German settlers first came to what is now North Carolina as part of the second expedition sent to the Roanoke area by Sir Walter Raleigh in the 1580s. The largest influx of German people to North Carolina, however, occurred in the eighteenth century, beginning with a joint effort between a Swiss land company and the British Crown to settle 100 families of German Palatines in the town of New Bern on the Neuse and Trent Rivers in 1710. The colony flourished and prospered for 18 months, but in 1711 the colony was virtually destroyed after suffering an attack by Tuscarora Indians.