island. DNA analysis of the "Indians" of Sampson County have not supported such early 20th c. myths.