An old woman I know told me that Native Americans that lives around the time the first settlers arrived would sometimes kidnap children and cut off their ears and noses so they would not run away. I did an internet search and read that is what Columbus's men did to Native slaves (The source was a history book written in 1980. How accurate is that? Kind of late after several hundred years went by)
She also said that the unwanted women and men would be staked to the ground to die sunburned and eaten by bugs and this is how the "Lost Colonies" disappeared, or are at least believed to be.
So is all this true? I am highly skeptical of a book published in 1980. Are there records of this? I'd imagine so.
This is a big topic and different nations handle captive in different ways. I'll try to tackle the two main issues here though.
Native Americans [...] would sometimes kidnap children and cut off their ears and noses so they would not run away.
Cutting off the nose was sometimes used as punishment for adultery among some peoples on or bordering the Plains / prairie, but rarely on the east coast where the "first settlers" arrived. Children and women would be taken captive during war and adopted into the community, but they wouldn't be maimed to keep the in place. Some captives (almost always fighting-age men) would be executed (perhaps after a day of torture) as a way to involve the larger community in the war effort. War was usually seen as an extension of justice system, with captured warriors to be given mercy or punished accordingly; involving the community in these executions was akin to the public executions employed by contemporary Europeans for their own purposes. Other captives would be sold as slaves (if also Native) or ransomed (if European) to various European powers. Barring some unusual cases, a captive that wasn't going to be executed would be well-treated (after all, they might end up being family soon), and executions were in the minority.
this is how the "Lost Colonies" disappeared
When people talk about a Lost Colony, they're usually talking about Roanoke. If this is what's being referred to here, then it's unlikely that it disappeared due to such executions. The colony was established during a period of drought and when the settlement was abandoned, they carved the name "Croatan" into one of the trees. However, they didn't carve the sign intended to signal that they had been forced to leave. Disease and starvation killed nearly 80% of the Jamestown colonists; if a similar fate befell Roanoke, the survivors may voluntarily joined with the neighboring Croatans. There's no need or evidence to suggest a massacre here.