 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,Appalachian English | |
| Religion | |
| PredominantlyProtestant Christianity | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Affrilachians,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 |
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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 who were primarily descended fromfree people of color andwhite settlers.[5][6][7][8] In the late 20th century, the term wasreclaimed 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]
Many groups have historically been referred to as Melungeon, including the Melungeons ofNewman's Ridge,[16] theLumbee,[17] theChestnut Ridge people,[18] and theCarmel Melungeons.[19] Free people of color in colonial Virginia were predominantly ofAfrican andEuropean descent; however, many families also had varying amounts ofNative American andEast Indian ancestry.[20][21][22][23] Some modern researchers believe that earlyAtlantic Creole slaves were one of the precursor populations to these groups.[24][25][26] Many creoles, once inBritish America, were able to obtain their freedom and manymarried into local white families.[27][28][29][30][31]
Despite often being able to pass as white people, Melungeons were affected by theone-drop rule. The one-drop rule either caused, or had the potential to cause, many Melungeons to be labeled asnon-white. Some Melungeons who were labeled as non-white were sterilized bystate governments, most notably inVirginia.[32][33][34]
The termMelungeon likely comes from the French wordmélange ultimately derived from the Latin verbmiscēre ("to mix, mingle, intermingle").[3][10] It was once a derogatory term, but later became used by the Melungeon people as a primary identifier. TheTennessee 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."[10]
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,[35] this word has been reclaimed by members of the community.[36] The spelling of the term varied widely, as was common for words and names at the time.
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."[10] 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."[10] 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.[citation needed]
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.)[3]
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).
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. ..."[37]
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.[38]
In 1999, historian C. S. Everett hypothesized that John Collins (recorded as a Saponi 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.[39] 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.[40][promotional source?]
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.[41][42][6]
Other myths claim that the Melungeons are descendants of lostSpanish colonists, maroonedPortuguese sailors,[43] descendants of theancient Israelites orPhoenicians,[44]Romani slaves, orTurkish settlers.[45]
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",[46] 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.[46] "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. 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][46]
Manyfree people of color, white-passing or otherwise, served in theAmerican Civil War on both sides of the conflict. Some served in theConfederate military,[47][48] though others resisted the Confederate government, such asHenry Berry Lowry.[49] As part of the1st Tennessee Cavalry Regiment in theBattle of Nashville,Harrison Collins was the first Union soldier from Tennessee to be awarded theCongressional Medal of Honor for heroism.
In the 1894US census, Melungeon people were enumerated as of the races to which they most resembled.[3]
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.[50]Anti-miscegenation laws in the United States were not declared unconstitutional until the 1967Loving v. Virginia case.[51]
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".[52] 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.[33][52][53]
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]
During theAmerican Revolution, there was purportedly a Melungeon "king" or "chief" named Micajah Bunch (1723–1804). Local folklore claims he intermarried with theCherokee, making the Melungeons a branch of the tribe, though no documentation of this event exists. The last male in Micajah's bloodline, Michael Joseph Bullard, died in a swimming accident at the age of 15 in 1991.[54]
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.[55][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.[56]
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.[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]
Definitions of who is Melungeon differ. Historians and genealogists have tried to identify surnames of different Melungeon families.[52][46] 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)".[52]
In 1992,Virginia DeMarce explored and reported theGoins genealogy as a Melungeon surname.[59] According to Paul Heinegg, geneaological evidence shows the Goins/Going/Gowen family descends fromJohn Graweere (Gowen), one of theFirst Africans in Virginia.[60] 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]
{{citation}}: CS1 maint: work parameter with ISBN (link)John Gowen, born say 1615, was one of the first Africans to earn his freedom in Virginia. On 31 March 1641 the Virginia Court ordered, that John Geaween being a negro servant unto William Evans was permitted by his said master to keep hogs and make the best benefit therof to himself provided that the said Evans might have half the increase... And whereas the said negro having a young child of a negro woman belonging to Lieut. Robert Sheppard ... the said negro did for his said child purchase its freedom of Lieut. Robert Sheppard ... the court hath therefore ordered that the child shall be free from the said Evans [VMH X1:281 (Virginia Council and General Court Records, 1640-41)].!"' [...] 127 :The name John Geaween was once transcribed as "John Graween," so it often appears as such in histories.
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