 Goins family, Melungeons fromGraysville, Tennessee, c. 1920s | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
|---|---|
| United States (East Tennessee,Southwest Virginia,[1][2]North Carolina, andKentucky[2]) | |
| Languages | |
| Southern American English | |
| Religion | |
| PredominantlyProtestant Christianity | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Lumbee,Atlantic Creole,Turks of South Carolina,Chestnut Ridge people,White Southerners,Black Southerners,Native Americans,Dominickers,Redbone (ethnicity),Mulatto,Coloureds,Griqua people,Basters,Métis,Black Indians in the United States,Garifuna |
| Part ofa series on | ||||||||||||
| African Americans | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ||||||||||||
Politics
| ||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||
Sub-communities
| ||||||||||||
Dialects and languages
| ||||||||||||
Population
| ||||||||||||
Melungeon (/məˈlʌndʒən/mə-LUN-jən) (sometimes also spelledMalungean, Melangean, Melungean, Melungin[3]) was aslur[4] historically applied to individuals and families ofmixed-race ancestry with roots incolonial Virginia,Tennessee, andNorth Carolina primarily descended fromfree people of color andwhite settlers.[5][6][7][8] In modern times, the term has beenreclaimed by descendants of these families, especially insouthern Appalachia.[9][10][11] Despite this mixed heritage, many modern Melungeonspass aswhite, as did many of their ancestors.[12][13][14][15][16]
Despite often being white passing, the impact of theone-drop rule either did, or had the potential to, label many Melungeons asnon-white. This redesignation resulted in some individuals being sterilized bystate governments, most notably inVirginia.[17][18][19]
Many groups have historically been referred to as Melungeon, including the Melungeons ofNewman's Ridge,[20] theLumbee Tribe of North Carolina,[21] theChestnut Ridge people,[22] and theCarmel Indians.[23]
Free people of color in colonial Virginia were predominantly ofAfrican andEuropean descent; however, many families also had varying amounts ofNative American andEast Indian ancestry.[24][25][26][27][28][29]
Some modern researchers believe that earlyAtlantic Creole slaves, descended from or acculturated by Iberianlançados[30] andSephardi Jews fleeing theInquisition,[31][32][33][34][35] were one of the pre-cursor populations to these groups.[36][37][38] Many creoles, once inBritish America, were able to obtain their freedom and manymarried into local white families.[39][40][41][42][43]
In the generalUS census, Melungeon people were enumerated as of the races to which they most resembled.[44]
The termMelungeon likely comes from the French wordmélange ultimately derived from the Latin verbmiscēre ("to mix, mingle, intermingle").[45][44][46] It was once a derogatory term, but is used by the Melungeon people today as a primary identifier. The Tennessee Encyclopedia states that in the 19th century, "the word 'Melungeon' appears to have been used as an offensive term for nonwhite and/or low socioeconomic class persons by outsiders."[46]
The termMelungeon was historically considered an insult, a label applied to Appalachians who were by appearance or reputation ofmixed-race ancestry. Although initially pejorative in character,[47] this word has been reclaimed by members of the community.[48] The spelling of the term varied widely, as was common for words and names at the time.
According to the 1894Department of Interior Report of Indians Taxed and not Taxed within the "Tennessee" report, "The civilized (self-supporting) Indians of Tennessee, counted in the general census numbered 146 (71 males and 75 females) and are distributed as follows:Hawkins county, 31;Monroe county, 12;Polk county, 10; other counties (8 or less in each), 93. Quoting from the report:
The Melungeans or Malungeans, in Hawkins county, claim to be Cherokees of mixed blood (white, Indian, and negro), their white blood being derived, as they assert, from English and Portuguese stock. They trace their descent primarily to 2 Indians (Cherokees) known, one of them as Collins, the other as Gibson, who settled in the mountains of Tennessee, where their descendants are now to be found, about the time of the admission of that state into the Union (1796).
The earliest historical record of the termMelungeon dates to 1813. In the minutes of the Stoney Creek Baptist Church inScott County, Virginia, a woman stated another parishioner made the accusation that "she harbored them Melungins."[46] The second oldest written use of the term was in 1840, when a Tennessee politician described "an impudent Melungeon" from what became Washington, D.C., as being "a scoundrel who is half Negro and half Indian."[46] In the 1890s, during the age ofyellow journalism, the term "Melungeon" started to circulate and be reproduced in U.S. newspapers, when the journalistWill Allen Dromgoole wrote several articles on the Melungeons.[49]
In 1894, theUS Department of the Interior, in its "Report of Indians Taxed and Not Taxed," under the section "Tennessee" noted:
In a number of states small groups of people, preferring the freedom of the woods or the seashore to the confinement of regular labor in civilization, have become in some degree distinct from their neighbors, perpetuating their qualities and absorbing into their number those of like disposition, without preserving very clear racial lines. Such are the remnants called Indians in some states where a pure-blooded Indian can hardly longer be found. In Tennessee is such a group, popularly known as Melungeans, in addition to those still known as Cherokees. The name seems to have been given them by early French settlers, who recognized their mixed origin and applied to them the name Melangeans or Melungeans, a corruption of the French word "melange" which means mixed. (See letter of Hamilton McMillan, under North Carolina.)[45][44]
In December 1943,Walter Ashby Plecker of Virginia sent county officials a letter warning against "colored" families trying to pass as "white" or "Indian" in violation of theRacial Integrity Act of 1924. He identified these as being "chiefly Tennessee Melungeons".[50] He directed the offices to reclassify members of certain families as black, causing the loss for numerous families of documentation in records that showed their continued self-identification as being of Native American descent on official forms.[50][51][52]
In the 20th century, during theJim Crow era, some Melungeons attended boarding schools inAsheville, North Carolina,Warren Wilson College, andDorland Institution which integrated earlier than other schools in the southern United States.[2]
Manyfree people of color, white-passing or otherwise, served in theAmerican Civil War on both sides of the conflict. Some served in theConfederate military,[53][54] though others resisted the Confederate government, such asHenry Berry Lowry.[55]
There is no uniquely Melungeon culture, though specific groups have formed into their owntribal entities on the basis of ancestral connections to historicalNative American communities.[56][57]
Due to the lasting impact ofcolonialism, thedecimation of initial contacttribes, and the legacy ofAmerican chattel slavery, culturally these mixed-race groups resemble theirwhite settler neighbors in culture, with few exceptions.[58]
Melungeon cuisine includeschocolate gravy.[59]
Definitions of who is Melungeon differ. Historians and genealogists have tried to identify surnames of different Melungeon families.[50][60] In 1943, Virginia State Registrar of Vital Statistics, Walter Ashby Plecker, identified surnames by county: "Lee, Smyth and Wise: Collins, Gibson, (Gipson), Moore, Goins, Ramsey, Delph, Bunch, Freeman, Mise, Barlow, Bolden (Bolin), Mullins, Hawkins (chiefly Tennessee Melungeons)".[50]
In 1992,Virginia DeMarce explored and reported theGoins genealogy as a Melungeon surname.[61] Beginning in the early 19th century, or possibly before, the term Melungeon was applied as a slur to a group of about 40 families along the Tennessee-Virginia border, but it has since become a catch-all phrase for a number of groups of mysterious mixed-race ancestry.[1] Through time the term has changed meanings but often referred to any mixed-race person and, at different times, has referred to 200 different communities across the Eastern United States.[1] These have included Van Guilders and Clappers of New York andLumbees in North Carolina toCreoles in Louisiana.[1]
Anthropologist E. Raymond Evans wrote in 1979 regarding Melungeons: "In Graysville, the Melungeons strongly deny their Black heritage and explain their genetic differences by claiming to have had Cherokee grandmothers. Many of the local Whites also claim Cherokee ancestry and appear to accept the Melungeon claim. ..."[62]
In 1999, historian C. S. Everett hypothesized that John Collins (recorded as aSapony Indian who was expelled fromOrange County, Virginia about January 1743), might be the same man as the Melungeon ancestor John Collins, who was classified as a "mulatto" in 1755 North Carolina records.[63] However, Everett revised that theory after he discovered evidence that these were two different men named John Collins. Only descendants of the latter man, who was identified as mulatto in the 1755 record in North Carolina, have any proven connection to the Melungeon families of eastern Tennessee.[64][promotional source?]
Jack D. Forbes speculated that the Melungeons may have beenSaponi/Powhatan descendants, although he acknowledges an account from circa 1890 described them as being "free colored" and mulatto people.[65]
Dispute regarding the origin of Melungeons families has led to a large number of ahistorical and dubious myths regarding their origins. Some myths involve physical characteristics and genetic diseases that are claimed to indicate Melungeon descent, such asshovel-shaped incisors, anAnatolian bump,Familial Mediterranean fever,polydactyly,dark skin withbright colored eyes, andhigh cheekbones.[66][67][6]
Other myths claim that the Melungeons are descendants of lostSpanish colonists, maroonedPortuguese sailors,[68] descendants of theancient Israelites orPhoenicians,[69]Romani slaves, orTurkish settlers.[70]
From 2005 to 2011, researchers Roberta J. Estes, Jack H. Goins, Penny Ferguson, and Janet Lewis Crain began the Melungeon Core Y-DNA Group online. They interpreted these results in their (2011) paper titled "Melungeons, A Multi-Ethnic Population",[60] which shows that ancestry of the sample is primarily European and African, with one person having a Native American paternalhaplotype.
Estes, Goins, Ferguson, and Crain wrote in their 2011 summary "Melungeons, A Multi-Ethnic Population" that the Riddle family is the only Melungeon participant with historical records identifying them as havingNative American origins, but their DNA is European. Among the participants, only the Sizemore family is documented as having Native American DNA.[60] "Estes and her fellow researchers "theorize that the various Melungeon lines may have sprung from the unions of black and whiteindentured servants living in Virginia in the mid-1600s, before slavery. They conclude that as laws were put in place to penalize the mixing of races, the various family groups could only intermarry with each other, even migrating together fromVirginia through theCarolinas before settling primarily in the mountains ofEast Tennessee."[1][60]
Although each group has its own unique admixtures, there have been several points made that might adequately explain a lot of them. On top of this, during the 19th and 20th centuries, many such communities began breaking up and scattering across much of the country, leading to some mixing occurring between many such racially ambiguous groups.
Between approximately 1700-1820, as the Carolinas, Georgia and Appalachia began to be settled, America solidified its interest in the slave trade. As a large part of their attempts to justify slavery of blacks, they cited their inability to read and write, among other aspects that made them less advanced or civilized than Europeans. But, this wasn't always the case- some of the people who were enslaved were able to read and write in Arabic, which upset and confused many American colonial settlers at each instance they were discovered. Several such people were known to have escaped, disappeared into Appalachia and may have taken refuge amongst Native Americans or formed their own communities. These slaves were most likely related to theSonghai people, neighbors to Benin, the nation where the American colonies sourced their African slaves, who were and still are today a Muslim majority people. If so, this would explain both the black ancestry and the claims of Turkish ancestry amongst some groups. There is well documented evidence showing those Melungeons who lived near Native American communities, particularly between Virginia and South Carolina, came to be very deeply ingrained into these communities, whether they intermarried or not.[71]
Among the Scots-Irish and German immigrants who settled Appalachia, there were also a fair minority of both who had the ability to tan. Amongst the Scots-Irish, descendants of the people around where Scotland, England and Wales meet, these are referred to as the "Black Irish", despite no such people existing amongst the actual Irish.[72][73][74][75] A primary source told researchers, "They would say they were "Black Dutch" or "Black Irish" or "Black French", or Native American. They’d say they were anything but Melungeon because anything else would be better ... because to be Melungeon was to be discriminated against."[76] Amongst the Germans, they are usually just referred to as Black or Swarthy, but a new term sprang up in both Australia and Appalachia- Black Dutch. As many mixed Australians began identifying heavily as Black Dutch to avoid discrimination, some mixed persons in Appalachia followed suit. But, over time, the connotation of being Black Dutch started leading to just as much discrimination and a will amongst white Appalachians to shun anyone they thought might be mixed off into their own separate groups. This caused some people of Native American ancestry (although rare) and authentic Black Irish or Black Dutch ancestry to all merge into one group. In some cases, other misaligned groups of recent immigrants who ended up in Appalachia, such as Italians, were also shunned into these same communities.
Many such people with alleged Native ancestry claim to either be Cherokee or Blackfoot. Cherokee derives from the slang use of Cherokee in early West Virginia and Kentucky to mean Native American in general, with many records from these places showing all tribes encountered occasionally referred to as Cherokees. Blackfoot is more confusing, as the term is clearly as old as pre-1830, when the Indian Removal Act forced the actual Cherokee off their land, but is nonsensical.
Melungeon ancestors were considered by appearance to be mixed race. During the 18th and the early 19th centuries,census enumerators classified them as "mulatto," "other free," or as "free persons of color." Sometimes they were listed as "white" or sometimes as "black" or "negro," or even "Indian."[citation needed] One family described as "Indian" was the Ridley (Riddle) family, as was noted on a 1767Pittsylvania County, Virginia, tax list.[citation needed] Another tri-racial family described as “Indian” was the Butler family, as was noted in the 1860 census forWhitley County, Kentucky, with the family patriarch (named Simon Butler) being born in Tennessee around 1776.[citation needed]
Ariela Gross referenced the 1846State v. Solomon, Ezekial, Levi, Andrew, Wiatt, Vardy Collins, Zachariah, Lewis Minor, Hawkins County Circuit Court Minute Book, 1842–1848, Hawkins County Circuit Court, Hawkins County Courthouse box 31, 32 and the Jacob F. Perkins vs. John R. White, Carter County, July 1855 Abstract of depositions to support her conclusions made about identity and citizenship in 19th-century United States.[77]
In 1924, Virginia passed theRacial Integrity Act that codifiedhypodescent or the "one-drop rule, suggesting that anyone with any trace of African ancestry was legally Black and would fall under Jim Crow laws designed to limit the freedoms and rights of Black people.[78]Anti-miscegenation laws in the United States were not declared unconstitutional until the 1967Loving v. Virginia case.[79]
By the mid-to-late 19th century, the term Melungeon appeared to have been used most frequently to refer to the biracial families of Hancock County and neighboring areas.[citation needed] Several other uses of the term in the print media, from the mid-19th to the early 20th centuries, have been collected by the Melungeon Heritage Association.[2]
Since the mid-1990s, popular interest in the Melungeons has grown tremendously, although many descendants have left the region of historical concentration. The writerBill Bryson devoted the better part of a chapter to them in hisThe Lost Continent (1989). People are increasingly self-identifying as having Melungeon ancestry.[80][page needed][better source needed] Internet sites promote the anecdotal claim that Melungeons are more prone to certain diseases, such assarcoidosis orfamilial Mediterranean fever. Academic medical centers have noted that neither of those diseases is confined to a single population.[81]
 | This sectiondoes notcite anysources. Please helpimprove this section byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged andremoved. Find sources: "Melungeon" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(January 2025) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
AuthorJesse Stuart's 1965 novelDaughter of the Legend, set in Tennessee, depicts a love story between a Melungeon girl and a timber cutter from Virginia, and explores socioeconomic and racial tensions among mountain-dwelling families.
A Melungeon character is the titular protagonist and narrator ofBarbara Kingsolver'sDemon Copperhead, which was a co-recipient of the 2023Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The novel takes place primarily inLee County, Virginia and environs.
A character of Melungeon descent, Pearl Grimes, is pivotal inAdriana Trigiani's novel (and theromantic comedy film derived from that novel) “Big Stone Gap,” which is set in Trigiani's hometownBig Stone Gap, Virginia.
The "Black Dutch", like the fictive "Black Irish", are a genealogical flight of fancy...Kunesh argues that Black Irish are a U.S. phenomenon with a background rooted only in the early 20th century. At the time of internet posting, Kunesh noted the lack of any mythical variants prior to the 20th century as well as a complete dearth of historical sources mentioning such a phenotype anywhere in Ireland.
Calling someone "Black Dutch" or "Black Irish" was a way to acknowledge the person's dark skin without insinuating a Negro ancestor
Any classification other than white meant in terms of social and legal status that these people were lesser citizens. Therefore, Native American or African heritage that was not visually obvious was hidden and sometimes renamed to much less emotionally and socially charged monikers, such as "Black Dutch", "Black Irish" and possibly also Portuguese.
While some contemporary Melungeons are quite light complexioned, even having blonde or red hair and fair skin, the majority are darker, with what is commonly described asolive orcopper toned skin, brunette or black hair, and dark brown eyes. Ironically, despite having Mediterranean or Middle Eastern physiognomies, many Melungeons grew up confident of their ostensibly Northern or Western European ancestry. This self-deception often originated with parents or grandparents who told the individual that s/he was Scotch–Irish, English, French, and/or German. If challenged by the skeptical child that s/he seemed to be darker than most Scottish or German persons, the parent/grandparent might reply that this was due to some Black Dutch or Black Irish ancestry
