A Melungeon (during the formative period from about 1700 to 1860)
was someone who was free but thought to not be pure White in the area where
the word was used - northern North Carolina, southern and western Virginia,
eastern Tennessee, eastern Kentucky, southern West Virginia, southern Ohio,
western Louisiana, the eastern edge of Texas, the panhandle of Florida, and
northern Alabama. The person might actually be White, but of a darker strain
like a Greek or Portuguese. The person might be mixed White and Black, White
and Indian or all three. The White might be northern European or
Mediterranean or both. A few people may have been of other races, such as
South Asian (Tzigane, Asian Indian, etc.). After becoming a Melungeon by
coming to live in one of these areas, these persons tended to intermarry and
produce a more uniform mixed population. People who were definitely
considered to be Black or Indian or were members of a Black or Indian group
probably would not be counted as Melungeon unless they joined or married
into a Melungeon group. So today, most Melungeons have quite a little of
both northern European and Mediterranean white, some Black and at least a
trace of American Indian. But anyone who traces back to someone considered
Melungeon before the Civil War is definitely Melungeon, and that is many
thousands and a very diverse group.
Perhaps the most important element in the formation of the
Melungeons was the descendants of Indian groups which were no longer
racially mostly Indian. Indian groups were genetically swamped in many cases
due to their susceptibility to diseases which were brought to America from
Europe and Africa. This particularly worked by the survival of children who
had better immunity due to non-Indian ancestry. In an Indian village, the
child of one Indian and one non-Indian parent was much more likely to reach
reproductive age than one with both parents being pure Indian. Likewise, one
with a mixed parent and a non-Indian parent (one quarter Indian) was more
likely to survive than one who was half Indian. During the Seventeenth
Century, most of the Indian groups of Virginia and North Carolina either
simply died out from the imported diseases or were genetically swamped by
mixing with non-Indians coupled with this selection for better disease
immunity.
The Indians incorporated genetic input from many groups very early
in Virginia. Probably the biggest single input was from free Mulattos
actually joining the Indian groups. English and Mediterranean settlers,
soldiers and seamen contributed a large input even earlier, and, with the
Tidewater Algonquians, were a major factor. Brent Kennedy has been
investigating the contribution of certain Mediterranean groups. Francis
Drake stopped at Roanoke for some months on his way back from raiding
Spanish colonies in the Caribbean. He had several hundred Muslim seamen with
him who had been freed from the Spanish and were being returned to Morocco
and the Ottoman Empire. These would definitely include Berbers and
Maghrebine Arabs from Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, and Greeks, Armenians,
Albanians, Bosnians and Turks from Anatolia and the Balkans, and other
Ottoman peoples such as Syrians, Egyptians, Georgians, Circassians, etc.
During several months spent ashore in Virginia, they must have left progeny
among the local Indian population. Some of them may have stayed and actually
joined the Indians.
Shipwrecked sailors may have been contributing to the population
even earlier. Portuguese would probably be the earliest and maybe the
largest component. Their ships from anywhere in the Americas usually
followed the coast north to around Cape Hatteras to take advantage of the
Trade Winds from there to the Azores and back to Portugal. Spanish, English
and French ships also wrecked on these coasts, of course. Another source of
Mediterranean ancestry was the Spanish colonies on northern Florida, which
extended through Georgia and the Carolinas and into eastern Tennessee before
the Brtish drove them out of the area. The colonists would have included
Marranos (Jews pretending to be Catholic to escape expulsion), Morriscos
(Moors either pretending or really converting), Portuguese, Catalans and
other people of the Spanish Empire as well as Spanish. They may well have
had Muslim captives from Morocco and the Ottoman Empire here like they did
in the Caribbean, there are striking similarities in the style of dress of
the Indians of the area and that of Morocco and the Ottoman Empire. When the
Spanish withdrew below the St. Mary's River, they left many part
Mediterranean descendants in the Indian population. While these mainly
formed or contributed to mixed groups south of the melungeons such as the
Brass Ankles, Red Bones and Turks of South Carolina, some may have reached
the Melungeons directly and more later as members of these other mixed
groups joined the Melungeons.
Donald Ball has given a good short history of the origins of the
Meleungeon groups in the paper which he presented at the Melungeon Third
Union in Wise, VA, in June, 2000. The formative area was a strip of land
which was disputed between the colonies of Virginia and North Carolina
because it was given to both by British Royal Grant. This strip is now the
northern tier of counties of North Carolina. Since it was a no-man's land
claimed by both colonies but administered by neither, it attracted people
who didn't want to have government supervision. That included many mixed
race people who didn't fit in White society but were neither part of Indian
or Black society. This included many people from the Indian groups which had
been genetically swamped by people from across the Atlantic and many people
who were free but part Black.
The free Mulattos have traditionally been thought to be the children
of slave owners with their slave mistresses, who were frequently raised free
and who would join the Indians or mixed communities. Dennis Maggard recently
pointed out that Paul Heinegg's study of the records of colonial Virginia
shows that most of them were actually the children of indentured White women
by Black slave men. The owners were mostly English whereas the indentured
servants were more frequently Irish, so this finding indicates a larger
Irish component than previously thought. As Donald Ball pointed out, the
history of the Melungeons starts with these free Mulattos, the status of the
Melungeons as Free People of Color resulted from their African ancestry and
not from a small amount of Indian, Portuguese, Moorish, or Ottoman ancestry,
and the presence of large numbers of free Mulattos very early in the
formative groups means that they are in the ancestry of all Melungeons. The
Indians in the ancestry of the Melungeons were very mixed with a lot of both
Black and White in them, one cannot claim Indian ancestry from eastern or
central Virginia and North Carolina without including the very large Black
element in these Indians. Any Melungeon who tries to deny African ancestry
is not only perpetuating the racism which removed the Melungeons from White
society, but is deluding himself as well.
After the formative period along the North Carolina - Virginia
border, there were many movements and different groups formed. Some have
always been called Melungeon, like the community in Hancock, Hawkins and
Grainger counties of Tennessee and the one in Wise, Scott and Lee counties
of Virginia and the one in Letcher county, Kentucky. The one in Person
County, North Carolina, has been called the Person County Indians (they are
somewhat organized under that name) and earlier the Cubans. The group in
Rockingham, Stokes and Surry counties, North Carolina, has been called the
Goinstown Indians. The group in Rhea, Roane and Hamilton counties,
Tennessee, are called the Goins locally, but have long been identified as
Melungeons by people from the rest of Tennessee. The group in Magoffin and
Floyd counties, Kentucky, and Highland county, Ohio, has been called the
Magoffin County People in Kentucky and the Carmel Indians in Ohio. The group
in western Louisiana and adjacent Texas is known as the Redbones (not to be
confused with the Red Bones of South Carolina) or the Louisiana Melungeons.
The group in Gulf and Calhoun counties, Florida, was called Melungeon as
long as they were identified as a separate group but was also known as the
Dead Lake People. This last group does not trace back to the North Carolina
- Virginia border, but to a very similar mixed race group in South Carolina,
probably the Brass Ankles or the Red Bones.
Each group has its own history and its own special mix of new
additions. Ulster Scots (Scots-Irish) is a large addition to many. Cherokees
and part Cherokees have joined some groups. Individual families have married
to introduce many different elements to the Melungeon mix. Black Dutch and
Black Irish as sometimes just euphemisms for Melungeon and sometimes
describe people joining the Melungeons. Welsh, English, Scots, Irish,
Jewish, Tzigane, Dutch, German and French are claimed by many. The unifying
factor is a history of someone in the family who was too dark to be accepted
as White without some doubts.