Jonita Mullins P.O. Box 3827 Muskogee, OK 74402 [email protected] Copyright 2010 Writers Guild of America, West Registration #1602943

National Treasure 3: The Lost Colony

Screen Treatment By Jonita Mullins

The Historical Back Story

England, 1586

Alarmed by the growing power of Spain in both wealth and military might due to its plundering of the New World, Queen Elizabeth I and her trusted advisor Sir sought to balance this power. They devised a plan to establish a colony in the New World north of Spanish Florida, but close to the sea lanes between Europe and the Americas. Their aim was for this colony to serve as a base of operation to attack and capture Spanish ships carrying gold and other precious metals and gemstones plundered from the native empires.

Raleigh enlisted two military men to scout a location for this new colony. They chose an island off the coast of present day . The natives call this island Roanoke (which means “shell money” in the Algonquian language).

Raleigh then sent a group of 100 soldiers and sailors to establish the . They built a fort on the island and secretly received treasure captured from Spanish vessels taken by English privateers.

Sir Francis Drake arrived about a year after the colony was established and found dire conditions. These military men were not adept at growing crops and they had alienated the surrounding native people so that they received no assistance from them. Their supplies had dwindled to desperate levels. After hiding the plunder seized by Drake, they convinced him to take all of them but 15 men back to . It was two years before Raleigh was able to send a second group of colonists to Roanoke. This group included families of farmers and craftsmen, some with children. The leader of the group was John White and his daughter Eleanor and her husband were among the colonists. They found no one alive at the Roanoke fort, only human remains. It was unclear what had happened to the men because the Spanish treasure was still hidden on the island.

With his son-in-law’s help, White moved the treasure to a new location on the island. Eleanor gave birth to a daughter and named her Virginia (she was the first English child born in the New World). White had to return to England for more supplies but he instructed Ananias to move the treasure again if he felt it necessary and to leave coordinates for the new location on a specified tree if he felt the colonists were threatened and would need to leave the island. They agree to a simple code to disguise the location coordinates. Each letter of the alphabet would represent a number.

White returned to England and reported to Raleigh, but he was delayed in going back with supplies because war broke out with Spain. It was three more years before he could return to Roanoke. When he arrived, he found the site abandoned with no sign of struggle or loss of life. On the specified tree were the carved letters C R O. C=3 degrees, R=18 minutes, O=15 seconds. This led White to a site where he expected to find the treasure; instead he found empty chests and ruined books and maps.

A second tree had the word Croatoan carved on it. This was the name of an island to the south of Roanoke. White tried to sail to this island, but a fierce storm drove his ship far out to sea. He had no choice but to return to England. He was never able to raise the funds for a return voyage and never knew the fate of his daughter, the colonists or the treasure.

What White didn’t know was that his daughter Eleanor had convinced her husband and a few trusted men to move the treasure to the mainland. She believed her father had abandoned the colony and was embittered by this because of their constant struggle to survive. After the treasure was moved, she then convinced the entire group to leave Roanoke and join with friendly natives in the area. The colonists were absorbed into the native population and their fate remained a mystery.

Eleanor and her family moved inland to live among the . Near her death, she left a record of her life and the location of the treasure carved on stones which she gave to her daughter.

Virginia Dare had married a . The Cherokees intermarried with English and Scottish immigrants who settled in Virginia and the Carolinas. With paper now available to her, Virginia began to keep a diary which she passed down to her descendants. She recorded the stories she had heard from her mother about a great treasure hidden at a sacred Cherokee site. Because much of this treasure was plundered from temples and burial sites, the Cherokees believed it was sacred and should not be divulged and certainly should not be used for any individual’s personal gain. Virginia, too, had come to believe that the treasure was sacred and should be protected from greed and exploitation.

For over 200 years, the Cherokees kept the treasure and the fate of the Roanoke Colony a secret. The facts were handed down orally by the “keeper of the flame.” Originally the keeper of the flame literally kept a fire burning at all times for the survival of the tribe, but with time, the “keeper of the flame” became a keeper of the oral traditions and history of the tribe. To be chosen as a keeper was a sacred honor and the secrets the keeper held were shared only with a few trusted tribal members.

As the years passed, fewer and fewer Cherokees even knew of the existence of the treasure. One person who knew was a Cherokee of mixed ancestry named John Jolly who lived in east Tennessee. He adopted a young Tennessean named Sam who spent his teen years living among the Cherokees. His Cherokee name was “Coloneh” which means raven (a member of the crow family.) Houston learned to speak Cherokee and adopted the traditional dress of the tribe until he joined the military at age 19. Jolly told Houston about the treasure and where it was hidden.

Houston served under General Andrew Jackson during the War of 1812. Grateful to find a mentor in the famous general, Houston divulged the existence of the treasure to Jackson. Intrigued by the possibility of such a treasure hidden in his home state, but doubtful of its existence, Jackson nevertheless urged Houston to keep it a secret.

After the war, Houston returned to Tennessee, but found that his Cherokee family had been pressured to move into western Territory with a group of other Cherokees. John Jolly became chief of this western group and he arranged to move the treasure to the area. He chose a new site near an ancient burial mound where three rivers join together, believing these would serve as landmarks for future generations.

However, newly elected President Jackson began to push Congress for an to force tribes in the southeastern United States to move to . Aware that Houston had told Jackson about the treasure and that he wanted it kept secret, Jolly wrote a letter to President Jackson threatening to reveal its existence unless the President dropped his push for Indian removal.

Alarmed, Jackson wrote to who was now governor of Tennessee. The President ordered Houston to do whatever necessary to stop Jolly from revealing the treasure. Houston resigned as governor and rushed to Indian Territory in 1829 to persuade Jolly to keep the treasure a secret.

Houston didn’t agree with Jackson’s policy on Indian removal, but he convinced Jolly not to use the treasure as leverage against the President. He convinced Jolly to keep the treasure secret, but to let him devise a map to the treasure’s location. The map would not identify landmarks; a separate key to the map would explain the landmarks and reveal the site where it was hidden. Houston built his home in Indian Territory within site of the treasure. He kept the key and Jolly kept the map.

Houston traveled with a Cherokee delegation to Washington but as he promised his father John Jolly, he did not visit Jackson or reveal to him to the new location of the treasure. Jackson was furious when he learned of Houston’s actions. He stirred up trouble for Houston in the House of Representatives and Houston was brought up on charges for assaulting a member of the House. Not knowing if he might be sent to prison at the President’s whim, Houston passed the key to his good friend, Tennessee Representative Davy Crockett.

Houston was found guilty by the House, ordered to pay a fine and ordered to immediately leave Washington. He left without the key, returned to his home in Indian Territory and then went on to Texas. He wrote to Crockett and asked him to bring the key to Texas. Crockett did so, but quickly was caught up in the Texas war for independence and found himself at the Alamo as it was being attacked. He hid the key in the chapel of the mission compound and sent a cryptic note by courier to Houston telling him where it was hidden.

Before his death a few years later Jolly passed the map to Red Bird Harris, a trusted Cherokee friend. Harris devised a plan to hide the map permanently. He, along with a Creek Indian named George Stidham, arranged to place the map in a concealed compartment within a large sandstone the Muscogee (Creek) Nation was donating to the construction of the Washington Monument in 1850.

When the Civil War broke out, Albert Pike, an Arkansas attorney, convinced the Cherokees and Creeks in Indian Territory to sign alliance treaties with the Confederates. Fearful for the safety of the treasure as hostilities broke out in the territory, Red Bird Harris, on whose land the treasure was buried, urged Pike to build a fort (named Fort Davis) around the burial mound near the location of the treasure. Pike, who was a distant relative of Zebulon Pike, told Harris and others of the Cherokee Mounted Rifles who served at Fort Davis about a large cave Zebulon Pike had discovered while trying to climb the mountain that now bears his name (Pikes Peak).

After the War, the Creek monument stone was returned to the tribe. Politicians in Washington had barred it from being included in the Washington Monument because the Creeks had sided with the Confederacy. The stone was kept by the Masonic Order that George Stidham had organized in 1855. (It now is displayed at the Five Civilized Tribes Museum in Muskogee, OK.)

The treasure remained safely undiscovered until Congress passed the Curtis Act in 1898 changing tribal ownership of land to individual allotments. A government agency (the Dawes Commission) would determine who would receive an allotment. Red Bird Harris recalled the story Albert Pike had told of the long-hidden cave half-way up the slope of Pikes Peak.

With fellow Masons Joseph Sondheimer and Cornelius Foley, Harris made a trip to Pikes Peak and found the cave. They arranged an expedition of Masons to Pikes Peak in 1898, ostensibly to honor Zebulon Pike, himself a Mason. But they used the expedition as the cover for moving the treasure to the cave.

At the former burial site of the treasure, they left a riddle about the cave at Pikes Peak and about a clue that Foley would include on the scrip he printed for his mercantile business in Indian Territory.

Cornelius Foley used an old Masonic method of giving clues to the new location of the treasure. As a merchant in Indian Territory he printed his own scrip (paper money) to be used in his mercantile. The scrip held clues to the treasure’s location. Unfortunately, all of Foley’s property burned in a fire in 1898 and the scrip with it. Foley had only a few bills which he kept with him in a small money belt.

In 1912, the Foley family was in England having spent several months there. They were booked to return to America on the Titanic. But one of their sons developed mumps and they were not allowed to board even though their luggage had been put aboard. Foley’s money belt went down with the Titanic. But his scrip was later salvaged from the Titanic wreckage and displayed with other salvaged items.

National Treasure 3: The Lost Colony

The Plot

Sarah Shepard, a graduate student, contacts Riley Poole to ask for his help in solving the mystery of the Lost Colony of Roanoke. She tells him she believes she has located information on a hidden treasure that may involve President Andrew Jackson. Having read Riley’s book, she is curious to know if Riley might have knowledge of the Roanoke Colony and its treasure.

Riley travels with Sarah to Muskogee, OK to meet the Cherokee “keeper of the flame” and a descendant of Red Bird Harris, a Confederate soldier in the Cherokee Mounted Rifles who fought under General Albert Pike. The Cherokee elder, named Clu Harris, tells them of the Lost Colony and its treasure and how Chief John Jolly tried to use it to stop President Jackson from pushing for Indian removals. To the Cherokees, the treasure is sacred for it was stolen by the Spanish from temples and burial sites. Though much information has been lost as it was handed down through the years, Clu knows the letters CRO, left by the Roanoke colonists, pointed to the hidden treasure. He believes his great-grandfather Red Bird Harris knew where the treasure was hidden and left clues behind.

Riley and Sarah do an internet search on the Lost Colony; they learn a tree on was marked with the letters CRO. They follow references to colonist and the stones on which she wrote about Roanoke.

Riley and Sarah travel to the university where the Eleanor are housed in its museum archives. Curator Virginia Porter, a descendant of Eleanor Dare, helps Riley and Sarah locate the stones, but does not divulge to them that she is a Dare descendant. She is very curious about their research and eavesdrops on them as they study the stones and she hears them refer to Clu Harris in Muskogee.

Riley and Sarah recognize references to the treasure on the stones. Eleanor’s writings reveal the real purpose of the Roanoke Colony to serve as a base of operation for taking Spanish vessels loaded with New World treasure. She wrote that the letters C R O were assigned a number for their place in the alphabet and these numbers gave the location in degrees, minutes and seconds from the tree on which they were carved.

After giving Virginia her contact information and asking her to call if she locates any other information on Roanoke, Riley and Sarah leave the university museum.

Virginia goes to her office and takes a very old book from a safe and turns through its pages. “So great-grandmother Virginia, you weren’t crazy after all. There really is a treasure. But if anyone is going to find it, it will be a member of the Dare family.” Virginia calls her brother John to alert him of this development and have him follow Riley and Sarah.

Riley and Sarah discuss the treasure over dinner with John watching nearby.

Riley and Sarah return to their hotel; she goes up to her room; Riley goes back to his car. Riley calls Ben Gates to ask him if he saw anything from Jackson in the President’s Secret Book. While talking to Ben and Amanda, Riley walks out to his car to get his laptop. He sees John Porter tampering with his car and yells at him to stop. Porter is putting a tracking device on the car; he pulls a gun and fires a shot at Riley before fleeing. Ben hears the shot fired over the phone and asks Riley what he has gotten into. Riley, who had doubted the treasure’s existence, is now convinced that he and Sarah are on to something. Ben tells him to visit the Hermitage which is where the Jackson papers are kept; he will check the Library of Congress.

Ben and Amanda discuss the possibility of another treasure.

Ben and Amanda go to the Library of Congress but find that the President’s Book has been moved.

Riley and Sarah arrive at the Hermitage.

After a lengthy search in the museum archives, they find a letter written in 1829 from President Jackson to Sam Houston referring to John Jolly. Jackson orders Houston to immediately visit Jolly in Indian Territory. The letter to Sam Houston referred to “the Cherokee lessons you shared with me at New Orleans. Visit your adoptive father to assure yourself that he remains well.” The letter seems to make a threat against Jolly.

They continue to search and finally find a letter from John Jolly to the President referring to “gold in Cherokee sacred land.” The letter hints that the gold will be “irretrievably lost” unless Jackson drops his push of the Indian Removal Act in Congress. Sarah asks the Hermitage curator about the gold referenced in John Jolly’s letter. He tells her that gold had been discovered in Cherokee-held land in Georgia, but that historians have never understood what he meant by “irretrievably lost.”

As Riley and Sarah leave the Hermitage, he gets a phone call from Ben. He tells Riley that the President’s Book has been moved and they could not find it. Riley tells of the connection between Jackson, Jolly and Sam Houston.

Ben’s mother, Emily, arrives for dinner while Ben is talking to Riley. After he concludes his conversation he tells Amanda and Emily that Riley may have found a connection between Sam Houston and the treasure. Amanda asks Ben if he knows a scholar who is an expert on Houston. Emily tells Ben that his father, Patrick, wrote his master’s thesis on Sam Houston. “He was obsessed with him for months,” she says. “If you want to know anything about Sam Houston, talk to your father.”

Ben calls Riley and tells him to meet him at his dad’s house.

At Patrick Gates’ home, Ben, Amanda, Riley and Sarah discuss the possibility that Sam Houston might have known about the Cherokee-held treasure. Patrick tells them that it has always been a puzzle to historians as to why Houston so abruptly resigned as governor of Tennessee to go and live in Indian Territory.

Patrick has Ben and Riley bring up boxes of research material from the basement and they spread it out on his dining table. Patrick recalls a riddle Houston had included in a letter to the editor of the Arkansas Gazette newspaper. He addressed the riddle to his “father” and makes reference to a key that he has passed to a friend and the map which Jolly has in his possession. They conclude the map must show where the Cherokees have hidden the treasure. Perhaps the key unlocks a container holding the treasure. Sarah remembers that Clu Harris thought the treasure was hidden on his ancestors’ land where three rivers meet in . Patrick says that is exactly where Houston built his home while he lived in Indian Territory.

Later in the evening, as they continue to pore over Patrick’s research materials, they find his notes about a letter from Davy Crockett to Houston written when Crockett was trapped at the Alamo. The note indicated that Crockett had hidden the key in the chapel. They decide to visit the Alamo. Has the key ever been found?

At the Alamo, Amanda and Sarah pretend to be tourists taking the tour through the old mission. They see several tile mosaics in a bird motif in the chapel.

Patrick meets with the director for the Daughters of the Texas Revolution who manage the Alamo site. He explains that he is researching Sam Houston’s connection to the Alamo and asks if items identified with Houston were ever found at the site. The director tells him no such items have ever been found. He then asks to see the original note sent from Crockett to Houston. On it he notices a small drawing of a bird. He copies it in a notebook. He asks if he might search the chapel and is assured there is nothing to be found. The director warns him not to attempt anything that might be destructive to the centuries old building.

The women and Patrick meet back at a van outside the Alamo where Ben and Riley have been putting the final touches on a laser devise that will allow them to see beyond the adobe and tile in the chapel to locate hidden cavities where a key might have been placed. Patrick shows them the drawing of the bird. Sarah and Amanda recognize it as the same design in the tile mosaics.

The women create a distraction in another part of the mission compound to allow Ben and Riley time to examine the mosaics. They find the one where the key is hidden and must quickly work to extract it and restore the mosaic before they are discovered. They are unaware that John Porter has been watching them and sees them return to the van with the tightly rolled up parchment on which Houston had written the key to the map. Porter accosts them with a gun just as they reach the van. He demands that they give him the parchment. Ben throws the laser devise at him as he and Riley dive into the van and tell Patrick to drive away. He careens around a corner and slows to allow the men to help Amanda and Sarah in the van.

Porter races to his car and gives chase. Patrick loses him in downtown San Antonio.

Back at Ben and Amanda’s home, they carefully unroll the parchment they found in the Alamo. It bears Sam Houston’s signature and consists of characters from the invented by the linguist , a good friend of John Jolly’s.

Virginia Porter answers her cell phone and her brother tells her what has transpired at the Alamo. She tells him it’s ok; she knows that what they found is not everything they need. She turns to point her own gun at the Cherokee elder Clu Harris. She tells her brother that there is a map to the treasure and she knows where to find it. But they are going to let Ben Gates retrieve it for them.

Virginia hands her phone to Harris. She has dialed Sarah’s number. Harris tells Sarah that he has remembered that there was a map to the treasure. His great-grandfather and fellow Masons in Indian Territory arranged to hide the map in a stone the Muscogee (Creek) Nation sent to Washington in 1850 to be a part of the Washington Monument. He is sure that if they find that stone, they will find the map. Sarah thanks him for the information. After the call is completed, Virginia tells Harris he did the right thing. Then to ensure his silence about her visit, she tells him she will destroy the sacred objects of the treasure if he tells anyone.

Ben visits FBI Agent Sedowski to ask about the possibility of examining a stone in the Washington Monument. Sedowski is incredulous that Ben is chasing down yet another treasure. He tells him that the National Park Service is responsible for the Monument but they are not going to allow him to tamper with a stone in the Monument.

Amanda and Patrick visit the office of the director of the Park Service. As a matter of professional courtesy, Amanda asks if it would be possible to examine a particular stone donated to the Washington Monument. The Parks director tells her there are no hidden treasures in the monument and he better not catch any treasure hunters near it.

Riley and Sarah stand in line to go into the Washington Monument. They go through security and then ride the elevator to the observation deck, noting the marked stones that they pass on the way up. They do not see the Muscogee Nation stone. They do not notice that John Porter is also at the Washington Monument.

Amanda, Ben and Riley look through records on the Washington Monument at the Library of Congress. Amanda states that she too does not want to tamper with the Monument. They will have to find some other way to locate the treasure. Surely there is another map or some other record of its whereabouts. Ben argues that they will do the minimal amount needed to extract the map from the Muscogee stone and no one will ever know anything was done. Riley interrupts their argument. He has found information on the stone. It was never put into the Washington Monument. It was returned to the Muscogee tribe in Indian Territory. Where is the stone now?

Clu Harris sits in the passenger seat of a car driven by his grandson. It is early evening and they pull into a large empty parking lot by an old building with a sign that reads “Five Civilized Tribes Museum.” They get out of the car and walk toward the building but stop before reaching it. Clu bends down to trace the words carved on a large stone. ”Muskokee Nation, May the 26 th , 1850.” Then he looks up at the cornerstone of the building which bears the Masonic symbol. He smiles and says, “The Masons always hid things in plain sight.” Then he turns and walks back to the car; his grandson looks puzzled but just shrugs as if he is used to his grandfather’s eccentricities.

Sarah places a call to Clu Harris. She tells him that the Muscogee stone is not in the Washington Monument. Does he have any idea where it might be? He hesitates before answering. Finally he tells her that he knows where the stone is located. She asks why he led them to believe it was in the Washington Monument. He warns her, “You are not the only one in search of the treasure. But I have decided to help you find it. Better to be found by those who care about its history and will ensure that it is preserved for future generations than to let it fall into the hand of someone with selfish motives.”

Harris, Ben and Riley approach the Muscogee stone under the cover of darkness. Harris tells them that while he knows the curator of the museum, he does not want to involve her or put anyone’s life in danger. They carefully examine the stone, discovering the carving of a crow or raven in one corner revealing a means of removing a section of the stone. Reaching inside, Ben pulls out the map. Riley unrolls the key they found at the Alamo. Symbols on the map correspond to the Cherokee script on the key. The Cherokee letters spell “Coloneh.” Harris tells them that the Cherokee syllables give directions to the land that had belonged to his great-grandfather. It is land where an ancient burial mound is located and around which Albert Pike later built Fort Davis. Red Bird Harris must have given the Confederate general permission to build the fort at that site because he believed it would protect the treasure. Pike probably never knew how close he was to another treasure.

From an amphitheater that sits on a hill above the stone, Virginia and John Porter watch the three men. Virginia expresses her anger that Clu Harris lied to her about the location of the Muscogee stone. She vows that as soon as the Gates group lead them to the treasure, she will deal with all of them. They will not put this treasure in a museum. It belongs to the family of Eleanor Dare.

Early the next morning, the treasure hunters approach the ancient mound with a large American flag flying over it. They make their way to the location near the juncture of the three rivers as indicated on the map. Instead of finding the treasure, they find another stone dated 1898 and set in place by the Muscogee Order of the Masons, the oldest in Indian Territory. Three names are inscribed on the stone: William McKinley Hill, Joseph Sondheimer and C. E. Foley. Harris says that he knows all three men belonged to the Knights Templar. Hill was his maternal grandfather and Harris donated his templar sword to a local museum. Foley’s grandson still lives in the area. Finding the same symbol of the crow on this stone, they open the stone to find a notebook inside. One page has a riddle written on it. The riddle indicates the Mason moved the treasure to an important landmark discovered by Pike. Foley will put the directions to the treasure on the scrip he uses in his mercantile.

Ben and Patrick approach the Titanic museum in Branson, Missouri. They express hope that Foley’s grandson is right and that a sample of his scrip that went down with the Titanic is now on display in the museum.

Inside the museum, Ben and Patrick locate the case where the Foley scrip is displayed. On it is a mountain viewed through a rock formation and below it in small, elaborate script are the letters C R O. Did the Masons give these letters the same meaning as the Roanoke colonists? Ben snaps a photo of the scrip with his cell phone and is promptly scolded by one of the museum docents. He and Patrick make a hasty exit from the museum.

The treasure hunters drive an SUV into the Garden of the Gods National Park near Colorado Springs. They do not realize they are being followed by Virginia and John Porter each in their own vehicle. They locate a rock formation that looks like the one on the Foley scrip. Getting out of their vehicle they all climb to the formation and Ben uses surveying equipment to pinpoint a spot . . .

. . . What? I can’t give away the ending!