The authors/submitters alone is responsible for
what is expressed
DID YOU KNOW
FROM THE WEBSITE WWW.MEXICA-MOVEMENT.ORG
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"Latino" denies us our true Nican Tlaca (Indigenous) identity and heritage. It keeps us slaves to European interests and Spaniard culture. Collectively, we have no Latin genealogy, Latin blood group, Latin history, or a common Latin culture of food or mythology. The "Latino" labeling of our people is a colonialist-racist act of Genocide---an attempt to "kill off" our people's true identity, history, independence, and our rights to our land and its wealth. Notice how this is not about "Latino Americans" in the U.S. This is about all of the "Spanish speaker" European Spaniards and their colonies of Nican Tlaca and Africans in the "Americas". What they are in fact doing is separating us from our Anahuac Heritage (Mexican and "Central American" Nican Tlaca identity and history) and enslaving us to their needs. THE CONCEPT OF HISPANIC is even more racist than "Latino" because it completely denies us our true Nican Tlaca heritage by not even referring to our colonized condition of being in "Latin America". We now become direct possessions of Spaniards. This is an attempt (successful so far) to actively reactivate the Spanish colonial empire through their colonials on our land. The media is their main tool in this parasitic renewed colonialist machine of the European Spaniards.
A side note: A
Mixed-blood is not a Criollo or a European.
Spaniards, Europeans, And Their Squatter
Descendants On Our Land Who Force Their Eurocentric, Racist, &
Anti-Indigenous "Hispanic" & "Latino" Labels On Our People!
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1) THEFT OF OUR
LAND was the initial crime of the
Europeans. We did not ever give up the ownership of our land, nor
did we ever invite Europeans onto our lands.
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THE LYNCHING OF SO CALLED NEGROES. (BLACK PEOPLE)
1885. . . . .184 1895. . . . .171 1886. . . . .138 1896. . . . .131 1887. . . . .122 1897. . . . .166 1888. . . . .142 1898. . . . .127 1889. . . . .176 1899. . . . .107 1890. . . . .127 1900. . . . .115 1891. . . . .192 1901. . . . .135 1892. . . . .235 1902. . . . .96 1893. . . . .200 1903(to Sept. 14, eight and a half months). . . . .76 1894. . . . .190 Total lynchings. Whites. Negroes. In the South. In the North. 1900. . . . . . . 115 8 107 107 8 1901. . . . . . . 135 26 107 121 14 1902. . . . . . . . 96 9 86 87 9 1903(to Sept. 14). . . . .76 13 63 66 10 Causes Assigned. 1900 1901.* 1902.† 1903. Murder 39 39 37 32 Rape 18 19 19 8 Attempted rape 13 9 11 5 Race prejudice 10 9 2 3 Assaulting whites 6 - 3 3 Threats to kill 5 - 1 - Burglary 4 1 - - Attempt to murder 4 9 4 6 Informing 2 - - - Robbery 2 “Theft” 12 1 - Complicity in murder 2 6 3 5 Rape and murder - - - 1 Suspicion of murder 2 3 1 3 Suspicion of robbery 1 - - - No offence 1 - - - Arson 2 4 - - Suspicion of arson 1 - - - Aiding escape of murderer 1 - 1 - Insulting a white woman - 1 - - Cattle and horse stealing - 7 1 - Quarrel over profit-sharing - 5 - - Suspicion of rape - 1 - - Suspicion of rape and murder - 1 - - Unknown offences 2 6 - 4 Mistaken identity - 1 1 3 NOTE.—The lynchings in the various States and Territories in 1900 were as follows: Alabama 8 New York 0 Arkansas 6 Nevada 0 California 0 North Carolina 3 Colorado 3 North Dakota 0 Connecticut 0 Ohio 0 Delaware 0 Oregon 0 Florida 9 Pennsylvania 0 Georgia 16 Rhode Island 0 Idaho 0 South Carolina 2 Illinois 0 South Dakota 0 Indiana 3 Tennessee 7 Iowa 0 Texas 4 Kansas 2 Vermont 0 Kentucky 1 Virginia 6 Louisiana 20 West Virginia 2 Maine 0 Wisconsin 0 Maryland 1 Washington 0 Massachusetts 0 ! Wyoming 0 Michigan 0 Arizona 0 Minnesota 0 District of Columbia 0 Mississippi 20 New Mexico 0 Missouri 2 Utah 0 Montana 0 Indian Territory 0 Nebraska 0 Oklahoma 0 New Jersey 0 Alaska 0 New Hampshire 0 * In 1901 one Indian and one Chinaman lynched. † In 1902 one Indian lynched. From these tables certain facts may be deduced. The first is that, in the year of which an analysis is given (1900), over nine-tenths of the lynchings occurred in the South, where only about one-third of the population of the country were, but where nine- tenths of the negroes were; secondly, that, of these lynchings, about nine-tenths were of negroes and one-third were in the three States where the negroes are most numerous; thirdly, that, while the lynchings appear to be diminishing at the South, the ratio, at least, is increasing at the North. It further appears that, though lynching began as a punishment for assault on white women, it has extended until less than one-fourth of the instances are for this crime, while over three-fourths of them are for murder, attempts at murder, or some less heinous offence. This may be accounted for, in part, by the fact that the murders in the South partake somewhat of the nature of race-conflicts. Over 2,700 lynchings in eighteen years are enough to stagger the mind. Either we are relapsing into barbarism, or there is some terrific cause for our reversion to the methods of mediaevalism, and our laws are inefficient to meet it. The only gleam of light is that, of late years, the number appears to have diminished. To get at the remedy, we must first get at the cause. Time was when the crime of assault was unknown throughout the South. During the whole period of slavery, it did not exist, nor did it exist to any considerable extent for some years after Emancipation. During the War, the men were away in the army, and the negroes were the loyal guardians of the women and children. On isolated plantations and in lonely ! neighbor hoods, women were as secure as in the streets of Boston or New York. Then came the period and process of Reconstruction, with its teachings. Among these was the teaching that the negro was the equal of the white, that the white was his enemy, and that he must assert his equality. The growth of the idea was a gradual one in the negro’s mind. This was followed by a number of cases where members of the negro militia ravished white women; in some instances in the presence of their families.*[A] The result of the hostility between the Southern whites and Government at that time was to throw the former upon their own acts for their defence or revenge, with a consequent training in lawless punishment of acts which should have been punished by law. And here lynching had its evil origin. It was suggested some time ago, in a thoughtful paper read by Professor Wilcox, that a condition something like this had its rise in France during the religious wars. The first instance of rape, outside of these attacks by armed negroes, and of consequent lynching, that attracted the attention of the country was a case which occurred in Mississippi, where the teaching of equality and of violence found one of its most fruitful fields. A negro dragged a woman down into the woods, and tying her, kept her bound there a prisoner for several days, when he butchered her. He was caught and was lynched. With the resumption of local power by the whites came the temporary and partial ending of the crimes of assault and of lynching. As the old relation, which had survived even the strain of Reconstruction, dwindled with the passing of the old generation from the stage, and the “New Issue” with the new teaching took its place, the crime broke out again with renewed violence. The idea of equality began to percolate more extensively among the negroes. In evidence of it is the fact that since the assaults began again they have been chiefly directed against the plainer order of people, instances of ! attacks on women of the upper class, though not unknown, being of rare occurrence.*[B] Conditions in the South render the commission of this crime peculiarly easy. The white population is sparse, the forests are extensive, the officers of the law distant and difficult to reach; but, above all, the negro population has appeared inclined to condone the fact of mere assault. Twenty-five years ago, women went unaccompanied and unafraid throughout the South, as they still go throughout the North. To-day, no white woman, or girl, or female child, goes alone out of sight of the house except on necessity; and no man leaves his wife alone in his house, if he can help it. Cases have occurred of assault and murder in broad day, within sight and sound of the victim’s home. Indeed, an instance occurred not a great while ago in the District of Columbia, within a hundred yards of a fashionable drive, when, about three o’clock of a bright June day, a young girl was attacked within sight and sound of her house, and when she screamed her throat was cut. So near to her home was the spot that her mother and an officer, hearing her cries, reached her before life was extinct. For a time, the ordinary course of the law was, in the main, relied on to meet the trouble; but it was found that, notwithstanding the inevitable infliction of the death penalty, several evils resulted therefrom. The chief one was that the ravishing of women, instead of diminishing, steadily increased. The criminal, under the ministrations of his preachers, usually professed to have “gotten religion,” and from the shadow of the gallows called on his friends to follow him to glory. So that the punishment lost to these emotional people much of its deterrent force, especially where the real sympathy of the race was mainly with the criminal rather than with his victim. Another evil was the dreadful necessity of calling on the innocent victim, who, if she survived, as she rarely did, was already bowed to the earth by shame, to relate in public! the sto ry of the assault--an ordeal which was worse than death. Yet another was the delay in the execution of the law. With these, however, was one other which, perhaps, did more than all the rest together to wrest the trial and punishment from the Courts and carry them out by mob-violence. This was the unnamable brutality with which the causing crime was, in nearly every case, attended. The death of the victim of the ravisher was generally the least of the attendant horrors. In Texas, in Mississippi, in Georgia, in Kentucky, in Colorado, as later in Delaware, the facts in the case were so unspeakable that they have never been put in print. They could not be put in print. It is these unnamable horrors which have outraged the minds of those who live in regions where they have occurred, and where they may at any time occur again, and, upsetting reason, have swept from their bearings cool men and changed them into madmen, drunk with the lust of revenge. Not unnaturally, such barbarity as burning at the stake has shocked the sense of the rest of the country, and, indeed, of the world. But it is well for the rest of the country, and for the world, to know that it has also shocked the sense of the South, and, in their calmer moments, even the sense of those men who, in their frenzy, have been guilty of it. Only, a deeper shock than even this is at the bottom of their ferocious rage—the shock which comes from the ravishing and butchery of their women and children. It is not necessary to be an apologist for barbarity because one states with bluntness the cause. The stern underlying principle of the people who commit these barbarities is one that has its root deep in the basic passions of humanity; the determination to put an end to the ravishing of their women by an inferior race, no matter what the consequence. For a time, a speedy execution by hanging was the only mode of retribution resorted to by the lynchers; then, when this failed of its purpose, a more savage method was essayed, born of a! savage fury at the failure of the first, and a stern resolve to strike a deeper terror into those whom the other method had failed to awe. The following may serve as an illustration. Ten or twelve years ago, the writer lectured one afternoon in the early spring in a town in the cotton-belt of Texas--one of the prettiest towns in the Southwest. The lecture was delivered in the Court-house. The writer was introduced by a gentleman who had been a member of the Confederate Cabinet and a Senator of the United States, and the audience was composed of refined and cultured people, representing, perhaps, every State from Maine to Texas. Two days later, the papers contained the account of the burning at the stake in this town of a negro. He had picked up a little girl of five or six years of age on the street where she was playing in front of her home, and carried her off, telling her that her mother had sent him for her; and when she cried, he had soothed her with candy which, with deliberate prevision, he had bought for the purpose. When she was found, she was unrecognizable. With her little body broken and mangled, he had cut her throat and thrown her into a ditch. A strong effort was made to save him for the law, but without avail: the people had reverted to the primal law of vengeance. Farmers came from fifty miles to see that vengeance was exacted. They had resolved to strike terror into the breasts of all, so that such a crime could never occur again. This was, perhaps, the second or third instance of burning in the country. Of late, lynching at the stake has spread beyond the region where it has such reason for existence as may be given by the conditions that prevail in the South. Three frightful instances by burning have occurred recently in Northern States, in communities where some of these conditions were partly wanting. The horror of the main fact of lynching was increased, in two of the cases, by a concerted attack on a large element of the negro population which was wholly i! nnocent. Even the unoffending negroes were driven from their homes, a consequence which has never followed in the South, where it might seem there was more occasion for it. It thus appears that the original crime, and also the consequent one in its most brutal form, are not confined to the South, and, possibly, are only more frequent there because of the greater number of negroes in that section. The deep racial instincts are not limited by geographical bounds. These last-mentioned lynchings were so ferocious, and so unwarranted by any such necessity, real or fancied, as may be thought to exist at the South by reason of the frequency of assault and the absence of a strong police force, that they not unnaturally called forth almost universal condemnation. The President felt it proper to write an open letter, commending the action of the Governor of Indiana on the proper and efficient exercise of his authority to uphold the law and restore order in his State. But who has ever thought it necessary to commend the Governors of the Southern States under similar circumstances? The militia of some of the Southern States are almost veterans, so frequently have they been called on to protect wretches whose crimes stank in the nostrils of all decent men. The Governor of Virginia boasted, a few years ago, that no lynching should take place during his incumbency, and he nearly made good his boast; though, to do so, he had to call out at one time or another almost the entire force of the State. Editorials in some of the Eastern papers note with astonishment recent instances where law-officers in the South have protected their prisoners or eluded a mob. The writers of these editorials know so little of the South that one is scarcely surprised at their ignorance. But men are hanged by law for this crime of assault every few months in some State in the South. A few years ago, Sheriff Smith, of Birmingham, protected a murderer at the cost of many lives; a little later, Mayor Prout, of Roanoke, defended a n! egro rav isher and murderer, and, though the mob finally succeeded in their aim, six men were killed by the guards before the jail was carried. These are only two of the many instances in which brave and faithful officers have, at the risk of their lives, defended their charges against that most terrible of all assailants—a determined mob.* *The following table is from the Chicago Tribune. The number of legal executions in 1900 was 118, as compared with 131 in 1899, 109 in 1898, 128 in 1897, 122 in 1896, 132 in 1895, 132 in 1894, 126 in 1893, and 107 in 1892. The executions in the several States and Territories were in 1900 as follows: Alabama 4 New York 3 Arkansas 0 Nevada 0 California 5 North Carolina 9 Colorado 0 North Dakota 1 Connecticut 1 Ohio 1 Delaware 0 Oregon 1 Florida 1 Pennsylvania 15 Georgia 14 Rhode Island 0 Idaho 2 South Carolina 3 Illinois 0 South Dakota 0 Indiana 0 Tennessee 4 Iowa 0 Texas 18 Kansas 0 Vermont 0 Kentucky 0 Virginia 7 Louisiana 6 West Virginia 0 Maine 0 Wisconsin 0 Maryland 3 Wyoming 0 Massachusetts 0 Washington 2 Michigan 0 Arizona 4 Minnesota 0 District of Columbia 3 Mississippi 1 New Mexico 0 Missouri 3 Utah 0 Montana 3 Indian Territory 0 Nebraska 0 Oklahoma 0 New Jersey 4 Alaska 0 New Hampshire 0 There were 80 hanged in the South and 39 in the North, of whom 60 were whites, 58 were blacks, and one a Chinaman. The crimes for which they were executed were: murder, 113; rape, 5; arson, 1. Thus, of the 119 hangings, about two-thirds (80) were in the South and one-third (39) in the North; about one-half (60) of the entire number were of whites, and one-half (58) were of blacks. So, the South appears to have done its part in the matter of punishing by law as well as by violence. For a time, the assaults by negroes were confined to young women who were caught alone in solitary and secluded places. The company even of a child was sufficient to protect ! them. Th en the ravishers grew bolder, and attacks followed on women when they were in company. And then, not content with this, the ravishers began to attack women in their own homes. Sundry instances of this have occurred within the last few years. As an illustration, may be cited the notorious case of Samuel Hose, who, after making a bet with a negro preacher that he could have access to a white woman, went into a farmer’s house while the family, father, mother, and child, were at supper; brained the man with his axe; threw the child into a corner with a violence which knocked it senseless, and ravished the wife and mother with unnamable horrors, butchered her and bore away with him the indisputable proof of having won his wager. He was caught and was burnt. Another instance, only less appalling, occurred two years ago in Lynchburg, Virginia, where the colored janitor of a white female school, who had been brought up and promoted by the Superintendent of Schools, and was regarded as a shining example of what education might accomplish with his race, entered the house of a respectable man one morning, after the husband, who was a foreman in a factory, had gone to his work; and ravished the wife, and then putting his knee on her breast, coolly cut her throat as he might have done a calf’s. There was no attempt at lynching; but the Governor, resolved to preserve the good name of the commonwealth, felt it necessary to order out two regiments of soldiers, in which course he was sustained by the entire sentiment of the State. These cases were neither worse nor better than many of those which have occurred in the South in the last twenty years, and in that period hundreds of women and a number of children have been ravished and slain. Now, how is this crime of assault to be stopped? For stopped it must be, and stopped it will be, whatever the cost. One proposition is that separation of the races, complete separation, is the only remedy. The theory appears Utopian. Colonization has been! the dre am of certain philanthropists for a hundred years. And, meantime, the negroes have increased from less than a million to nine millions. They will never be deported; not because we have not the money, for an amount equal to that spent in pensions during three years would pay the expenses of such deportation, and an amount equal to that paid in six years would set them up in a new country. But the negroes have rights; many of them are estimable citizens; and even the body of them, when well regulated, are valuable laborers. It might, therefore, as well be assumed that this plan will never be carried out, unless the occasion becomes so imperative that all other rights give way to the supreme right of necessity. It is plain, then, that we must deal with the matter in a more practicable manner, accepting conditions as they are, and applying to them legal methods which will be effective. Lynching does not end ravishing, and that is the prime necessity. Most right- thinking men are agreed as to this. Indeed, lynching, through lacking the supreme principle of law, the deliberateness from which is supposed to come the certainty of identification, fails utterly to meet the necessity of the case even as a deterrent. Not only have assaults occurred again and again in the same neighborhood where lynching has followed such crime; but, a few years ago, it was publicly stated that a negro who had just witnessed a lynching for this crime actually committed an assault on his way home. However this may be, lynching as a remedy is a ghastly failure; and its brutalizing effect on the community is incalculable. The charge that is often made, that the innocent are sometimes lynched, has little foundation. The rage of a mob is not directed against the innocent, but against the guilty; and its fury would not be satisfied with any other sacrifices than the death of the real criminal. Nor does the criminal merit any consideration, however terrible the punishment. The real injury is to the perpetrators of the crime ! of destr oying the law, and to the community in which the law is slain.[C] It is pretty generally conceded that the “law’s delay” is partly responsible for the “wild justice” of mob vengeance, and this has undoubtedly been the cause of many mobs. But it is far from certain if any change in the methods of administration of law will effect the stopping of lynching; while to remedy this evil we may bring about a greater peril. Trial by jury is the bed-rock of our liberties, and the inherent principle of such trial is its deliberateness. It has been said that the whole purpose of the Constitution of Great Britain is that twelve men may sit in the jury-box. The methods of the law may well be reformed; but any movement should be jealously scanned which touches the chief barrier of all liberty. The first step, then, would appear to be the establishment of a system securing a reasonably prompt trial and speedy execution by law, rather than a wholesome revolution of the existing system. Many expedients have been suggested; some of the most drastic by Northern men. One of them proposed, not long since, that to meet the mob--spirit, a trial somewhat in the nature of a drum-head court-martial might be established by law, by which the accused may be tried and, if found guilty, executed immediately. Others have proposed as a remedy emasculation by law; while a Justice of the Supreme Court has recently given the weight of his personal opinion in favor of prompt trial and the abolishment of appeals in such cases. Even the terrible suggestion has been made that burning at the stake might be legalized! These suggestions testify how grave the matter is considered to be by those who make them. But none of these, unless it be the one relating to emasculation, is more than an expedient. The trouble lies deeper. The crime of lynching is not likely to cease until the crime of ravishing and murdering women and children is less frequent than it has been of late. And this crime, which is will-nigh wholly con! fined to the negro race, will not greatly diminish until the negroes themselves take it in hand and stamp it out. From recent developments, it may be properly inferred that the absence of this crime during the period of Slavery was due more to the feeling among the negroes themselves than to any repressive measures on the part of the whites. The negro had the same animal instincts in Slavery that he exhibits now; the punishment that follows the crime now is as certain, as terrible, and as swift as it could have been then. So, to what is due the alarming increase of this terrible brutality? To the writer it appears plain that it is due to two things: first, to racial antagonism and to the talk of social inequality, from which it first sprang, that inflames the ignorant negro, who has grown up unregulated and undisciplined; and, secondly, to the absence of a strong restraining public opinion among the negroes of any class, which alone can extirpate the crime. In the first place, the negro does not generally believe in the virtue of women. It is beyond his experience. He does not generally believe in the existence of actual assault. It is beyond his comprehension. In the next place, his passion, always his controlling force, is now, since the new teaching, for the white woman.*[D] That there are many negroes who are law-abiding and whose influence is for good, no one who knows the worthy members of the race, those who represent the better element, will deny. But while there are, of course, notable exceptions, they are not often of the “New Issue,” nor even generally among the prominent leaders: those who publish papers and control conventions. As the crime of rape had its baleful origin in the teaching of equality and the placing of power in the ignorant negroes’ hands, so its perpetration and increase have undoubtedly been due in large part to the same teaching. The intelligent negro may understand what social equality truly means; but to the ignorant and brutal young negro, it ! signifie s but one thing: the opportunity to enjoy, equally with white men, the privilege of cohabiting with white women. This the whites of the South understand; and if it were understood abroad, it would serve to explain some things which have not been understood hitherto. It will explain, in part, the universal and furious hostility of the South to even the least suggestion of social equality. A close following of the instances of rape and lynching, and the public discussion consequent thereon, has led the writer to the painful realization that even the leaders of the negro race--at least, those who are prominent enough to hold conventions and write papers on the subject--have rarely, by act or word, shown a true appreciation of the enormity of the crime of ravishing and murdering women. Their discussion and denunciation have been almost invariably and exclusively devoted to the crime of lynching. Underlying most of their protests is the suggestion, that the victim of the mob is innocent and a martyr. Now and then, there is a mild generalization on the evil of lawbreaking and the violation of women; but, for one stern word of protest against violating women and cutting their throats, the records of negro meetings will show many against the attack of the mob on the criminal. And, as to any serious and determined effort to take hold of and stamp out the crime that is blackening the entire negro race to- day, and arousing against them the fatal and possibly the undying enmity of the stronger race, there is, with the exception of the utterances of a few score individuals like Booker Washington, who always speaks for the right, Hannibal Thomas and Bishop Turner, hardly a trace of such a thing. A crusade has been preached against lynching, even as far as England; but none has been thought of against the ravishing and tearing to pieces of white women and children. Happily, there is an element of sound-minded, law-abiding negroes, representative of the old negro, who without parade stand for good order! , and do what they can to repress lawlessness among their people. But for this class and the kindly relations which are preserved between them and the whites, the situation in the South would long since have become unbearable. These, however, are not generally among the leaders, and, unfortunately, their influence is not sufficiently extended to counteract the evil influences which are at work with such fatal results. One who reads the utterances of negro orators and preachers on the subject of lynching, and who knows the negro race, cannot doubt that, at bottom, their sympathy is generally with the “victim” of the mob, and not with his victim. Until the negroes shall create among themselves a sound public opinion which, instead of fostering, shall reprobate and sternly repress the crime of assaulting women and children, the crime will never be extirpated, and until this crime is stopped the crime of lynching will never be extirpated. Lynching will never be done away with while the sympathy of the whites is with the lynchers, and no more will ravishing be done away with while the sympathy of the negroes is with the ravisher. When the negroes shall stop applying all their energies to harboring and defending negroes, no matter what their crime so it be against the whites, and shall distinguish between the law-abiding negro and the law-breaker, a long step will have been taken. Should the negroes sturdily and faithfully set themselves to prevent the crime of rape by members of that race, it could be stamped out. Should the whites set themselves against lynching, lynching would be stopped. The remedy then is plain. Let the negroes take charge of the crime of ravishing and firmly put it away from them, and let the whites take charge of the crime of lynching and put it away from them. It is time that the races should address themselves to the task; for it is with nations as with individual men; whatsoever they sow that shall they also reap. It is the writer’s belief that the arrest and ! the prom pt handing over to the law of negroes by negroes, for assault on white women, would do more to break up ravishing, and to restore amicable relations between the two races, than all the resolutions of all the Conventions and all the harangues of all the politicians. It has been tried in various States to put an end to lynching by making the county in which the lynching occurs liable in damages for the crime. It is a good theory; and, if it has not worked well, it is because of the difficulty of executing the provision. Could some plan be devised to array each race against the crime to which it is prone, both rape and lynching might be diminished, if not wholly prevented. The practical application of such a principle is difficult, but, perhaps, it is not impossible. It is possible that in every community negroes might be appointed officers of the law, to look exclusively after lawbreakers of their own race. The English in the East manage such matters well, under equally complicated and delicate conditions. For example, in the Island of Malta, where the population are of different classes among whom a certain jealousy exists, there are several classes of police: the naval police, the military police, and the civil or municipal police. To each of these is assigned more especially the charge of one of the three classes of whom the population of the Island is composed. Again, in Hong Kong, where the situation is even more delicate, there are several classes of police: the English, the Chinese, and the Indian police. Only the first are empowered to make general arrests; the others have powers relating exclusively to the good order of the races to which they belong, though they may in all cases be called in to assist the English police. Somewhat in the same way, the negroes might be given within their province powers sufficiently full to enable them to keep order among their people, and they might on the other hand be held to a certain accountability for such good order. It might even be ! required that every person should be listed and steadily kept track of, as is one in Germany at present. The recent vagrant laws of Georgia, where there are more negroes than in the entire North, are an attempt in this direction. In the same way, the white officials charged with the good order of the county or town might be given enlarged powers of summoning posses, and might be held to a high accountability. For example, ipso facto forfeiture of the official bond and removal from office, with perpetual disability to hold any office again, might be provided as a penalty for permitting any persons to be taken out of their hands. Few ravishings by negroes would occur if the more influential members of the race were held accountable for the good order of their race in every community; and few lynchings would occur, at least after the prisoners were in the hands of the officers of the law, if those officers, by the mere fact of relinquishing their prisoners should be disqualified from ever holding office again. These suggestions may be as Utopian as others which have been made; but if they cannot be carried out, it is because the ravishings by negroes and the murders by mobs have their roots so deep in racial instincts that nothing can eradicate them, and in such case the ultimate issue will be a resort to the final test of might, which in the last analysis underlies everything. |
WHERE THE NATIVE AMERICANS GOT THE NAME INDIANS
It was stated by Russell Means that he was given
documents
from scholars in Turin, Italy (the true home of the Shroud of Turin) that
the Native people of this continent were called "Indians", not because of so
called confusion between this land and India, but because the early
explorers to this continent saw the spiritual nature of the Original Man
living here and wrote back to Italy and Spain and said "these people are
Indios (In-Dios)" meaning, In God or with God.
Please share this little known fact with the Universal Zulu Nation. Respect
due, Bro. Ernie Panicciolio
That Phoebe Fraunces a Black women saved George Washington's life on the eve
of the Revolutionary War. The British had a agent Irishman name Thomas Hickey,
who was George Washingtons bodyguard who had an intimate friendship with Fraunces and gave her
a dish of poisoned peas to served Washington when he came for dinner. She became suspicious of the Irishmans
actions and warned Washington, who threw away the peas into the yard, where some chickens ate the peas and fell dead
. For Hickey assassination attempt on Washington's life, he was hanged before a crowed of 20,000 in
New York City. Both Miss Fraunces and her father, Black Sam were officially recognized by the Continental
Congress for their service to the fledging country and given a sum of money. When George became Americas
President, he appointed Fraunces White House steward.
That President Ulysses Grant was probably the first and only American President to be arrested, and that it was a Black
District of Columbia policeman by the name of Officer William West who performed the deed in
the 19th century. Officer West book the President for violating the district speeding law and for professionalism as an officer of the law,
the President later on promoted Officer West to a mounted policeman. President Grant not want to be in the public eye as someone who is above the law.
| MUSLIMS IN EARLY AMERICA | |||||||
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This
paper will cover early Muslim settlers from 1500-1850
not covered under the Unit on Muslims in slavery. This
will include such individuals as Naserudine (an Egyptian in the 1550's), Salem the Algerian (Muslim present at the signing of the Constitution) Melungeons, the Ben Ishmael Tribe, the Delaware Moors, and the Dismal Swamp Maroons of North Carolina will also be covered. An Egyptian named Nassereddine settled near the Hudson river in the Catskills region of upstate New York in the later part of the 16th century. He claimed royal linage and was called Prince Nassereddine by friends and associates. He met his fate when he made a bet with a Dutchman. Gambling was, of course, against Islam, but the nature of the bet was one he felt he had to undertake. The Dutchman wagered him a thousand pieces of crown gold that he couldn’t win the heart of a beautiful Native American princess named Lotwana. Nassereddine succeeded in befriending Lotwana’s father, the Mohawk chief Shordaken. However, he failed to make headway with the princess. Subsequently, she became engaged to a brave of her tribe of her own choice. Nassereddine was smitten with love for the princess and vowed revenge. He poisoned Lotwana on her wedding night by giving he a gift with a poison snake hidden inside. After the princess was bitten, the warriors of the Mohawk tribe captured Nassereddine and burned him at the stake. Salim the Algerian Salim the Algerian, who was a Muslim from a royal family of Algiers that studied in Constantinople. After returning from a visit to Constantinople, he was captured by a Spanish Man of War and later sold into slavery to the French in New Orleans. Eventually he became free after running from slavery, lived among American Indian tribes, and settled in Virginia. Salem was found in rags, almost naked, and was taught English. Eventually, it was ascertained that he knew Greek and he was given a Greek New Testament. Several future members of the U.S. Congress befriended him and he converted to Christianity. A new convert to Christianity he decided to go back home to spread the Gospel. After a disastrous journey to his homeland (where he was shunned as an apostate), he returned to America, met Thomas Jefferson, attended the 1st Continental Congress, and died an insane man having given up his family and religion for America. While Salim was at the Congress, Congressman Page introduced him to the painter Mr. Peale. He would later paint Salim’s portrait. Near the end of Salem's life, he regained his long lost sanity. He had been insane since his trip to his homeland after his conversion to Christianity. According to some legends, he renounced Christianity, other say died a Christian at the Page estate, and still others say he died in an insane asylum. [Graham's Magazine, 1857, pp. 433 437.] Arab Muslims during the Revolutionary War During the American Revolution the French helped the revolutionaries by sending aid in ships from Algeria. The islands of Cape Hatteras were the site of many ship wrecks. The Wahhab brothers were shipwrecked on the coast of North Carolina in the 1770's. They settled, married, and started a farm. Ocracoke Island off the North Carolina coast has its Wahab Village. Wahab family tradition states that the founder of Wahab Village was a Muslim from North Africa and settled there due to the land’s natural beauty. Whether they or their ancestors stayed in the Islamic faith is something that I can not answer at this time. Earlier in this century their descendents owned one of the largest private hotel chains in North Carolina. On the North Carolina barrier island of Ocracoke there are two hotels built by Robert Stanley Wahab. The two hotels still exist under private ownership but not in the hands of the Wahab family. Blackbeard’s Lodge which was originally called Wahab Village Inn built in 1936 and The Island Inn with its Old Crow’s Nest Officer’s Club built in 1940. From Social Security records I believe he lived from Feb. 3, 1888 to Nov. 1967. Stanley Wahab was also associate manager of the Dare County Airport authority from 1947-1949. The main cemetery on the island is named the Wahab-Howard cemetery after the two most famous families on the island. Around this same time, a ship of 70 odd Moorish slaves landed in Maryland. No more is known on these Moors. Another similar reference can be traced to 1753 when Abel Conder and Mahamut petitioned the authorities in South Carolina to be freed from indentured servitude. They came from Sali on the Barbary Coast. They fought the Portuguese at Maguson, lost, and were sold into slavery. Captain Henry Daubrig offered to buy their freedom if they would be his servants in South Carolina for five years and they readily agreed. In South Carolina they were sold to Daniel LaRouche and treated as slaves. Instead of being freed after five years LaRouche held them for more than fifteen years. It is believed the petition was accepted and they were freed. Records of other Moors also exist in public records in South Carolina, Rhode Island, Delaware, Florida, and Georgia. Sumter Turks Another groups like the Wahhab brothers was the family of Yusuf Ben Ali (Anglicized as Joseph Benenhali). He fought along side General Thomas Sumter during the Revolutionary War. In 1790 the House of Representatives of South Carolina passed the Sundry Moors Acts. These acts recognized Yusuf Ben Ali and about a dozen other North African Muslims in South Carolina as subjects of Morocco and not subject to laws regarding slaves and freedmen. Keep in mind Morocco was one of the first nations to recognize the new American Republic in 1783. Later General Sumter championed Yusuf Ben Ali’s rights to serve on all White juries. The descendants of the Sundry Moors joined the various Protestant denominations in the areas they settled. The Benenhali family intermarried with the Oxendine family and was listed as Turk (or non-White) in census records. These two families made many contributions to the social and historic development of Sumter, South Carolina and surrounding areas. There are over three hundred members of these families in South Carolina today. It is highly unlikely that any are Muslim today. Even though we can trace hundreds of Muslims in the United States prior to the War Between the States, Islam never gained a strong foothold until the arrival of immigrant Muslims from India and the Middle East after the 1870’s. Omani Traders in the United States The Omani Embassy published a pamphlet about the exploits of the first Arab traders to the United States in 1840. They did not settle here, however. [Eilts, Herman Fredrick The Visit of Ahmad bin Na'aman to the U.S. in the Year 1840, Embassy of Oman 1962.] The ship arrived on April 30 and left on August 7, 1840. Merchant ships from Salem, Massachusetts had already setup extensive trade with various European nations and the seafaring Omani’s wanted in on the commercial activities. The voyage started from Muscat and Zanzibar. The captain Ahmad bin Na’aman was an Arab born in Basra interested in setting-up an import-export business with the United States. Being seen as a representative on the King of Zanzibar, he was given red carpet treatment and received many resolutions from politicians welcoming him. He tours the East Coast by train and visited Castle Garden, Brooklyn, and Washington, D.C. He was a guest at a formal dinner at NYC’s city hall thrown by Commodore Vanderbilt. There he met NY governor William Seward and Vice-President Richard Johnson. Edward Mooney painted his portrait. The Delaware Moors The Delaware Moors are a group of mixed race individuals related to the Delaware Indians. The Delaware State Legislature refused to recognize the Moors as either Indians or as Moors. They were classified as "Negro" on state records and the Delaware Indians were proclaimed extinct. The Nanricoke Indians fought back as did their close relatives the Moors. Eventually both won some degree of recognition. The scholar C.A. Weslager writes of his time among these "Forgotten Moors" in his works The Nanricoke Indians (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1983) and Delaware's Forgotten Folk (Philadelphia, 1943). The Moors were a result of a mixture of Moorish, Irish, and Nanricoke blood. A similar group called the Ben Ishmael Tribe is described below in this lesson. According to Weslager, several theories arose as to the origin of the Delaware Moors. On p. 27 of his 1943 work we read, "First is the Colonization legend. In essence, it says that a group of dark skinned Spanish Moors, sometime before the Revolutionary War, sailed to America to found a colony. They are supposed to have settled along the Atlantic Coast. From this ancestral stock, through intermarriage with Indians, came a race of people called Moors who lived apart in settlements of their own on the southeastern coast of the Delmarva Peninsula." A further modification of this theory is found on p. 30 where we read, "Sometime before the Revolutionary War a beautiful red haired lady lived on a large plantation in the vicinity of Lewes and owned many black slaves. A strange plague swept the countryside and killed many of her slaves. She went to the slave market at Lewes to purchase a new lot of blacks who had lately arrived on a slave ship. There she was impressed by a coterie of seven handsome men and seven beautiful women who stood apart from the other slaves and spoke a different language. Their skins were dark, but their hair was straight and their features were as regular as those of white persons. She recognized that they were Moors not Negroes and bought the seven couples and took them home. The children who were born to these Moorish slaves later intermarried with Indian descendants then living on the Indian River. The progeny of these mixed marriages became the people known today as Moors and Nanticokes." [C.A. Weslager, 1943, pp. 27, 30]. Escape from Noble County The Ben Ishmael Tribe Around 1785 a number of freed and runaway slaves, along with poor, white indentured servants fled Noble County (now Bourbon County) Kentucky and settled near the future site of Indianapolis. They intermingled with Pawnee Indians and set up a nomadic tribal existence. Their leaders were Ben and Jennie Ishmael. This fine artisan, musical pair taught polygamy, nomadic existence, and racial mixing. By 1810 they had three temporary villages: Mahomet, Illinois and Morocco and Mecca, Indiana. In 1827 James Fenimore Cooper wrote his book the Prairie about them. The leaders went West and became legendary occultated leaders (similar to Master Fard and many Shia’ leaders). By 1880 they had so many run ins with the law over Polygamy, vagrancy, and similar “crimes” that a Minister O.C. Mc Culloch wrote The Tribe of Ishmael: A Study in Social Degradation in favor of castrating the men and separating children from their Mothers. In 1907 Indiana passed a draconian eugenics law and the tribe fled Indianapolis for Chicago, Detroit and other cities and would have vanished from history if not for Hugo P. Leaming's “The Ben Ishmael Tribe” in The Ethnic Frontier (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1977). According to Leaming, Noble Drew Ali gathered many of his early followers from this group and this is one possible unexplored area for his teachings. I have little doubt that the monthly magazine The Ishmaelite was a publication somehow related to the Ben Ishmael tribe members in Cincinnati, Ohio. Newberry Library in Chicago has monthly volumes for 1897 1898. There are poems for Cuba, Africa, and Egypt in many volumes. Also some of the contributor have Arabic sounding names that were common among members of the Tribe of Ishmael, such as: Farr, Rabb, and Latta. In Vol. 1, No. 2 (Jan., 1897) there is a poem “Cuba” by Meredith Nicholson which has the lines: “Let vulture Spain hide in her nest the fair pearl of the Southern seas...,” “But while we prate of love of man, may not the Spaniard match the Turk?” and “I know not whether black or white they be who strive to make her free...”. There is also a poem by Albert Weston in this issue called “Out of Egypt.” On the cover of each issue are the words: “His hand shall be against every man and every man’s hand against him and he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren” and also the promise, from Mount Nebo Press (the publisher), “Written by men and women who are not employed to boom anyone's Book Bindery Shop, who hate snobbery in life or literature, and who, expecting little shall be disappointed…” In Vol. 2, No. 6 (Nov. 1897) the Editor writes a brief note to the readers. He writes, “with this number The Ishmaelite completes its second volume and celebrates its first birthday. Twelve months ago the young Ishmael was sent into the desert the desert of local encouragement- to struggle for his life... He has not been all that he wished to be, he has not taken on all the flesh he hoped for, yet to have lived is much. Right here does he pitch his tent…”. On the back cover of the Sept. 1897 issue is the poem “Fate’s Arrears” by Emma Carleton. “Great Omar says that today is life/ Oh, blessed bard, you are far astray;/ Each day we die, in an endless strife/ Paying the bills of Yesterday.” In Volume 3, No. 1, 1897, we find the poem “To a Friend” by F.K. Farr from Lebanon, Tennessee. “With a copy of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam/ Tho’ dark mistrust hath part in Omar's strain,/ Tho’ youth is stealing from us, not again/ To open for us two his manuscript,/ Not this nor that, old friend, shall yield us pain./ For this alchemic rhyme makes blossom new/ That rose by Ivan's garden side that blew;/ And certain memories our hearts keep well/ Shall yield our lives' delight, till life be through.” Finally on the back cover of the Nov. 1898 (Vol. 4, No. 6) we read, “Ishmael was no prophet, neither was he a prophet's son. Yet the 57th verse of the 14th chapter of the Gospel According to St. Matthew was as applicable to Ishmael as it is today to his humble and unworthy descendant The Ishmaelite. ‘Tis the same old story of honor coming from afar. Oh, ye unenthusiastic Indianapolitans! Know ye not that the stamp of approval has been set upon our brow by Boston, by New York, and by Ottumwa, Iowa? Can it be that you are not yet convinced that it is the proper thing, not only to approve, but to subscribe? What will you? Must we follow in the footsteps of Mr. Beecham or Mr. Bok and print the seductive testimonial? No, no! Arose yourselves, ye conservative citizens, and show them that dwell beyond the borders of the Wabash that you know a good thing when you have been told about it.” Tennessee Melungeons Historic records show that from 1492 to 1600 over 500,000 Muslims and Jews were exiled from Spain. Many of these settled in their ancestral homelands of North Africa. The so-called Barbary Pirates sprang from this group and were able to attack Baltimore, Ireland and hold it for 68 days in the 17th century. The poem “The Sack of Baltimore” was written about this event. Some of these pirates were captured and sold as slaves by the British, Spanish, and Portuguese. These exiled Berbers and Moors frequently referred to themselves as “Portuguese” wherever they settled. Columbus hired a Moorish guide from this group on his first expedition. These “Portuguese” were able to make it to America before Columbus as were African traders from Mauritania, Mali, and elsewhere in West Africa due to ocean currents flowing from Africa to the Americas but not in reverse! Columbus saw a forty-foot ship with such people in the Caribbean and recorded the event in his diaries. The earliest Spanish settlement was Santa Elena in South Carolina. Established in 1566, it flourished until overran by the British in 1587. The inhabitants escaped to the mountains of present-day Tennessee and North Carolina. There they intermarried with Cherokees and other indigenous peoples. In the same year Sir Francis Drake made a daring raid off the coast of Brazil and liberated 400 Portuguese and Spanish prisoners. Among them were 300 Moors. He planned to release them in Cuba as a stronghold against the Spanish, but a storm forced him to continue on to North Carolina. He left them unarmed at Roanoke Island. From there they gradually made their way inland and united with the remnants of the former colony of Santa Elena. Later English settlers encountered bands of southeastern Indians that wore beards, dressed in European fashion, lived in cabins, and prayed dropping to their knees several times a day. These grey-eyed Indians spoke English and are called Lumbees and Melungeons depending if they are in Tennessee or in eastern North Carolina. French travelers also encountered them and called them “Christianized Moors,” “Portuguese,” and the mysterious term “Melungeon.” In the 1700’s they were used in silver mines and farming. Jonathan Swift married one and called them “Mecca Indians” in his journals. Over the coming decades, they fled deeper into the hills of North Carolina and Tennessee to avoid the encroaching British settlements. They even avoided calling themselves Melungeon and attempted, when possible, to pass as “White.” This caused them to be isolated and to lose their heritage and customs. In the 1990’s an attempt to reclaim their lost heritage was started by Melungeon scholar Brent Kennedy (author of The Melungeons: The Resurrection of a Proud People). He found their blood types linked them to North Africa and Turkey and that the term “Melungeon” PROBABLY CAME FROM Turkish. In Turkish “Melun can” means lost soul. The descendants of the Santa Elena colony and Sir Francis Drake’s Moors and Turks can be found in a wide area across the Southeastern United States. Names such as Chavis, Goin, Hall, Jackson, Lopes, Nash, Sexton, and Williams predominate. The Melungeons were victims of ethnic cleaning in Europe and their mostly Christian descendants are the living legacy of the first wave of Muslim immigration to the New World. Dismal Swamp Maroons The Great Dismal Swamp is over one thousand square miles today. In the time of the Maroons it was over two thousand square miles. Its beginning is on a hill from which seven rivers spring. Since the overall area is rather flat, a swamp developed. Several islands are above water level and villages developed on several. Lake Drummond, Paradise Old Fields, and Scratch Hill (mixed swamp and pine barrens) are prominent geologic features. Until the drainage of a large portion of the swamp in the twentieth century, there was an area of giant reeds known as the Green sea. The water of the swamp is black in color, highly acidic, and rumored to have health benefits. Sailors would fill kegs with it for sea voyages since it would stay fresh far longer than regular fresh water. The population of the area probably was never greater than two or three thousand individuals. Virginia Beach and the seer Edgar Cayce (called the sleeping prophet by followers) are the main things the area is known for today. Life in the swamp was hard. Everything had to be made in the swamp and there was little area suitable for farming. Beds were made of fur and fallen trees and furniture was all hand-hewn. Houses were cleaner than the rural norm and man-made paths led to settlements deeper in the swamp. These did not connect with roads leading out of the swamp and had to be traveled with local guides, thus Maroons worried little from outsiders ambushing them. The developed body armor from turkey feathers stuffed into vests and carried on silver-smithing in the swamp. Single manufacture was an enterprise of the border areas, but no record of where the shingle’s Dismal Swamp wood source has come to light. The economic base of the Maroons was communal and they shared housing, food, and household supplies. They worked in gangs for the good of the community and all but the ill and pregnant shared in the work. Settlements were scattered, not clustered, and if one was discovered others likely would not be found easily. In the Dismal Swamp region on the Virginia/North Carolina border, many slaves and indentured servants escaped to seek freedom. The area was also at the edge of a trading region. These Maroons fought many guerrilla wars to keep their freedom. The most famous was the Maroon war of 1801-1802. They attacked Norfolk, Virginia to free slaves held at the local jail and attacked the Pasquotank Militia. The leader of the Dismal Swamp Maroons at this time was named Peter the Second. He was named after Peter Legba – the Voodon messenger of the Spirits. The Maroons fought in the war of 1812 and gained a leader from a free Black community named Captain Mingo. In the swamp a community named Black Mingo Pocosin developed through his leadership. Some Tuscarora Indians lived in the village and contributed to the heritage that developed. 1823 to 1824 saw the greatest guerilla warfare in the area since the Revolutionary war. The Maroon leader at that time was Bob Ferebee. Auntie Ferebee was a spiritual leader for the Maroons.One branch of the Ferebees became Maroon leaders and the other became prominent as one of the first families of the white upper South. Indian Town was originally called Culong after a vanquished North Carolina Indian Tribe and was the center for the White Ferebee clan. The Nat Turner Revolt likely had Dismal Swamp aid since it occurred twenty-five miles from the area. However, Nat Turner proclaimed no aid from outside his area and historians have found no clear linkage. However, Turner and others in the Revolt did plan to retreat to the Dismal Swamp if defeated. 1831 to 1851 saw the development of the Dismal swamp as a spiritual center. Leaders such as Father Gamby Gholar directed practitioners of Afician mysticism (a religion of the use of sorcery and spiritual powers for benign purposes). He held office for over thirty years. Father Alick, a Black Methodist minister, succeeded him. Father Alick was able to be a leader inside and outside the Dismal swamp, a bee keeper, and served as the area mailman. Father Alick also owned a mule that he claimed was Nat Turner’s mule. The mule had the uncanny ability to climb trees so some claimed it could fly! The next great leader was Osman. David Hunter Strother was able to draw a charcoal sketch of him in 1856. Harriet Beecher Stowe (author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin) used him as the model for her Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp. He died of a painful snakebite before the War Between the States. The Maroons sided with the North in the War. Records of people in the Dismal Swamp are mostly twentieth century. A family Bible from the area dates to 1635 and has record of a Nansemond Indian linage for settlers from the Northern part of the Dismal Swamp. Wolf and bear trapping and canoe building techniques came from Native American influences as did carrying rabbit’s feet for good luck. However, dream reading, numerology and other religious practices have West Africa or European roots. A Congo Village was found when a portion of the swamp was drained. It was one of the largest and earliest settlements. Built on stilts, it survives as a model of other undiscovered Maroon villages. Besides the stilts, other Maroon villages probably looked similar to it. The leader of the village was King Jonah. He held court and was born on a litter and carried in a procession like in Bantu villages in West Africa. The Maroons were religious as a whole, but the swamp itself was held as spiritual and their spirituality may derive from that. A group called the seven-fingered glister developed the hereditary spiritual leadership mentioned above. The seven rivers that the swamp grew from gave impetus to a seven-headed hydra-like leadership. If one head was captured, another could grow in its place. Each member was elected for fourteen year terms. Areas of the swamp held special signifigance, such as Paradise Old Field being a center for Serpent King worship. The symbol of the seven-finger glister was the snake. Besides the seven-headed glister, the area had ministers and witches as spiritual leaders. Grace Sherwood, a victim of a 1706 witch trial, hailed from the swamp. In popular folklore the area was haunted and a center of black magic and supernatural activity. In truth, Maroon freedom was the main fear that the swamp held for area Whites. West Virginia Guineas The modern day Guineas and Males of West Virginia are remnants of many diverse elements: British subjects that fled the area of the American revolution, their Palentine wives, soldiers of the Revolution and Indian helpers promised western land for salaries, and local Indian tribal members. The term “Guineas” may refer to a shortening of the Indian word “Alleghany.” The Delaware Indians were settlers in the Ohio River valley and named the river “the fairest river” or “welhiklanna” and the English butchered the word. Prior to 1800 the names Male, Norris, Dorton, Harris, Canaday, Newman, and Croston were the most common. The alternate name of Males likely comes from the first, but some say it is from the infusion of Mali blood into the area bloodlines. By 1810 the degree of non-White mixture was so great that census records listed the Males and Guineas as Mulattos or mixed-race. The Guineas and Males as a group are less well known than the Melungeons, but there is evidence of some Islamic West African linage and influence. |
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AMERICAN INDIAN
MELUNGEON
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NOTICE:
You have permission to print this book for personal use only, and you are welcome to link to this site. You do not have the right to sell, make copies to distribute, or otherwise commercially use this book to promote, or make any money from it. Everything else falls under copyright protection. © 2002
DONATION REQUEST:
This book was started as a way to raise funds to support Melungeon projects. It is being made available free of charge. I will let you be the judge, but I think you will find these many articles both informative and useful. You can show your appreciation by sending a donation in any amount to:
V.C.H.S.
P.O. BOX 554
SNEEDVILLE, TN 37869
Their Website:
http://hometown.
Donations 2
Preface 3
Examining Melungeon History 5
A Search 9
Remnant Indians 12
Final Thoughts 19
Main Sources *
Racial Realities *
About Mediterranean People *
Closing Remarks 24
Visit to the Melungeons 26
The Powhatan Remnants 30
The First European Settlements *
The Spanish and the Powhatan 32
Virginia Tide Water Indians 33
The Founder of the Powhatan Empire *
Jamestown *
Sold into Slavery *
Chief Powhatan - Wahunsonacook 1550s-1618 38
The Powhatan Reservation 39
Our Melungeon Forefathers 39
Melungeon Memories 43
Blackfoot *
Barbados and Melungeons…………………………………………………………………………………..52
Melungeon Mystery…………………………………………………………………………………………58
A New Path………………………………………………………………………………………………….63
This book is specifically aimed at trying to identify the American Indian tribes that may be involved in Melungeon families. From historic times Melungeon people have claimed to be, at least in part, American Indians. Seldom was there anything definite about the tribe or tribes involved. Many claimed to be Cherokee, or simply said they were Indian, without a definite tribe.
What I hope this book will do is give an overview of the possible tribes Melungeons descend from, show some of the ethnic mixing that happened, and relate family stories and traditions about Indian heritage.
Each writer—including myself—is responsible for his or her own work, the accuracy, speculations, etc.… I have tried to get as broad a view, and include as many likely tribes as possible to present in this book. Some writers do not agree with each other—I have welcomed that disagreement, I have not silenced any reasonable point of view. Diversity is what Melungeons are all about, and personally, my guess is that no one point of view will apply to all Melungeon descendants, everyone has their own story. My hope is that this information will be used as a catalyst to cause further searches into the American Indian element in Melungeon lines.
My own involvement in this process began very early as I have had a lifelong interest in American Indians. I have American Indian heritage on my father’s side of the family, and likely Melungeon on my mother’s side of the family. It was only a few years ago that I first heard the word Melungeon. That stirred my interest and caught my attention. When I learned something of the history of Melungeons my interest only deepened, as I grew increasingly confident that my maternal grandmother’s family was very likely Melungeons.
My interest in Appalachia is not just an academic one. I was partially raised in Appalachia, spending many of my summers there while growing up, and making many visits there long afterward. My Grandmother Mary (Branam) Hutchinson’s house was where I added to my knowledge of Appalachia. Nestled right between two mountains of the Cumberland Plateau in northeast Tennessee I received a good taste of southern Appalachia. Going from the Industrial Midwest to those mountains of the south was a bit like going into some time machine and stepping into an earlier era. Gone was indoor plumbing, hot running water, drinking water from the tap. In its place were deadly snakes to watch out for, heating with a coal stove, and lye soap. But also there was the best drinking water I have ever tasted, as well as the cleanest air, and a pace of life so slow as to be standing still. Mountains on a July summer night lit up with fireflies appearing for the entire world like some great Christmas tree. There were stories, folklore, and words more commonly used in Shakespeare’s time than today. Consider a favorite word of my grandmother’s for a "no good", or drunk: SOT. This word was used in exactly the same way by Shakespeare in five of his plays: Comedy of Errors, King Lear, Merry Wives of Windsor, Tempest, and Twelfth Night. Sot was a word I have only heard used by my grandmother, though still found in some English dictionaries, I suspect use of the word was much more common in past centuries. Another favorite word she used was BLAGGARD, or BLACKGUARD, meaning: the worst kind of person. This word is found in many of the Classic works of literature, notably by Mark Twain in Niagara, he uses the word there exactly as my grandmother did—Blaggard. Finally two other words of note were KYARNEY, which was a word for laziness, and may be an Irish word; I have been told that Irish families that immigrated to New York also used this word. The other word of note is RIGMAROLE, pronounced RIGAMAROW by my grandmother. I have never heard anyone other than my grandmother use this word, though Rigmarole is still found in English dictionaries. I found the word used by Edgar Allan Poe in three of his works, I suspect this word was much more popular in the early 19th century.
I would also mention the bit of folklore that I learned from my grandmother, such as A Snake Does Not Really Die Until Sundown. This was believed even if you had chopped the thing into twenty pieces. If A Bird Flies Into Your House Someone In Your Family Is Going To Die. It was believed, though I can’t say I ever saw any results to that one either. Drinking Milk While Eating Fish Will Make You Sick. Sort of makes me sick to think of it. Don’t Let A Frog Pee On You Or You Will Get Warts. No interest in finding out about that one. Steal And Bury Your Neighbor’s Dishrag To Rid Yourself Of Warts. I wonder if that one works? And Finally: If A Dying Snake Eats Snakeberries (they look like miniature strawberries) It Will Live. I can only imagine there were hundreds of ideas like these in the last century in Appalachia. It is probably a miracle that so many have survived for so long, and I suspect that other folklore exists in isolated pockets of Appalachia.
I have tried to give the reader an idea of what influences stirred me to get involved in the Melungeon Movement. Appalachia is a big part of who Melungeons are. I have no expertise except for a lifelong interest in American Indians, my own experiences in Appalachia, and traditions handed down to me by my family members. I am the moderator for the Melungeon and Metis Christians at Yahoogroups. I brought forth the idea for The Melungeon Statement, an attempt to define Melungeons by bringing together Melungeon descendants with various ideas about what, and who Melungeons were/are. I am an author of two books, and I have had articles published in the Appalachian Quarterly magazine, and on web sites and E-zines. But this section is not about me; it is about attempting to discover the source of American Indian input in Melungeon lines. And I have gathered some very good people together to aid in that mission. I hope you will find the following information useful and that it will stir you on the quest of finding your own Melungeon Ancestors.
Karlton Douglas July 2002
EXAMINING MELUNGEON HISTORY AND GENEALOGY
By: JACK GOIN
Having the advantage of living in and near the homeland of the Melungeons has helped me considerably in my search for the true history of the Melungeons and their kinfolks. I first became interested in the Melungeons when told that some authors and historians listed two of my Great Grandparents as Melungeon. My Grandfather Goins denied these allegations and personally told me "My grandma Minor was about 3/4 Indian and Grandpa Goins was about ½". This heritage has not been established as a fact, but Grandpa believed it. His Grandma Susan Minor’s mother was Aggy Sizemore and most of these families filed Cherokee Indian Application beginning in 1905.
Having backtracked the Melungeons from the Clinch River to the New River, to the Flat River and the Pamunkey has helped me to personally dismiss many fables about the Melungeons. One major discovery was that they migrated with the other pioneer settlers and they owned land in all these places. They lived next door to white settlers and had adjoining farms. They went to the same churches and schools, intermarried with all their neighbors, fought in the same wars, including Lord Dunmore’s War 1774 Militia of Fincastle County, Virginia. These men were to fight in the battle of Point Pleasant against the Shawnee Indians. John Collins served 35 days; Micager Bunch served 29 days (1774. Soldiers of Fincastle County, Virginia by Kegley).
Also, I have found no record where they were driven from their land, or driven to the mountains, etc., etc. This rumor may have started from the outdoor drama "Walk Toward the Sunset." I also discovered that most of the story Calloway Collins told the reporter Will Allen Dromgoole in the 1890 interview on Newman Ridge was true. "The Collins and Gibsons were living as Indians in Virginia before they migrated to North Carolina." The Indian tribe was not named and has not been factually proven, but the important part, moving from Virginia to North Carolina has been proven by deeds from all these areas, beginning on the Pamunkey River in Louisa County, Virginia. Orange County, Virginia Order Book 3 record "Alexander Machartoon, John Bowling, Manincassa, Capt Tom, Isaac, Harry, blind tom, Foolish Jack, Charles Griffin, John Collins, Little Jack, Indians being bought before the court for stealing Hogs, Ordered that their Guns be taken away from them till they are ready to depart of this county, they having declared their intentions to depart this colony within a week". On pages 309-312 of Court Record book the above named men individually put up security.4
This party of Saponia ( Monasukapanough) Indians left that county and some of these may have been the same group that formed the settlement near Hillsborough, North Carolina in 1750. It appears from Granville and Orange County tax records that a John Collins arrived in the area about this time. John Collins lived on the Flat River for about 17 years then moved to the New River circa 1767. Tax records from Grayson County, Virginia reveals that Lewis and James Collins were likely sons of John Collins. "James Collins, John Bolin, and Mike Bolin Indians from Blackwater, Newman Ridge, were named by Sneedville attorney Lewis M. Jarvis in 1903, as quite full blooded who fought in the War of 1812-1814". 5 Another Indian family Moses and Mary, Ridley, Riddle are on these same Granville and Orange County, North Carolina tax lists, identified as mulattoes. In Orange County Moses was closely associated with Charles Gibson, Thomas Gibson Sr & Jr, Thomas Collins, Joseph Collins, William Bolin, and John Brown. Moses later moved to Pittsylvania County, Virginia where he is recorded on a 1767 Pittslyvania County Tax List as "an Indian." 6. Moses and Mary were the parents of a William and John Riddle (alias Ridley) who filed a Revolutionary War pension application his Randall moved to Hawkins County, Tennessee. Several Collins, Bolling and other related Melungeon names still live in this area today, now Person County, North Carolina.
Their migration journey began in the 1740's and ended on Newman Ridge about 1790. I can only document one person who lived to make this complete journey. He was Charles Gibson. Charles was the oldest living Melungeon on Newman Ridge when he filed his Revolutionary War Pension Application in 1839 stating that he was born in Louisa County, Virginia. He enlisted near Salisbury, North Carolina. Benjamin Collins, Jonathan Gibson and Jordan Gibson testified that Charles Gibson was reputed to be a Revolutionary War Soldier in their neighborhood. Charles Gibson was the son of Thomas Sr. and Mary Gibson. They sold their land on the Pamunkey River in 1749 to Thomas Mooreman. This land was located on the south side of the Pamunkey River adjoining Gilbert Gibson’s land. Gilbert was the father of Gedion, Jordan, and George Gibson. [Louisa County, Va., deeds and wills]
My incredible research journey includes actually locating and going to these above-mentioned areas. Several photos of these Rivers and Landmarks are in my book "Melungeons And Other Pioneer Families." One of my most memorable discoveries was the Flat River Primitive Baptist Church established in 1750. The present church that stands in the same location was built circa 1930's. The earliest minutes found to date begin in 1770. Unfortunately most of the Melungeons left that area for the New River beginning in 1767.
Living in the neighborhood also created a mystery for me concerning the Melungeons and has left me with two troubling questions, which I have not been able to solve, but one of the most important things I have learned from this research was the words, "perhaps and maybe."
Mystery problem #1- Did the 1700 Melungeon forefathers refer to themselves as Melungeons? If the answer to this question is yes, no records have been found that actually call them by the name Melungeon. Also, to my knowledge no Melungeon tribe has been documented prior to the record in Tennessee.
Mystery problem #2- Was this name Melungeon coined by the local people? If the answer to this question is yes the name would only apply to those people. This is the message I got from living in the land of the Melungeons because during the early years of my life time no person in that neighborhood was actually identified as a Melungeon until after the 1947 Post story, because those people in this time period told their children; "If you don’t be quiet the Melungeons will get you." They would tell you the Melungeons lived somewhere else, or over on the next ridge, etc.
In conversations with several old-timers including two who’s pictures are in the Melungeon story "Sons of the Legend" (1947 Saturday Evening Post Article.) They did not realize until the story was published in the Saturday Evening Post that they were the Melungeons the author was writing about.
William L. Warden, author of this Saturday Evening Post story, asked Asa Gibson who was then 75 years old if his ancestors were Welsh Warriors, Phoenicians or survivors of Roanoke his answer, "an Indian."
One person in the Post story told me the whole Melungeon thing was a myth and laughed about it. She assured me there was no such thing as a Melungeon, but like Grandpa Goins, they also claimed to be of Indian descent. In conversations and letter from Melungeon descendants, including the Collins, Gibson and Bolin families they also claimed Indian descent.
Several authors have suggested that the Melungeons were lying about their Indian nationality just to hide their known African ancestors. I am convinced that old Asa Gibson told the author William Warden, (Saturday Evening Post 1947) story what he believed was the truth, that his ancestors were Indian. This does not exclude Asa from the possibility of having both white, and or black genes. Example; In colonial days if an indentured servant, regardless of their nationality married a Saponia Indian and was accepted in their said Indian tribe, their children would be recognized as Indians. In a few generations their original nationality would be lost to history if they remained in the tribe. If these children married whites, mulattoes, or other free blacks they would eventually lose their Indian identity and would not have a clue as to their original nationality.
Let us examine the historical Melungeons. The first known records that specifically identifies a group of people historically known as the (Melungins) and living in Tennessee. These records also pinpoint their location. Let us examine some of these written records.
Some of the Tennessee State Senators first denied that there was such a race living in Tennessee according to the reporter Will Allen Dromgoole who kept asking and was told by another senator (not named), that the (Malungeons) live in his district. "Only upon the records of the State of Tennessee does the name appear."
This author discovered the word Melungin written in the 1813 Minutes of Stony Creek Church, which was from an accusation that a lady in the church was housing them "Melungins", There is not enough written about this incident to actually determine anything factual. Some of the first Melungeon families migrated circa 1790's from the New River area of Wilkes County, North Carolina to Fort Blackmore and joined the Stony Creek Church 1801-1802. The majority of these were from the old Thomas and Mary Gibson family who originally migrated from Louisa County, Virginia beginning in 1749. Most of these families were gone by 1810.
This term "Malungeons" sprang up again in "The Wig" a
Jonesboro, Tennessee newspaper. This may have been during a
political campaign October 7, 1840. (3) And again in the
celebrated Melungeon trial of 1872 Bolton girl represented by
Attorney Lewis Shepard, of Chattanooga, Tennessee "She is
related to a group of people living in the mountains of East
Tennessee known as (Malungeons)
Several racial clans that existed in the Eastern United States in the 1940-50's have been recognized. Some of these were the Redbones, Croatans, Brass Ankles, Ramps and Melungeons. According to my research of known Melungeon families, the Ramps of Fort Blackmore were related to the families that became known as Melungeons. Oddly the term Melungeon may have also began in Fort Blackmore and later the term Ramps were placed on their kinfolks who remained in Fort Blackmore. Ramptown, known by the locals is located between Fort Blackmore and Dungannon, in Scott County, Virginia.
About The Author:
Jack Goins Lives in Rogersville, Tennessee, Retired from AFG Industries, began family research at an early age.
(1) Articles include; Zephaniah Goins Fought In Yorktown Campaign [Gowen Research Foundation Newsletter, Volume 5 number 3, 1993.]
(2) Melungeon Families-Sizemore, Minor, Goins, Fisher and Riddle Article in [1994 Families Of Hawkins County, Tennessee page 537 to 540]
(3 and 4) Arrington Family page 88 and co-authored Henry Fisher family page 126. [Hancock County, Tennessee And It's PeopleVolume II 1994]
(5) Sizemore Family, Jan 1999 Distant Crossroads Volume XVI, Number 1
(6) May 2000, Published a book "Melungeon And Other Pioneer Families" price $17.95
A SEARCH IN PROGRESS
By: CINDY HARTMAN
I grew up knowing that we had Native American Indian blood
in our family. And was told the Indian heritage was Cherokee. It
was always an intriguing thing to me, imagining ancestors living
in teepees and wearing animal skin clothing. I pictured an
ancestor wearing a feather headdress. No one in my family ever
tried to hide the fact that we had American Indian heritage.
However, no one, to my knowledge, ever wrote down anything about
our Indian ancestors to pass on to later generations. That
heritage might have been a shameful thing to some of my
ancestors, but I was never aware of that attitude in the
ancestors that I had the privilege of knowing. My hopes are of
one day uncovering the identity of my Native American ancestors.
I would like to know how they lived and to what tribes they
belonged. I would also like to know if my ancestors were forced
to leave their home and go on the "Trail of Tears". And if my
mother's family really did have an Indian chief like I was told
when I was a child. I have daydreamed of traveling to Oklahoma
and North Carolina, just to see if I can find any Indian people
who resemble my family members.
Many people have been accused of trying to be Indian, for
reasons that may be less than noble. My desire is to know who my
family was, and understand the things that may have happened to
them. And why those things happened to them. I know that some of
my white relatives killed Indians. I just wonder if those
relatives were part American Indian themselves. My
great-grandfather was a bounty hunter, hunting Indians who had
stolen horses from white men. I believe he was part Indian.
There are heart-breaking stories of Indians being massacred, and
equally heart breaking stories of white settlers being massacred
by Indians. I have read that Governor John Sevier of Tennessee
had a desire to wipe out the Cherokees. But I also know that he
lost many close family members to an ambush by Indians, giving
him the motive of revenge. His niece was a "step" fourth great-
grandmother in my family and she was scalped by Indians. I have
wondered if any of those Indians were my relatives, and why the
two ethnic groups could not get along and peacefully coexist.
My paternal grandmother always appeared to me to be partly
American Indian. She was born in Webber's Falls, Cherokee Indian
Territory, Oklahoma, in 1910. Recently, her sister told me she
and her siblings were 1/16th Cherokee. I now suspect that there
may be more American Indian heritage in our family than I was
told about. My grandmother'
I have an uncle by marriage with the last name of Bryan. He is
of Cherokee descent, and his Indian heritage, and that of his
father, is obvious. His degree of Indian blood I believe to be
very high, but he cannot prove it. He and his parents were told
that records showing his ancestry were destroyed in a fire. From
stories passed down in his family, he does know that he had
ancestors on the Trail of Tears. When his daughter was a baby,
she was often mistaken for an Oriental child. My uncle was in
the Air Force, and people assumed that he had adopted a Korean
child. As a grown woman she is clearly Indian. She is a first
cousin on my father's side of the family, so she has also
inherited any
American Indian we may have from my father's parents. Her
children's surname is Hall, also a Melungeon related name.
I do not believe anyone in my father's family was aware of
American Indian ancestors in the line of my paternal grandfather
Roberson, although his father appeared to be very dark skinned,
with Indian facial features. Very little is known about his
family, as my
great-grandfather seemed to have a knack for alienating his
loved ones. Yet I have found many Robersons listed on Oklahoma
Creek and Cherokee Indian records. I was encouraged to find
several Indian men with the same first and last names as my
grandfather. I hope to be able to prove they are related. Other
known names in my grandfather'
I was told from the time I was a little girl, that my maternal
grandmother was 1/16th Cherokee Indian. I can remember her
telling me many years ago that there was an Indian chief in our
family. Whether that is true or not, I many never know. A
photograph of my grandmother at the age of twenty-one shows her
to be very obviously Indian. She was beautiful and looked very
much like the stereotypical picture of an Indian maiden. She had
dark hair and eyes, with an olive complexion that tanned very
well. I have only seen one picture of her father, but from his
appearance, I know that there is Indian heritage in his line. My
maternal grandmother'
My maternal grandfather'
and Reeves cousins. Growing up, I had never heard of any
American Indian in this line of my family, but because of the
Melungeon connections, I believe there was. Most of these people
lived in the Augusta County, Virginia and Greene County,
Tennessee areas, before moving to Texas. Other known names from
my Guinn line are Crenshaw, Fairburn and McDonald. I have not
yet investigated these names to see if there is any
Indian connection.
I think many times we are able to see American Indian features
in other people, but may not see them in ourselves. Recently, I
asked a friend if she knew what degree of Indian she was. She
looked surprised and wanted to know if I thought she was Indian
because of her high cheekbones. She did not seem to know if she
had Indian heritage,
although she did know her stepfather was 1/4th Indian. She is so
clearly Indian by her appearance, that no one would doubt it.
Several years ago when my son had surgery, his nurse thought I
looked too young to be his mother. When I told her my age, she
attributed my appearance to being part American Indian. I have
never thought I had any American
Indian features. But one of my three sisters has definite Indian
features. I have a picture of her as a child with her long, dark
hair pulled back in pigtails. She has dark eyes, and skin that
tans to a medium brown. In the picture, she resembles an Indian
maiden, just like our grandmother did.
I have not begun to research my husband's family, but
would like to do so. He was adopted as a baby in West Virginia,
so we have not discovered his biological heritage. I do believe
he is of Melungeon descent because of his appearance and
birthplace, so my children will have inherited American Indian
from their father also. I am excited about the possibilities in
that search.
I believe most people born in this country have Native American
Indian ancestry. Many do not know it because the amount of
Indian blood is so small, or the ancestor was so far back in
history. Many of my ancestors lived in northwest Arkansas and
Oklahoma, where there was a large Native American population. I
am a mixture of people from many different countries and many
different walks of life. I am proud of all my ancestry,
including Native American, Melungeon, and European. I will be
equally proud of anything further research may reveal. And I
will pass this pride in our heritage on to my children.
About The Author:
Cindy Hartman lives in Deer Park, TX, just outside Houston, with
her husband, Steve, son Brandon and daughter Bethany.
REMNANT INDIANS OF THE SOUTHEAST
By: KARLTON DOUGLAS
I have always been interested in American Indians. From my boyhood until the present my ears have perked up at the very mention of the word Indian. So it is no wonder that I was fascinated in finding out about the Indian looking cousins on my mom’s side of the family, and that clearly Indian Great Grandmother on my dad’s side. Then there were all those people from East Tennessee and Southeastern Kentucky that looked like Indians. How could I explain my own East Tennessee Indian heritage, along with the legion of those other folks that were from Tennessee and Kentucky who looked like, and claimed to be Indian? There were not supposed to be any Indians in those regions—they had all been moved out west, at least that is the "official" story.
So I started building upon an already well-established foundation of interest in Native Americans. I began searching for clues, any reference I could find for Indians that may have remained in the southeast. There was substantial information that through hiding their heritage, intermarriage with other "races", passing for white, black, or mulatto, that American Indians did indeed leave descendants in the southeast.
In searching for the Indian origin of my great grandmother Mary Byrge Wishoun I was directed to a resident Indian tribe and chief in Scott County, Tennessee where my great grandmother was born, and lived for several years. An editor for a newspaper in that region gave me the telephone number of the tribal chief. I had several phone conversations with her, and correspondence by mail. Donna Markham, also known as Laughing Fawn, is Chief of the United Eastern Lenape Nation (middle division). Formerly known as the Upper Cumberland River Cherokee. The Cherokee band merged with the Lenape when a Chief from that tribe moved south to Tennessee from Ohio and joined them. Chief Markham uses the tribe as a springboard to help the poor in Appalachia. I am proud to say she accepted me as a member in the tribe.
Another interesting event in my desire to gain knowledge about Indians in general came from a visit a few years ago to the newly opened Zane Shawnee Caverns and Indian Museum near my home here in Ohio. Chief Hawk Pope—a direct descendant of the Shawnee Chief Cornstalk—who is today a leader of the Shawnee Nation United Remnant Band, happened to be at the museum and gave me a personal tour. He showed me the artwork, and other exhibits, explaining how the Shawnees had much in common with their neighbors to the south the Cherokee. He also spoke briefly about how Native Americans often were listed as Black Dutch on census records. The personal tour was an honor, and I really enjoyed his insights.
Again the conviction continued to grow that not all Indians were out west.
It is hard to deny your own eyes. Many of the children I grew up with were from the southeast. I had friends that looked like Indians right out of the southwest. Their parents had come from Tennessee and Kentucky for jobs in the Midwest, just like my mother did. When I worked in factories in Ohio, many of the good people I worked with from Kentucky and Tennessee also had Native American features, one guy was actually called by the nickname "Indian". On top of this, my wife, whose family is from Southeastern Kentucky, has Native American ancestry on both sides of her family that clearly show Indian features. This too was a source of interest in the overall picture of these people who appeared to be Indians from the southeast. So the desire for answers continued to grow.
In looking for answers to these Indians of the modern Southeast, I ran across the Melungeons, and discovered that my mom’s side was very likely Melungeon through the Branham surname. I found that Melungeons are considered to be at least part Native American. And researchers like Virginia DeMarce had connected Southeastern Siouan Indians to Appalachian area people. A book called: Indian Island In Amherst County, by Peter W. Houck and Mindy D. Maxham, also showed evidence of Southeastern Siouan Indians in Virginia. They pointed out that a Lewis Evans map of 1751 clearly showed Monacan (Siouan), and Tuscarora (Iroquoian) Indians living in the mountains of Southwestern Virginia. Not only that, they also listed my maternal grandmother’s Branham surname as being prominent among the Monacan Indians. My first documented Branham ancestor was found in the adjoining county to Amherst in the late 1700s. Recently I have found that in the same area a group known as the Buffalo Ridge Cherokee was also asserting their Indian heritage.
The Cherokee was the largest tribe in this region of the southeast where so many Indian looking people have come from. We know that about one thousand Cherokees were able to stay behind in North Carolina and avoid removal to the west.
Cherokee Indians were often mixed with other ethnic groups. Consider that quite a number of Cherokee had already intermarried to whites by the early1800s, and that it is shown in books like: Black Indians, by William Loren Katz, that tribes like the Cherokee had intermarried with Blacks, as well. Indeed as early as 1721 slaves were known to speak not only English, but the Cherokee language also. It is notable that African slaves and Cherokees also shared a common folklore in the "Brother Rabbit" stories as noted by James Mooney in his book about the Cherokee. The proportion of Indian blood among southern Blacks is probably considerable. In the decades between the Revolution and the Civil War Black Indian Societies were reported in TN. VA. NC. NJ. NY. DE. MD. SC. CT. MA. William Loren Katz points this out. It is no stretch to imagine that many Indians, and part Indians were able to avoid removal by simply claiming to be of another race, or were assumed by later Census takers to be so. In his book: From Africa To America, William D. Piersen says that many African Americans labeled as mixed-race were a mixture of African and Native American ancestry rather than African and white European ancestry.
Samuel Carter in his book: Cherokee Sunset, notes that Black slaves worked arm in arm with their Cherokee owners. The Blacks were allowed to plant their own crops, also their children went to the same schools as the children of the Cherokee. Blacks and Cherokees often intermarried. The Children of Black-Cherokee unions were born free. In another place Carter mentions that the 1835 census of the Cherokee listed about 10% of the Nation as Black slaves—1,600 total population Black slaves, keep in mind this is before the removal to the west. There was considerable intermingling between Indians and Blacks.
My Great Grandmother Mary E. Byrge was listed as white on the censuses—you have to wonder about the eyesight of those early census takers—as was her mother Lucy Ann Newport, both of them show Indian features in photographs. My dad’s eyewitness account of his grandmother Mary Byrge also speaks of her looking like a full-blood Indian. And it is understood that she was American Indian through her mother Lucy Ann Newport. If these could pass for white, I can only wonder at how many others must also have passed for white.
The Cherokee tribe probably had contact with more ethnic groups than we will ever know about. All of the southern colonies bought and sold Native American slaves. The slaves worked side by side with Black Africans. As early as 1693 the Cherokee complained slave hunters were kidnapping their people. Hundreds of captured Tuscarora, and nearly the whole tribe of Appalachee was distributed as slaves among Carolina Colonists in the early 18th century. In 1776 Cherokee prisoners of war were still sold to the highest bidder. The Governor of South Carolina was accused of trying to provoke an Indian war by his encouragement of slave hunts. James Mooney writes of these things in his book on the Cherokee, and on page 224 says: "The Cherokee have strains of Creek, Catawba, Uchee, Natchez, Iroquois, Osage, and Shawano blood," This not only from their contact with those tribes, but from their own "slave" taking excursions. The famous Shawnee Chief Tecumseh’s own mother was a Cherokee. She was taken captive from the Cherokees in a reciprocal raid by the Shawnee tribe.
The Uchee/Yuchi Indians resided in East Tennessee, and as far north as the Green River, in Kentucky, Mooney makes note of the fact that the Uchee had a village in Cleveland Tennessee, John Swanton mentions a village in Polk County, Tennessee called the "Rabbit Place". He also mentions that some Yuchi Indians remained in Appalachia among the Cherokee, never moving out of the Appalachian region. The Yuchi were thought to be Siouan Indians, but the Uchean language may be distinct from all others. They called themselves: "Children of the Sun." David H. Corkran in his book about the Creek Indian frontier informs us that Yuchi Indians were said to have stolen English slaves in the 1730s, this shows that the potential for ethnic mixing was there at an early period.
The Natchez also had several villages in Tennessee and a joint village with the Cherokee in North Carolina at the junction of Brasstown Creek and the Hiawassee River. The Natchez were driven into Tennessee because of warfare in the west, in 1729 the Natchez and a group of Blacks attacked the French in Louisiana. It is likely that the some of the Black allies of the Natchez followed them into Tennessee, thus we have opportunity for continued ethnic mixing. Swanton says that the Natchez long maintained an independent existence in the territory of the Cherokee, and that a great deal of Natchez blood flows in the veins of the Cherokee. Both the Yuchi and Natchez tribes were incorporated into the Cherokee before the removal. It is possible that people of East Tennessee and Southeastern Kentucky with Native ancestry may have received that ancestry from Yuchi, Natchez, or other tribes absorbed by the Cherokee that did not go west in the removal.
The Cherokee more than just about any other tribe tried to blend in with the whites around them, in clothing, farming, slave holding, trade, and religion. Still, despite every attempt to remain in the east, President Andrew Jackson was determined to have them removed, even defying a Supreme Court ruling to do so. We know that about one thousand Cherokee were able to officially remain behind in North Carolina, and it is more than likely that other Cherokees remained hidden and blended into the white communities of Appalachia in particular. I can find no other explanation for the large number of southerners from Tennessee and Kentucky that claim, and certainly show Indian Heritage. It had to be a large, persecuted, southern tribe to leave so many remnant members behind, and the most obvious source is the Cherokee. In 1819 Cherokee territory included the mountainous areas of, NC. TN. GA. AL. The Cherokee in the east numbered 16,542 people in the census for the year 1835. In Tennessee and North Carolina alone they numbered 6,172 individuals in that same census. (The removal didn’t take place until the years 1838-1839.)
I believe that at the time of the Cherokee removal in the east a lot of whites were already intermarried into the tribe. Every history about the Cherokee tells of their intermarriage with white Europeans from an early period of contact, before their removal from the east. For instance, the famous Cherokee leader Nancy Ward had a white husband. Any doubt about Cherokee intermarriage with whites is easily removed by looking at eastern Cherokee Rolls, such as the Immigration Roll of 1817 which has a large number of English surnames. Isn’t it possible that Indians with white relations, maybe even states away, could have been taken in and hidden during the Cherokee and other removals of the Five Civilized Tribes? This is only a hypothesis, but would help to explain why so many Indians were able to remain in the east. I know my own white Great Grandmother Rachel Walden took in two Indian Children in east Tennessee in the twentieth century to care for, so I hardly think it a stretch that it could have happened in historic times among white families intermarried to the Cherokee. Other Cherokee may simply have hidden in the mountains to avoid being removed. It is hard to believe otherwise when you consider the legion of people who filtered into the Industrial Midwest from southern states that look Indian, and claim Indian heritage. It has been said that there is hardly a county in Ohio that doesn’t have someone who claims Indian Heritage. This is in addition to those descendants who remained in the southeast and also claim Indian Heritage. It is a shame that we feel we have to prove our Native Heritage. No one expects you to prove you’re German, Irish, and Scottish, but somehow there are doubts if you say you are American Indian, especially if you don’t fit the stereotype Hollywood Indian. By all accounts American Indians come in many shapes and sizes, shades and hues. We don’t all look like Sitting Bull, or Red Cloud. Cherokee, and being Native American is also a heart and spirit thing as well, that too is overlooked.
The stories of Indian great grandmothers from Appalachia are legion. Made completely believable when you look at their descendants, many of whom do have features that would allow them to walk onto the set of any American Indian Hollywood movie.
In the book: Indians of the United States, by Clark Wissler, he notes that due to continued intermarriage between whites and Indians about half of the Indians in the United States are mixed with whites. By the year 1900 nearly half of all Cherokee were married to whites and spoke English. In the 1990 census 80% of American Indians were of mixed ancestry. American Indians are becoming whiter genetically. Obviously this is not only a recent phenomena.
Besides the three federally recognized tribes of Cherokee, there are more than fifty other Cherokee organizations in at least twelve states.
The Cherokee undoubtedly make up a large portion of Native American input of those from Tennessee, Kentucky and southern Appalachia in general, but an often-overlooked group is the Southeastern Siouan Indians.
The Southeastern Siouans inhabited the Piedmont region of Virginia and North Carolina.
The northern Iroquois were their enemies. John Lawson, an early surveyor in the southeast said the southern Siouans joined together for mutual protection. There are a dozen or more names for these Siouan tribes. Some of the most prominent names were Monacan, Saponi, Tutelo, Sara, Manahoac, Occaneechi, and Catawba.
The Southeastern Siouans are believed to have originally resided in the Ohio Valley. I take great pleasure in the thought that as a possible descendant of the Siouans I now reside in the area that they originated from. Moreover it is a tradition that the Cherokee also dwelt in the area of Ohio in their early history, but were driven south by their enemies. Maybe there is some poetic justice that my residence is where my Indian forefathers once called home.
The historic home of the Monacans was in Virginia on the James River, at a place called Manikin near Richmond. Today the Monacans reside in Amherst County, Virginia, and are a State recognized Tribe.
The Monacan confederation originally consisted of the Tutelo, Manahoac, Saponi, Sara, and Monacan proper. In the year 1714 the Monacan-Sara of Virginia and North Carolina were estimated at 750 people.
In 1700 John Lawson the surveyor traveled through villages of the southern Siouans. He mentions coming across a unique tribe named the Keyauwee. These Keyauwee Indians had mustaches and whiskers. I think it is quite possible that these Keyauwees were a remnant group of Spaniards, likely intermarried into the southern Indians. The Keyauwee were not mentioned much before 1700 when Lawson found them in a palisade village, after 1761 they do not reappear in any historical records, it is possible that this North Carolina tribe left remnants among todays Indian descendants. As for the Spanish—it is still a mystery as to what happened to some of the Spanish soldiers and Missionaries of Forts in the Carolinas and Tennessee frontier, and other outposts in the southeast. It is quite possible that they took native wives and by 1700 were for all purposes a "tribe", yet a unique tribe with mustaches and whiskers. It would be interesting to know how many shipwrecked sailors of different nationalities may also have found their way into the southeastern tribes.
After 1700 the Saponi, Keyauwee, Tutelo, and some other small tribes of Indians headed north to Virginia and resided just north of Roanoke, they lived in Virginia 25 years before they were thought to have returned to the Carolinas. I think it likely that some remained in Virginia, then possibly moved further back into the western mountains.
Swanton records that in 1761 the southern Tuscarora, Meherrin, Machapunga, and southern Saponi were on and near Roanoke River in southwestern Virginia and that the Meherrin probably had ultimately united with the Tuscarora. These Indian tribes did not completely remove to the north to join their Iroquois brethren until 1802—so there was ample time for them to mix with the surrounding ethnic groups.
To summarize this: Iroquoian and Siouan tribes in the southeast were already joining forces because of their dwindling numbers after 1700—they told Lawson they were doing this—Tuscarora, Saponi, Meherrin, Monacan, and others were located in the mountains of western and southwestern Virginia circa 1750 and later. These tribes very likely had a disproportionate ratio of females over males due to constant warfare, and because of slave hunters stealing males. When White, FPC (Free Persons of Color), and other males moved into these frontier areas it is likely they would have married the females at hand from the tribes mentioned. Consider also that these tribes like the Keyauwee were probably already mixed with Spanish and others from an earlier period. This explains the Mediterranean element found in groups like the Melungeons, and there is additional information emerging about Armenians and others in Virginia brought over for industries like the silk trade. All this adds up to an interesting and very amalgamated group of people in the southeast. American Indian was certainly a large part of any mixture.
It can be stated that the Spanish were among the
Cheraw/Sara/
One other strange, but interesting item is worth mentioning. The Siouan Catawba and the Powhatan Rappahannock both made use of the Crossbow. The Spanish, particularly those Spaniards with De Soto, used this weapon against Indians in the southeast. Also when Juan Pardo was in the southeast years later his men used the crossbow as one of their principle weapons. It is in Pardo’s weapon supply list. Could these Indian tribes have learned the use of this weapon from the Spanish?
The State Recognized Virginia Monacans, The Saponi Indians of North Carolina, and the better known tribe of Catawbas evidence that the Southeastern Siouans are still among us.
What about those who were scattered upon the ridges, and within the hollows of the Appalachians? Those who blended into the white settlements, black communities, or who didn’t blend in at all but were labeled Melungeon? Is it possible, even likely that the southeastern Siouan blood still flows in the veins of the multitude who have an Indian grandma, or are themselves obviously Indian, yet have no records to back that up?
We know the Southeastern Siouans existed, we know they were in the Appalachian areas as tribes even as late as 1755. Lewis Evans’ map of 1751 shows Monacan as well as Tuscarora Indians in the area of southwestern Virginia. Mitchell’s map of 1755 shows Sara Indian towns in northwestern North Carolina. Virginia DeMarce mentions the Saponi tribe as residing in Orange County, Virginia, later they were found to be among Tennessee Melungeons. So the Saponi Indians are certainly part of the Indian mix of Appalachians with Indian heritage.
In the twentieth century little articles began to appear in books about Native Americans. The word Tri-Racial-Isolate (White, Black, and Indian), and the label "Marginal Groups" were added to explain pockets of people who claimed to be Native American, especially in the southeast. Melungeon was a name that was also applied to them. The Historians and Ethnologists were not sure what to do with these people, but they had to classify them somehow. They figured they had it covered by using the label Tri-Racial, so they tucked them into this category thinking they had it figured out. And I agree that Tri-Racial is part of the mix, we know for instance that Lawson ran into Virginia Traders with 38 loaded pack horses when he left the Keyauwee village. That was in 1700—I am sure there was plenty of white contact after that time. And just by considering the well-known historic tribes and their positive attitude about blacks—adopting and accepting them as fellow warriors—it is not hard to picture them in the mix as well. After all, where would a free person of color or an escaped slave head to in those days before the Underground Railroad? Obviously west, into the mountains, and who would they run into there—the Eastern Siouan Indians.
In a book called: From Africa to America, by William D. Piersen, he notes that from the time of the Spaniard expeditions of the sixteenth century Africans would escape from their Spanish masters and settle among the American Indians. Those Tuscarora Indians already mentioned as being in southwestern Virginia in 1751 were known to have built forts during the Tuscarora War that resembled forts in West Africa. Indeed it seems that an escaped African named Harry who joined the Tuscarora Indians was the one who taught them to build their sturdy forts. Though many of the Tuscarora would go north and join their Iroquois brothers, they would do so over a period of ninety years. And there were neutral Tuscarora who did not take part in the Tuscarora War who may never have moved north. The Tuscarora Indians are undoubtedly part of the mixture of southeastern people with Native American heritage.
William D. Piersen records that on the Appalachian frontier black males escaping slavery would marry into the Indian nations of that area who had become weakened. And these black males took the place of missing Indian males among the tribes. And that is the very thing I have thought for quite some time—I was glad to find I wasn’t the only one to think so. Warfare along with Indian males being taken as slaves had to leave an uneven ratio of males to females among many tribes in the southeast. Just as the male ratio of black slaves probably outnumbered females—especially of those likely to be found on the frontier, this was a situation that made a good fit for black males and Indian females.
Considering just the face value of the term Tri-Racial, a question arises in my mind—what tribe made up the Indian part? I think an obvious answer is—along with the Cherokee and some Tuscarora—the Southeastern Siouans. What group made up the white part besides possible children of the traders, and maybe some escaped white indentured servants, along with the later whites moving into the frontier area of Appalachia? Could Spanish Portuguese have been mixed in there? Besides those already mentioned where did the blacks come from who joined the mix? Could some of them have been among the Spanish as Conversos—Moors? We need to be cautious about trying to put folks into a tidy little box ethnically or racially.
The Spanish spent more time in Georgia than any other area of the southeast with the exception of Florida. They had contact with the Cherokee, but particularly with the Creek Indians. It is very likely that the Spanish—and those who were with them—are part of the genetic mixture of the southeastern Indians.
Something that jumped out at me in William D. Piersen’s book was that in 1653 an Englishman was taken to a Tuscarora Indian village where he found a wealthy Spaniard with his family of thirty persons. Also with the Spaniard were seven black slaves. Not only did the Englishman find these, but also there was a strange black person said to be of the "Newxes" nation. After digging around a bit I would now speculate that this last person was actually from the Neusiok tribe of Indians. These Neusiok Indians lived south of the Neuse River in North Carolina and were believed to have joined the Tuscarora Indians.
So here again we have a situation with Indians, blacks, and a "rich" Spaniard. Nothing is dull about the history of the southeast.
Back to the Siouans. I think from what little bit I have written here it is obvious that the southeastern Siouans have not completely disappeared. I think it is not a stretch to say they make up the heritage of at least some Appalachian people with Indian heritage. Since all the Indians were supposed to have been sent out west, in the eye of the census beholder these folks were listed as White, Black, Mulatto, Black Dutch, Mixed, and Free Person of Color (FPC). The academics fairly worship these often bogus census records, and point to them as evidence in their studies. I have seen enough census records to doubt them in a serious way. I have seen race designation on census micro-films that have been changed white to black, black to white, two brothers living beside each other, one listed as white, one listed as black. My own great-grandmother was very dark, yet she was given a white rating on the census. So let us not put too much of our faith in these records. Especially when you are looking at a stand in for Pocahontas, and she is listed as white.
A great obstacle in researching our Indian ancestors is
that Native Americans did not keep written records. And the few
records kept by whites—often-
Are there people from Kentucky and Tennessee—Appalachia in general that are American Indian? The answer again is a resounding Yes!
Note:
I have focused mainly on the regions of Kentucky, Tennessee and southern Appalachia where these descendants of Indians may have got their Indian ancestry. There are more groups in the Southeast such as the Lumbee, Seminoles, and others who also descend from Indians that I have not delved into here, but nevertheless are Southeastern Indians.
It should also be noted that people who migrated westward into Appalachia from the Tidewater-coastal regions might have already been mixed with Powhatan, Pamunkey, and other coastal tribes—thus they would have been added to the Indian mix as well.
History, Myths, And Sacred Formulas Of The Cherokees, by James Mooney.
Indian Island In Amherst County, by Peter W. Houck, M.D. and Mintcy D. Maxham.
Black Indians, by William Loren Katz.
Encyclopedia Of North American Indians, edited by Frederick E. Hoxie.
The Indian Tribes Of North America, by John Reed Swanton.
The Indians Of The Southeastern United States, by John Reed Swanton
"Very Slitly Mixt" Tri-Racial Isolate Families Of The Upper South A Genealogical Study, by Virginia Easley DeMarce.
Indians Of The United States, by Clark Wissler.
The Creek Frontier, by David H. Corkran.
From Africa To America, by William D. Piersen.
RACIAL REALITIES, AMERICAN INDIANS AND MELUNGEONS
By: KARLTON DOUGLAS
I don’t think it is easy for us to grasp the realities that many of our ancestors were faced with.
Can you imagine what it would have been like to be a person of color in say, 1820, or 1920?
During early periods of outright racism they were dealing
with racial laws and prejudice on an unbelievable scale. People
of Color were forced to go "underground"
You have a period where the offspring of mixed Indians dared not admit to being Native American—for fear of being removed to the west—so they may have claimed to be free blacks. Later after the Indians were removed they would have found it safer to claim to be Indian than black because of racial prejudice against blacks. I can easily picture a white man, or woman, claiming their dark mate’s ancestry was Indian, or African, depending on the racial climate, to avoid persecution for their mixed children. In one or two generations no one would know the difference, and would accept what the ancestors claimed, or were labeled as. I give one note of caution here. Though my focus has been on American Indians and the mixing of the various ethnic groups, I do not consider to be prejudice those individuals who reject one ethnic group or another as being part of their own particular Melungeon line. Not if it is because their own family-line has shown through genealogical research and family traditions to be either Indian, or African, or Mediterranean, and is basically one of those, exclusive of the others. Their research may point to one, or the other of those sources of origin. I do however take issue with those people who insist that because their ethnic ancestry is either one particular ancestry, or another—all other Melungeons must be of that ethnic ancestry as well, and they would exclude the other ethnic groups from the mix. I do not wish to imply in any of the writing that I have done about Melungeons that a person is prejudice because they really believe their Melungeon ancestor was of this, or that ethnic group. Just don’t try to tell me a person was not a Melungeon because they had an ethnic group involved in their heritage that someone does not approve of.
I paint with the broadest possible brush, but I acknowledge that every individual Melungeon family is different.
Knowing human nature and the facts we have—racial mixing has always occurred. It was probably amazing to see how fast racial prejudice could melt when a white man or woman fell head-over-heals for an attractive person of color. Now some people of color were Indian, but likely others were not. When you consider the sheer numbers of Mulattos, Africans—slave and free—compared to the number of Native Americans in the east, and southeast, you have to conclude that a good sized portion of those early people of color were of African Ancestry, or at least part African Ancestry.
I do believe there is a unique blend in Melungeon. The
term Tri-Racial applies in some instances, but I believe the
core of the groups ethnic stock was more involved than that. We
should probably also include small Native American tribes now
considered "extinct" that were mixed with Mediterranean people.
This Native American-Mediterran
The Melungeon mix is not an exact proportion. White is evident in many, but some appear to be mostly Indian, or black, or have a dark European look. Again, there is no exact mixture, to say Melungeon is to say—mixed!
Here is the great fun—or aggravation of it all—many of these people have flown the coup, so to speak. They have scattered as Appalachia has opened up to the rest of the world, and Melungeon descendants have left Appalachia to find better jobs, and less prejudice by hiding their past. Many look "white", so they had no trouble hiding their past. No one can blame Melungeons for wanting to avoid having their children suffer persecution. But now that some of those fires of racial hatred have died down the grandchildren and great grandchildren want to know where their ethnic ancestry came from—even if it includes African and American Indian, maybe even especially if it does.
I think it will be interesting to see if an exact definition of Melungeon can ever be concluded. But the answer can not be one of exclusion—or we become the very thing our ancestors dreaded.
ABOUT MEDITERRANEAN PEOPLE AMONG AMERICAN INDIANS
There are three ethnic groups that I don't question
whether or not they are part of the "Melungeon Mix", considering
that they are mixed in different amounts, and all three may not
be involved in every family:
White Northern European, Black African, Red American Indian. For
me the only question is if, and when Mediterraneans came into
the mix. I believe they are, and in 3 different waves, I will
call it: The Three-Wave-Theory.
FIRST: Through the well known historical fact that Spanish
soldiers and Missionaries were in the American Southeast. And as
someone pointed out—they didn't have women with them. Also Forts
in the southeast were abandoned and we still don't know what
happened to the Spanish group of people who manned them. I think
it likely that these Spaniards mixed with the surrounding Indian
tribes.
SECOND: Through Tidewater and Coastal Indian tribes that were
pushed back into Appalachian areas by the advance of whites,
such as the Powhatan Indians of Virginia, Tuscarora Indians of
North Carolina, the Coosa Indians of South Carolina. There are
reports of shipwrecks, and stranded sailors on the Carolina
coast, I think if these men survived they did so by joining
nearby Indian tribes.
THIRD: Through facts that are now coming to light of Armenians,
and possibly Turkish slaves who were brought to America in the
17th century. I think it likely that these people would have
moved back into the frontier area much like the FPC (Free People
of Color) did, and mixed with the forming groups of Melungeons.
Some specific information:
In checking on which Indian tribe it would have been that mixed with the Spanish who were driven from Santa Elena, South Carolina, and went to the area of Asheville, North Carolina. My best deduction based on John Swanton's book: Indians of the Southeastern United States, is the Cheraw tribe whose home was in the area of Asheville, North Carolina. These Indians are specifically mentioned as having contact with these Spaniards. This tribe became the Saura/Sara Indians. De Soto had visited them early on, and Spanish captain Juan Pardo visited them in 1566 and built a fort there named Fort San Juan in which he left his lieutenant Boyano with some soldiers. Later Boyano took part of his force to Chiaha on the Tennessee River. When Pardo reached the Cheraw town in 1567 the Indians had it besieged, but the Indians submitted on Pardo's arrival. When Pardo returned to Santa Elena this garrison and three others were destroyed by the Natives. And there is no record of what became of the Spanish here, except that they appear to have settled east of Asheville, North Carolina which brings us back around to the Cheraw/Sara Indians again. Later the Cheraw/Sara did join the Keyauwee, we actually never hear much about the Keyauwee until around 1700 which makes them suspect as they are the bunch singled out by the surveyor John Lawson as being the strange mustached and bearded Indians. Maurice Mathews of South Carolina listed tribes he was familiar with in the Carolinas in 1670. He had visited them in the late 17th century. Among others he names the Keyawah (Keyauwee), and he says of these tribes of Carolina, that the Indians were generally "Poore and Spanish."
The Keyauwee traveled north to Virginia and disappear from the records after 1761—which makes them an excellent suspect Indian tribe for Mediterranean input in Melungeon lines. My belief that the Keyauwee were mixed with Spaniards seems very likely.
A few more things are worth mentioning regarding Spanish-Indian mixing. Lawson says of the Catawba "King", that he kept on hand several prostitutes for service to Europeans who passed by.
In the book: The Juan Pardo Expeditions, by Charles Hudson, he mentions that one of Pardo’s men, Juan Martin married an Indian woman named Teresa. He likely married her in the back country when he was posted there under Boyano during Pardo’s first expedition. Boyano also brought eight women slaves out of the interior, they were set free in the year 1567. The Pardo expeditions were during the years 1566-1568 and covered the areas of South Carolina, North Carolina, and East Tennessee. The forts setup by Pardo were later destroyed by Indians, a few soldiers escaped, some may have been taken prisoner, while others were killed by the Indians.
The Juan Pardo documents clearly show how dependent the Spaniards were upon the Indians for food, and that the survival of these Spaniards was clearly dependent upon the goodwill of the Indians. Pardo was in contact with the Creek-Muskogean, Iroquioan, Catawba-Siouan, and likely Yuchean tribes. It cannot be emphasized enough that the Spanish explorers had a good deal of contact with the Creek tribes, but it is worth noting that the Cherokee were also visited by Pardo at a village called Tocae, near present Asheville, North Carolina.
On the ethnic mixing issue you should know that Pardo specifically warned his commander at Fort Santiago not to let the soldiers bring women in at night. Do you think that may have been a problem? Consider the account of Teresa Martin, the wife of Juan Martin, given in the year 1600 that when Pardo did not return at an appointed time the soldiers abused the native women, bringing the wrath of the Indian men against the Spaniards.
I will offer one last thing for your consideration. Though I cannot accurately estimate the possible number of Indian-Spanish mixed offspring. I think common sense will allow me to speculate that whatever the number was, those mixed offspring would very likely have been better able to withstand the European diseases and germs brought among the Native Americans by the Spanish. And more likely to be among those remnants Indians of the southeast who later would mix with other ethnic groups in the area of Appalachia and beyond.
MELUNGEONS "POSSIBLE" TIMELINE AND ETHNIC MIX:
Rootstock: Native Americans, Spanish Portuguese-Moors, Angolan and other Africans.
1720-----1780
Addition: White Northern Europeans, Free Black-Africans, and additional Native Americans.
(Melungeons still consider themselves Indian & Portuguese at this time.)
1780-----1850
An Amalgamation: All of the above races and groups: though White Northern European is becoming dominant as can be seen by use of White Surnames. Racist pressures begin to move Melungeons away from their original Culture and Heritage.
1850-----Present
White Wash: Heavy admixture of Whites. With some Freed Slaves, African Americans, American Indians, and groups of Melungeons continuing to mix over the generations. Though many Melungeons are showing up as White on the Census’ and many are trying to hide their ancestry because of persecution. Others are leaving traditional Melungeon areas for better opportunities. With the exception of a few who remained in Melungeon areas, and were proud of their heritage in spite of harassment and prejudice, and who clearly stood out as being of a different ethnic background. The rest are just now, or recently discovering this part of their heritage as info has become available in books, old records coming to light, and through the Internet.
Back when I first joined the Melungeon e-mail list at Rootsweb I asked the following question to decide if the list was right for me: "Does this group accept that Blacks are part of the Melungeons?"
I received a number of responses, many were good, but some off-list responses had an underlying anger and resentment that I would even suggest such a thing. I stayed because of the good responses.
Racism is alive and well sad to say. I have seen it from
close, and distant relatives, in news reports, and very sadly,
even among a few Melungeon descendants. My focus has been on
American Indian elements among Melungeons, because that is where
I am most knowledgeable—
That statement has stuck in my mind, and keeps me looking, "in the woodpile". It motivated my search into genealogy, trying to discover my own ethnic past. I believe that he, or she (the African/s) are hiding, not willingly, but because they had to due to the racism around them. Maybe they even took refuge among my Native American ancestors long ago, those who didn’t know racism against blacks until whites taught it to them, even then Native Americans never became as expert at it as some whites. I would be surprised to find out that there was not African heritage in my family lines somewhere.
Melungeon descendants must be willing to embrace the
totality of our ethnic past: White Northern European, African,
American Indian, and Mediterranean. And never should one ethnic
group be uplifted at the expense of another. Even though every
family is different—some may be mostly White, or Indian, or
African, or Mediterranean…
I have seen positive change among Melungeons. A move toward becoming more accepting of the African element as part of the Melungeon ethnic past, of accepting all the various ethnic elements that make up who Melungeons were, and are today. Exclusion should have no place here, we should never be, of the "Indian", "African", or "Mediterranean" camp, never holding one group up as greater in importance than another. The lesson of Native Americans is clear for anyone with eyes to see—Divide and Conquer. That is the history of Native Americans, one group of Europeans pitting them against another, against themselves, and even against Blacks when the Europeans wanted to secure control over them. When Native Americans joined together they were a force to be reckoned with. Consider the powerful Six Nations Iroquois before they divided during the Revolution. Pontiac and his alliance of Indians, (he was killed by an Indian by the way). Tecumseh the great leader whose oratorical skills for uniting the tribes terrified the whites. Consider Custer’s fall at the hands of a united Indian front. We should all learn from these historical lessons that Melungeons must stand together, differences must take a back seat to the common good. I have a vision of what could be, that keeps getting tarnished by dark clouds of division, by things that really don’t matter in the final analysis.
I have outlined a number of possible and likely tribes that are involved in Melungeon lines. To me it is not as important that we know the specific tribe as it is that we acknowledge the fact of American Indian involvement in Melungeon heritage. Tecumseh preached that Indians should unite, and simply be known as Indians rather than of this, or that tribe. We should also as Melungeons with Indian heritage be proud to say we are American Indian, regardless of any particular tribe.
American Indian Remnants are among Melungeons. We should search out, and seek to discover, and recover that important part of our ethnic past. Though we have never lived on a Reservation, or struggled and suffered the way our brothers and sisters in the west have, we still should lay hold of that great part of our heritage, embracing this wonderful piece of our ancestry.
Again, my plea is for us to embrace every part of who we are, to avoid division, and be proud of the fact that we are a mixed-— new hybrid people in the New World.
About The Author:
Karlton Douglas lives in Ohio with his wife and daughter. He spent his summers growing up at his grandmother’s home in Appalachia. Moderates the Melungeon Christians e-mail list. Is the author of two books: Chronic Illness: Living With a Thorn. And the fictional story: Griffin Island. He is on the devotional writing team of Rest Ministries. He has had articles published in the Appalachian Quarterly magazine, and contributes articles to Angel Wings Magazine, web sites, and other E-zines. He is proud of his mixed ethnic hybrid status.
VISITS TO THE
MELUNGEONS AND TIDEWATER VIRGINIA GROUPS
By: W. GROSVENOR
POLLARD
During a visit to my parents in Oak Ridge, Tennessee the
summer of 1962, I was introduced to a juvenile probation officer
who had been assigned Hancock and Hawkins counties in northern
Tennessee as part of his jurisdiction. His supervisor had
informed him that there were several communities of a
"mixed-blood" people known as Melungeons and claiming an
American Indian identity in those counties, with the major
concentration being on Newman's Ridge, northeast of Sneedville,
in Hancock County. He was to visit this community to determine
how to proceed with rehabilitating potential Melungeon juvenile
offenders.
Learning from my parents that I was a graduate student in
anthropology at The University of Oklahoma, he asked if I would
accompany him on the trip and conduct interviews with any
Melungeons we met. I welcomed the opportunity. My companion
first had to introduce himself to the sheriff in Sneedville, who
informed us that, until about 1950, the Melungeons were rarely
seen in any towns in the county except for quick trips for
groceries or gasoline. Many Melungeon families were leaving
Hancock and Hawkins counties for construction jobs in New
Tazewell in neighboring Claiborne County. There were also
several communities of Melungeons in Lee County, Virginia who
were supposedly engaged in coal mining or logging.
Newman's Ridge is the second ridge northeast of Sneedville to
the right of State Highway 33. We followed a dirt road along the
foot of the ridge through a narrow valley, known locally as
Skunk Hollow, and passed many young people with black hair and
varying shades of bronze skin color before seeing the first
house. This was the only house we saw on the right side of the
road, opposite the foot of Newman's Ridge.
A woman came out and, after we introduced ourselves and told her
why we had come, she informed us that she had been permanently
banished from the Melungeon community on the ridge. She had been
left with five young children to care for on a meager salary as
a checker at a grocery in nearby Rock Hill when her first
husband, a Melungeon, died. An African-American co-worker
befriended her and helped care for her children. Other
Melungeons had threatened her with banishment if she did not end
the relationship, and made good on the threat when she and her
friend married. The only way they would accept her back into the
community was for her to divorce the man and never befriend
another African-American.
Her banishment became irrevocable when she gave birth to a sixth
child fathered by her second husband. The reason is clearly that
her marriage to an African-American and having a child with him
could be seen as validating the claim of many local whites that
the Melungeons were actually mulattos attempting to deny their
Negroid ancestry by claiming to be American Indians. The entire
community risked being branded with this stereotype if she was
not expelled.
The poor woman recommended that we talk to her neighbor, a Mr.
Bell, on the other side of the road. He and his father were said
to be the most knowledgeable about the history of the community
on the ridge. Mr. Bell identified himself and his family as
American Indians, although no one had any idea what tribe, or
tribes, they were descended from. He recognized that the
Melungeons are not culturally distinct from their rural
Appalachian white neighbors and was aware of the theory that the
Melungeons are descended from shipwrecked Portuguese sailors who
made their way inland. He said that this is an invention,
borrowed from the so-called "Guineas" of West Virginia, and used
by those with light complexions in the hope of marrying whites
and producing children with even lighter complexions. The only
hope for darker Melungeons, like Mr. Bell, was that the
Tennessee State legislature would acknowledge their American
Indian identity. But he recognized that there was little chance
of this unless the group can prove descent from some tribe known
to have inhabited Hancock County.
Mr. Bell's father, who was away on business, and one or two
elderly women in Rhea County were the only Melungeons he knew of
who spoke an American Indian language. The senior Mr. Bell and a
visiting Cherokee from the Qualla Reservation in western North
Carolina had found that language and Cherokee to be mutually
unintelligible.
Asked if there were any customs he thought were possibly Indian,
Mr. Bell said at least the Melungeons on Newman's Ridge built
A-frame "chicken coops" about two feet high over the graves of
family members. Every Memorial Day, gifts of food and water are
left in these for the souls of the departed who might not have
gone on "to their reward." My later investigation proved that
this custom is a possible clue to the ancestry of the Melungeons.
I knew that Cherokee territory in East Tennessee did not extend
north of the French Broad River and was curious to know what
Indians may have occupied land north of it before white
settlement. I found the answer in John Reed Swanton's *Indians
of the Southeastern United States*. Bulletin 137 of the Bureau
of American Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution, 1946.
Swanton reported that there were three bands of the Yuchi (Uchee
or Euchee): a southern one centered near the present Macon,
Georgia; a middle one near the present Talladega, Alabama; and a
northern one centered on Newman's Ridge in Hancock County,
Tennessee. The northern band were not among the Yuchi forced to
relocate in Indian Territory in the 1830s. They were settled on
the Qualla Reservation with the Eastern Cherokee band and
allowed one representative on the tribal council. All
deliberations were in Cherokee, which none of the Yuchi
understood (understandable, since Cherokee belongs to the
Iroquoian language stock and Yuchi to the Siouan one). After two
years of feeling like strangers among the Cherokees, the Yuchi
left and returned to Newman's Ridge.
Frank G. Speck, in his *Ethnology of the Yuchi Indians*
(Anthropological Publications of the University Museum,
University of Pennsylvania, no. 1, 1909), both describes and
includes a photograph of the spirit houses the Yuchi in
north-eastern Oklahoma erect over the graves of deceased family
members. They appear to be the same structures Mr. Bell called
"chicken coops." This strongly suggests that, whatever other
ethnic and genetic elements make up the Melungeons, the core
group may well have been the northern band of the Yuchi.
A visit to the Chickahominy and Rappahannock in Tidewater
Virginia in 1973 gave me several good reasons to think that the
claim of a Negroid genotype in such racial isolates in the
Eastern United States should be seriously downplayed. The
Rappahannock in Caroline and Essex Counties were not as
sensitive to this claim for reasons stated below. The slowness
of rural school boards to desegregate the public schools and
their attempts to place Chickahominy, Mattaponi, Upper Mattaponi
(or Adamstown Indians), and Nansemond children in schools
reserved for blacks threatened to invalidate any claims of these
groups to an American Indian identity.
The Chickahominy are divided into two bands southeast of
Richmond, a larger one in a rural area between Charles City and
Providence Forge, and a smaller one centered in Providence Forge
itself. They recognize that many African-Americans in the area
have the same physical features they do and admit that this is
perhaps the result of band members who fraternized with blacks
being forced out of the group through ostracism. Chief Oliver O.
Atkins of the larger band assured me that this had been a
routine practice since the eighteenth century. He pointed out
that many Mattaponi, descendants of Powhatan's tribe, are
particularly sensitive to the claim that their dark brown
complexions are proof of Negroid ancestry despite their obvious
Caucasian or American Indian facial features and straight or
curly (not kinky) hair. I told him I had read that the Mattaponi
insist on marriage within the tribe, which he confirmed, and
said that inbreeding among American Indians was known to cause
darker complexions. Mattaponi women and a very dark
Haliwa-Saponi from North Carolina my wife and I met when we
attended the Chickahominy Fall Festival and Powwow in 1993 were
aware of this and had used it as a defense against claims that
they had Negroid ancestry.
Both Chickahominy bands, the Rappahannock, and the larger of two
factions of the Nansemond had incorporated with the Commonwealth
of Virginia as The Reorganized Powhatan Confederacy. Chief
Atkins was well aware that the Chickahominy were never part of
the original Powhatan Confederacy and that the Rappahannock were
only allied with it on occasion. What these groups needed was a
name both the state government and whites in the general
population would associate with Indians who had lived in the
Tidewater area in colonial times.
To further their claims to be American Indians, Chief Atkins,
who was president of the Jamestown Association, involved members
of all four groups in a powwow held annually Memorial Day
weekend at the site of the Jamestown colony as a major tourist
attraction. This had presented a problem: all remnants of the
original Algonquin tribes in the Tidewater area lost their
traditional culture and indigenous languages in colonial times.
To demonstrate an American Indian identity, they had to borrow
from other tribes which whites would recognize as "Indian."
Thus, the regalia worn by the dancers is a mix of Eastern
Woodland and Plains motifs. Canvas teepees are set up behind the
stand where the master of ceremonies sat, despite the fact that
the ancestors of the participants had lived in bark-covered
longhouses.
This process of attempting to establish a separate ethnic
identity by a group that has lost its distinctiveness from its
neighbors is what anthropologists call "retribalization.
When my wife and I attended the Chickahominy Fall Festival and
Powwow in1993, there were three wooden posts with carved faces
in their tops at the center of the dance arena. Anyone familiar
with drawings of Delaware or Secotan dances in colonial times
will recognize such carved posts as a common trait of coastal
Algonquins. Whether they were used by the aboriginal
Chickahominy is immaterial. They are symbols that identify them
with Indians who occupied the Tidewater area in colonial times,
and this is their primary function. The two Chickahominy bands
are among seven groups now recognized by the State of Virginia
as American Indian tribes. They, the Nansemond, and the Monacans
of Amherst hold annual powwows which draw a fair number of white
spectators, and all seven groups hold an intertribal powwow in
Richmond in November.
Captain Nelson, chief of the Rappahannocks in 1973, and his wife
had some real surprises to tell. The group has a tradition of
descent from the chief's namesake, a British officer who married
the daughter of the Rappahannock chief sometime in the late
1600s. Although all legal documents relating to the group were
lost when the Essex County Courthouse was destroyed in a fire in
the early 1870s, there is no case in memory of a child born to a
Rappahannock and an African-American. It is difficult to imagine
there was much chance of an exception. Captain Nelson shared the
surprising information that there had been a small Rappahannock
community of two birch-bark-covered longhouses, each over 120
feet long, in thick woods only miles from his back door until
after the Civil War. Mrs. Nelson had inherited a diary kept by a
great aunt who had been a resident. Each longhouse was inhabited
by a matrilineal clan (descent from a common ancestress through
mothers only); whose members were obliged to marry members of
the other clan. That is, the two clans were also moieties.
Succession to leadership was from mother's brother to sister's
son. The diary even included a vocabulary of some 300 words in
the Rappahannock language or dialect.
How was it possible for an Indian tribe to preserve their
traditional settlement pattern and aboriginal culture for so
long and near the Rappahannock River, which was the scene of
major battles between the Union and Confederate armies? One
explanation is that the longhouse community was so isolated that
outsiders may have been unaware of its existence. The impressive
height of many Rappahannock men may have made any whites who saw
them for the first time believe others who think they were
deranged if they reported it. Captain Nelson remarked that the
group had a basketball team made up of teenage boys all over
seven feet tall! Captain Nelson's uncle had been the Indian
giant (7'9") employed by the Ringling Brothers, Barnum & Bailey
Circus in the 1940s and '50s. Mrs. Nelson placed a whole loaf of
bread in a size 22 shoe the man had worn!
The longhouse community was abandoned after the Civil War, and
the isolation of its residents ended as they experienced varying
degrees of contact with whites and acculturation. The
traditional culture described in the diary was gradually lost.
There was one living medicine man who conducted traditional
curing ceremonies and an annual rite surely associated with the
aboriginal religion. The entire group gathered at a spring in
rural Essex County, where the medicine man invoked a female
spirit supposed to live at the bottom and everyone tossed in
small bundles of tobacco, red maize, and meat. The medicine man,
who was said to be the only person able to speak Rappahannock,
then prayed for bountiful crops and the health and prosperity of
group members in the indigenous language. He was in his eighties
and attempting to teach the language and traditional ceremonies
to a grandson, who seemed more interested in basketball and
girls. It seemed inevitable to the Nelsons that the elder's
linguistic and ceremonial knowledge would die with him.
There were elders who had preserved traditional crafts, such as
weaving oak-splint baskets, making bags consisting of
chain-linked bracts from pine cones, and hand-made bows and
arrows. They were using the group's American Baptist church to
conduct classes for the young people. But the Nelsons feared
this was not enough to give the Rappahannocks a sense of group
solidarity. I suggested that it seemed the ceremony at the
spring had been a focal point of this in the past. If some group
members saw this ceremony as pagan, they could have a Christian
prayer and praise service there after the medicine man dies
without having trained a successor. Captain Nelson liked this
idea and would propose it to the tribal council.
Readers who want a further understanding of retribalization
among racial isolates in the Eastern United States might wish to
see "Making a Middle Way: Problems of Monhegan Identity," by
George L. Hicks and David I. Kertzer, *Southwestern Journal of
Anthropology*
About The Author:
W. Grosvenor Pollard and his wife live in Anadarko, Oklahoma. They have become very close with the Tribes of this area, especially the Kiowa Indians. They attend a Kiowa Church, and are associate members of a non-profit Kiowa organization. They gourd dance at Kiowa, Comanche, Plains Apache, and Wichita powows. Mr. Pollard has a B.A. from the College of Wooster, Wooster, Ohio. He has an M.A. in Anthropology from the University of Oklahoma. He attended The University of Illinois, and The University of New Mexico as a candidate for a Ph.D. in Anthropology. He also has a Master of Science in Library Science, The University of Tennessee.
By: HELEN CAMPBELL
Prior to the white man's arrival in America, a chain of separate but interacting Algonquian communities thrived along the Atlantic coastline. The Indians thrived in communities from the Chesapeake to the Gulf of St. Lawrence. When warm weather arrived, the Indians used the coastline for fishing and hunting. In the southern regions Indians turned to the planting of crops for foodstuff. Some of the Southeastern Indians tribes became extinct almost immediately upon contact with the explorers from the Old World; the contact with the Indians was catastrophic because the foreign ships carried a plague of diseases. The Native Americans didn't have any immunity to the diseases, which resulted in epidemics and the deaths of millions of Native Americans. The first African slaves were transported to the Americas in 1510 thus transmitting new diseases from Africa to the Native Americans. In 1551, the English voyagers reported that the Roanoke Islands' natives were dying by scores.
The First European Settlements
In 1584, an Englishman, Walter Raleigh, led an expedition to look into Spanish defenses in the Caribbean Islands and to explore for a perfect site to build a new settlement. His men explored in Albemarle Sound and landed on the Virginia coastal island (now North Carolina), of Roanoke Island. In 1585, Walter Raleigh tried to establish a settlement on the newfound island. It was the ideal location to plant and grow wild sassafras, an herb prized for it's medicinal qualities in England. Raleigh sailed back to England to purchase provisions for the coming winter. During a skirmish with the Indians, the settlers killed an Indian chief and the Indians were infuriated. This first group of immigrants abandoned the undeveloped settlement after a year when Sir Francis Drake rescued the settlement from disaster.
In the spring of 1586, an English fleet of twenty- five ships, under the command of Sir Francis Drake, sailed into the harbor. Drake was returning to England from his successful victory over the Spanish. In 1585, Drake and his mighty fleet went on a marauding expedition against the Spanish settlements. He and his men attacked major fortifications on the Spanish settlements in the West Indies, taking prisoners and anything of value. Then Drake sailed to Florida's Spanish fortifications at St. Augustine and plundered the settlement and took more captives.
The Spanish and Turks were constantly at war in the Mediterranean. The Spanish enslaved their Turkish, Portuguese, Arab and Moorish captives, to use them as galley slaves. These prisoners also did slave labor at Cartegena in the West Indies. Galley slaves were men who were enslaved or convicts who were severely punished for their illegal deeds by pulling the oars on galleys. Galleys were long ships with one deck and had twenty to thirty oars on each side. The ship was driven across the waters by the oars with six or seven men per oar.
When Drake offered the scared and stranded Roanoke settlers a safe passage home, they accepted. Drake had freed five hundred Ottoman (Turkish and Black Muslims), Levants (sailors), from their Spanish captors in the West Indies. Some researchers believe that Drake left about 500 Portuguese and South American captives on Roanoke Island. Drake had plans to ransom about one hundreds Turks back to the Ottoman Empire
Resent research suggests that Portuguese and Native Americans from South America were included in Drakes prisoners of war. Another two hundred came from an invasion on Spanish Florida, at St. Augustine. These captives were left on Roanoke Island to make room for the Roanoke settlers. They left the freed captives at the mercy of the infuriated Indians. Perhaps these men were absorbed into the American Indian population.
Drake was the first Englishman to sail around the world. In 1577 he left England aboard the Golden Hind and returned in 1580. Drake and his men raided Spanish settlements along the way. He presented the Queen with tropical plants, birds, gold, and American Indians. One of the Indian captives was an Aztec. Drake presented the illustrated log of his successful voyage to Queen Elizabeth. This top-secret log documented the voyage around the world. They were very careful that the illustrations and maps didn’t fall into enemy hands. Maps in this era were kept from the public they were available only to a select few.
In 1587, Raleigh sent replacements to reestablish the abandoned Roanoke settlement. The second group of about one hundred men, women and children began to rebuild Roanoke. The settlers needed provisions for the coming winter. John White, the governor of the settlement, sailed back to England to purchase the needed provisions. Governor White and his small crew departed leaving behind the settlers, including his daughter and his granddaughter, Virginia Dare. Virginia was the first English child to be born in America. Spain was at war with England, which prevented John White's speedy return to Roanoke. After three very long years, he managed to return in the year 1591. The settlers were nowhere to be found. There were no signs of battle, no bodies and no destruction of property. The only possible clue was the word "CROATAN" carved in a tree bark near the fort's entrance. On another nearby tree the bark was stripped off and carved into the tree the letters "CRO."
About one hundred miles inland, from Roanoke Island, and adjacent to the South Carolina border, was an area called Robinson County, North Carolina. In 1719, a group of hunters and trappers strayed into the hilly landscape and stumbled upon a tribe of Indians. The Indians had light skin, gray/blue eyes and light brown hair. But most astonishing was the fact that they spoke nearly perfect Elizabethan English. These Indians said that their ancestors "talked from a book." Their customs were similar to the early English Roanoke Colony. This sighting brought about a theory that the starving colonists at Roanoke took refuge with the Croatan Indians during the first winter when Governor John White didn't return. To this day the descendants still live in Roberson County, North Carolina. They are known as the Lumbee Indians. The surviving remnants of the Roanoke settlement may have been assimilated into the indigenous tribes. The existence of fair skinned Indians in Roberson, North Carolina substantiates the theory that the Roanoke colonists and perhaps the abandoned Turks and Portuguese and Moors blended in with the Croatan and other Tidewater, Virginia Indian tribes, including the Powhatan and Lumbee Indians. Dr. Robert Gilmor, a Melungeon researcher, suggests the people of the legendary "Lost Colony of Roanoke" intermarried with the Powhatan Indians who had already intermarried with Jamestown Colony. Adding the surnames White and Dare to the Indian population. Other surnames common to the Lumbee Indians are; Applewhite, Atkins, Braveboy, Bridger, Caldwell, Chavers and it’s variants, Cole, Cumbo and it’s variants, Cummings, Drake, Goins, and it’s variants, Humpreys/Humprey, Kearsy, Kitchens, Locklear, Manuel, Morison, Moore, Mainer, Newsom, Oxedine, Ransom, Revels, Thompson, and Wood. The remnants of this mixed raced population were ultimately pushed together in the mountains of south-central Virginia, western North Carolina and upper South Carolina where they became known as the Tri-racial isolates.
The Powhatan came into contact with the Spaniards when Juan Ponce de Leon of Spain arrived at Florida during the years 1513-21. In 1513, Spain’s explorers claimed Florida but they made no permanent settlement. A group of one hundred and fifty French Huguenots fleeing religious persecutions, settled on the St. Johns River in 1562. The refugees built a fort on the St. Johns River and named the fort, Carolinefort. When Spain found out they sent a fleet to Florida under the command of Pedro Menendez de Aviles. Carolinefort was seized by Aviles and he renamed the fort, San Mateo. It is written that Aviles and his men massacred the French Huguenots; Only God knows if any of the French Huguenots from Carolinefort settlement found shelter amongst the local American Indians.
In 1566, Juan Pardo, a Spanish navy officer with Portuguese origins, strategically positioned five garrisons in the back country of Carolina. These soldiers were recruited from the mountains of Northern Spain and Portugal. Pardo led his expedition of two hundred soldiers into the interior of the southern Appalachians. Leaving small garrisons along the way. Each garrison was made up about fifty Spanish and Portuguese soldiers.
In 1566, the Spaniards built the town Santa Elena, a settlement with a small fort, Fort San Salvador. Santa Elena was built over the former settlement of the defeated French Huguenot refugees Charlesfort.
About twenty years later, the Spanish retreated from Santa Elena about the same time John White landed at Roanoke Island. Those settlers, who survived, burned the town and sailed south to St. Augustine. The garrisons in the back country of the Carolinas were cut off from their Spanish command post. These Spanish forts are thought to have been located near the present day cities of Rome, Georgia; Greenville, South Carolina; Asheville, North Carolina; and Johnson City, Tennessee. The remnants produced a mix raced population that inhabited the Deep South. The evidence suggests that the first Santa Elena settlers fled westward away from the coast of South Carolina. Then the displaced group traveled north along the Pee Dee River. The migrating remnants of the Portuguese, Moors and Spanish men may have intermarried with Indian women from various Southeastern Indian tribes.
Later Roman Catholic missionaries came to convert the Indians into Christians. Military garrisons protected these Roman Catholic missionaries. To finance the missions, the Spanish missionaries taught the Indians to manufacture raw material into products that could be sold. They also grew food crops to support the missions. The mission Indians dressed in Spanish fashion and they were taught to read, write and play musical instruments.
These first early attempts by European settlers in North America were no more than foot holds. As the European colonies along the Atlantic Coast grew, the few surviving Indians were forced off their ancestral lands and pushed inland. The remnants were left with no choice but to encroach on other Indian Nations' ancestral homelands. This led to warfare amongst the Native Nations for trespassing on other tribe's ancestral lands. The entire situation was a dilemma for all Native Americans. Coastal Indians swarmed the Indians in the inland seeking sanctuary. Some tribes resented the onslaught and killed or captured those who dared to trespass on their tribal lands. The people from the Old World had an advantage over the New World Indians, a lack of tribal unity. The Europeans would conspire to instigate such skirmishes among the many diverse ethnic Indian tribes.
The Powhatan and Pamunkey of Virginia were two of many Appalachian tribes speaking the Algonquian language. These Appalachian Indian tribes shared a common culture, customs and had similar religious beliefs too. Other Eastern Algonquian tribes are Abenaki, Passamaquoddy, Pequot, Mohegan, Lenape, Nanticoke, Miami, Kickapoo, and Shawnee to name a few. Muskhogean Indians was another linguistic group of the Southeastern Indians and included the Creek, the Chickasaw, the Choctaw, the Seminole tribes and other smaller clans. But the Powhatans of Virginia consisted of many tribes and became a sizable powerful empire.
The Founder of the Powhatan Empire
The "Powhatan" word is not the name of a particular tribe but rather a generic name for a group of Algonquian speaking tribes that formed an alliance. The man who gave the Powhatan Empire its actual foundation was a native Ruler in Virginia who is historically known by the name the Spanish gave him, Don Luis Valasco. One day, during the 1560s, the Spanish along the Virginia coast had abducted the teenage Pamunkey Ruler away from his homeland. While a captive of the Spanish, he was highly educated in Mexico, Madrid and Havana. Molding him into a "proper Christian Spaniard " Don Luis was to be an example for the other Indians to follow. In 1570, the Catholic priests brought their Spanish educated captive back to Virginia in the area of the York River. The Jesuits, along with the help of Don Luis, founded a mission for the Indians assuming their efforts would improve the relations between the Spanish and Indians. These Spanish priests thought they had an honorable plan to convert the Indians into Roman Catholics and then dominate their communities. Don Luis resumed his previous position as the ruler of his prominent family and King of his people. The Powhatan Indians believed in many deities, and although polygamy was practice it appears to have been uncommon. It is said that when Don Luis practiced polygamy, the Jesuit priests became enraged because Christianity denounces such practices. The Jesuits severely degraded and disgraced Don Luis in public, humiliating him in front of his people. Don Luis could not take this painful humiliation so he organized and led an attack and obliterated the mission he had helped to build. Three Jesuits were spared, Rogel, Alonso and Carrera. The Spanish retaliated the following year by massacring many Indians.
To understand the history of the Powhatan and Pamunkey Indians, one has to understand the history of the English settlement at Jamestown. Modern historians number the Native population of 1607 Tidewater Virginia at 13,000 to 14,000. Powhatan villages were thick along the rivers. By 1669, the estimated population of the Powhatan Tidewater in Virginia had dropped to about 1,800 and by 1722; many of the tribes belonging to King Powhatan were reported extinct. Many tribes lost their reservations lands assigned to them and some of these displaced Indians tried to adapt to Colonial America. Those who could pass as white were absorbed into the European population. Those who couldn't pass for white fled their lands to escape enslavement.
The English mercantile shareholders believed that precious metals existed in the Americas. They spent about ten thousand dollars to send three groups of emigrants to settle the New World. The first voyage set sail from England just before Christmas, December 20 in the year 1606. The convoy left England aboard three ships that carried about 105 colonists and supplies for their journey across the ocean. The sponsors of this New World voyage expected these colonists to develop business enterprises. Some of the colonists were skilled in silk making, glass making and other skills. The spirited people embarked on a new venture to a New World with dreams of finding prosperity.
The names of the ships were, the Susan Constant, the Godspeed and the Discovery. The three ships sailed into the Chesapeake Bay in 1607 and named their English settlement Jamestown, in honor of their king, King James I. Jamestown was located on the confluence of the James and Chickahominy Rivers. Jamestown became the first permanent English settlement in the New World.
They were not prepared for the hardships that lay ahead of them. Diseases, malnutrition, poor organization and environmental ignorance all play a part to the large numbers of deaths in Jamestown. One main problem was they built the town on swampland and soon became plagued by malaria and distasteful drinking water. All these harsh conditions resulted in bad blood among the men and endless quarreling over how to stay alive. But the major crisis was a lack of food supplies. Jamestown settlement almost starved to death and would have if not for the support of the Powhatans during their first terrible winter in 1607-1608. The Powhatans were initially friendly to the English colonists. Many Englishmen married women from the various tribes living in the area. John Rolfe and Pocahontas are the most remembered because Pocahontas was an Indian princess, the favorite daughter of King Powhatan. By the spring of 1608, disease and accidents had taken all but 38 of the one hundred and five men who had come to Jamestown so full of hope the year before.
The Powhatans and Pamunkey Indians were under constant pressure to provide food for the English. This became a serious problem after the settlement grew. In 1609 England sent four hundred English immigrants to reinforce the original group at Jamestown. But the town relied on trade with the local Indians for their food supplies. The new group didn't bring enough food provisions for themselves. The English were too frightened of the environment to go out and hunt for food in the forest. When deep winter arrived, the helpless colonists were eating rats and mice along with dried up roots. A few of the most desperate turned to cannibalism and even opened fresh graves for food.
Within several years after the establishment of Jamestown conflicts between the Indians and the English settlements had reached a breaking point. In 1610, the Appamattock, Arrowhatecks, and the Weyanocks, tried to expel the English settlers from further encroachment. The Nansemond attacked the English settlement along the James River. The major culprit in the conflict was tobacco, a harvest that was addicting and had immense popularity in Europe. The Jamestown settlers realized the addictive tobacco crops were a way to make a fortune. Thus began the large-scale cultivation of tobacco. In 1612 John Rolfe introduced a tropical tobacco from Trinidad and by 1614 the first Virginia tobacco was being sold in London. After five years it was Jamestown's leading export. As the Virginia Colony expanded farther inland, the Powhatans and Pamunkey Indians were forced off of their ancestral lands.
To cultivate tobacco the Englishmen required huge tracts of land, more so than other crops because the tobacco plants depleted the soil at a rapid rate. There was of course, in Englishmen's eyes, plenty of land in Coastal Virginia but the region was heavily wooded and full of unfriendly Indians. So the English implemented a plan to seize the fields that the Indians had already cleared for their own survival thus began the mass departure process of pushing tribes farther and farther inland. These tribes were pushed out of the Tidewater area of Virginia and Maryland. The estimated population of Powhatan Indians was 9,000 in the year 1600. By the late 18th century the Tidewater Indians had nearly disappeared as a result of warfare, disease, and intermarriage with Africans, Europeans and the assimilation amongst other Indian tribes.
Robert Rich, a very influential man, was an investor to the Bermuda Company and the East Indian Company, and also the Guineas Company, which traded primarily in African slaves. The name of his ship was The Treasurer, and his ship brought the first cargo of twenty Africans to Virginia in 1619 establishing the way for the establishment of slavery in English America. These twenty Africans are recorded as being the first of 10,000 other captives who came to the American Colonies in the 17th century. Their languages were of the Niger-Congo family. These unfortunate African captives had religious and cultural traditions. They were skilled in the cultivation of, tobacco, rice and indigo. These skills completed the foundation for the Tidewater economy in Carolina and Georgia. In South Carolina, over forty percent of African slaves came from the rice growing area of Upper Guinea and Senegambia. Another forty percent came from Angola. The Chesapeake area Africans came from the Bight of Biafra controlled by the Ibo people. Many of these enslaved African people intermarried with the Powhatan Indians.
In Africa, the slave trade was connected to warfare among rival kingdoms. The victorious forces brought back captives as spoils. Often these unfortunate captives were sold or traded from one ruler to another as well as to European traders. The African Rulers valued the European's trading merchandise. These captives were packed into ships and sent into the world slave market. By 1725, the African population in the Chesapeake area numbered forty-five thousand.
Africans were imported to fill the requirements for laborers when English cultivators found that they could not force Indians to work in their fields. The first Africans were indentured servants, and they worked on tobacco plantations alongside white indentured laborers. But as the number of Africans in North America grew, the plantation owners began to fear their potential power and implemented regulations, which made slaves of these African indentured servants.
The French, English and Spanish all carried on extensive trade in Indian as well as African slaves. The Spanish were dominant in slave trade early on. In 1675, there were only 4000 Africans scattered across Maryland and Virginia; in 1708, there were just 4000 in Carolina. West Indian natives worked beside Africans in the West Indies on sugar plantations. In Virginia captive Powhatans and other Indian tribes were put to labor in the English tobacco plantations. Slavery of the Indians in the Southeast tribes was difficult. After all it was their ancestral lands and this gave them an edge. But the settlers had weapons that put them at an advantage.
The English needed armed forces to hold off the Spanish settlement in the New World. Pine, oak, cypress and cedar trees grew plentiful along the Carolina coastline. This gave the British navy an endless source of supplies to build a navy base in the New World. Cutting down these trees and boiling tar required a multitude of workers to complete the hard backbreaking work. The English tried to enslave the Indians to do the arduous labor. Most Indian slaves were war captives who had been spared from death. Eventually some of these captive Africans and Indians were accepted into another tribe by adoption and marriage.
To satisfy the demand for slaves European traders encouraged Indians to wage war against one another for the captives. Afterwards, the Southeastern Indians would be exchanged for trade goods or money. Pitting tribe against tribe not only produced slaves for the market but also reduced the threat of Indians would unite in large numbers against the white population.
The English raiding gangs from Carolina besieged thousands of Appalachian Indians including the Timucus, who had been converted to Christianity and were taught to be farmers by the Spanish missions in the 16th century. These merciless men made shocking assaults on the Christian farming towns in Northern Florida. The purpose of these raids were to seize the sedentary Indians and ship them back to the Carolina slave markets where they were sold into slavery and deported to the West Indies and New England. As a result of such raids, as many as 12,000 American Indians had been auctioned off and deported out of Charleston to the Caribbean Islands in the West Indies. Some of these Native Americans were shipped to Africa too. It was a profitable market and many European men became wealthy and dominant.
After slavery was established at the port of Charles Town, later named Charleston, slaves entered in a steady stream. It was usual to see an advertisement for slave auctions. One such poster read: "To be sold, on Thursday the third day of August next, a cargo of ninety-four prime, healthy, Negroes, consisting of thirty-nine men, twenty-four women, and sixteen girls, just arrived, in the Brigantine Dembia. Francis Bare Mafter from Sierra Leon, by David and John Deas." Other slave ports were; New Orleans; Savannah; New York, Boston and Newport. Those bought and sold on the auction block of Charleston were shipped off in wretched bunches to New England or the West Indies.
In 1670, Barbados sent cultivators who were very experienced with African slavery, to the Carolinas to help establish plantations. They brought with them the first slaves both Black and White. Also, the settlement's proprietor had an economic interest in the slave trade and was very pleased to find such a market as existed in the Carolinas. Barbadians had been enslaving the Indians to work on sugar plantations since the Pequot War in 1637. Pequot Indians were one of many Algonquian tribes. The Puritans parsons, who called the Pequot Indians "friends of hell, and children of Satan," incited the war. The outraged settlers stormed the Pequot village located on the Mystic River in Connecticut, massacring and burning to death more than six hundred Indians. Surviving captives became slaves of New England settlers; others sold to West Indies sugar plantations. Thus began the mass deportation of the American Indians out of their ancestral homelands to a life of slavery in the West Indies.
Chief Powhatan - Wahunsonacook 1550s-1618
It is not certain but probable that Don Luis was the father of Wahunsonacook, born in the 1550's and later became the legendary Chief Powhatan of the Powhatan Confederacy.
The English called Wahunsonacock, Chief Powhatan, King of the Powhatans. Wahunsonacook was a member and chief of the Pamunkey Indians. The Pamunkey were the largest of the many Virginia Tidewater tribes. Their political system was Chiefdom, a sovereignty and supreme power with a king and a province. Some researchers have written, that Wahunsonacock inherited the Chiefdoms of the Powhatans, Arrowhateck, Appamattock, Pamunkey, Mattaponi, and the Chiskiak Indians.
The Powhatans lived in a 9,000 square mile area. Chief Powhatan and his people lived on the North side of the James River in Henrico County. It was a custom for the Ruler of the Powhatans to acquire the name of the tribe, thus Chief Powhatan.
There were hundreds of Indian villages near the Chesapeake Bay. The inlets and rivers that flow into the Chesapeake Bay, were vital, they were used for transportation and were a major source of food. The rivers and bay provided the Indians with an abundant source of fish, oysters, clams and waterfowl. The Powhatan villages were strategically placed enabling the Indians to have a commanding view of the waterways and the people traveling them, especially their enemies. Historian James Mooney estimated the Powhatan population at nine thousand Indians in the sixteen hundreds and by the end of the eighteenth century they had nearly disappeared as a result of warfare, disease, and inter-marriage with Africans and Europeans. Some were fortunate enough to be adopted among other Indian tribes thus becoming another mixed raced people. In 1685 the Powhatans were said to be extinct, but in reality their survivors continued to move inland, intermarrying with other mixed-race exiled people. In 1691 a law was made to end the intermarriage of Whites to Indians and Blacks. The remnants of this mixed raced population eventually fled to the isolated mountains in the Southeast.
The English settlers began to transform the forests into tobacco plantations ruining the hunting grounds by massive deforestations; forever changing the Virginia Indian lands to cultivate the addicting tobacco plantations. The once plentiful food supply became nearly extinct, leaving the Indians without a means of survival. King Powhatan ordered about forty warriors to permanently expel the settlers from his province for what they had done to the Indian lands.
One day Chief Powhatan implemented a plan that united thirty or more Algonquian speaking tribes of coastal Virginia and Maryland into one single province ruled by Powhatan and his family. The alliance was well known as the all-powerful Powhatan Confederacy. King Powhatan extended the name to all the tribes within his newly united province. The capital of his province was located on the modern day Pamunkey River in Virginia. King Powhatan named the capital of his province, Werowocomoco. The settlement was located on the north bank of the York River.
The earliest estimate of Powhatan-Pamunkey-
Opechancano the brother of King Powhatan became the king of the Powhatan Confederacy after his brother's death in 1618. He led an attack on the Virginia colonies in 1622. The attack was a complete surprise to the English settlements and back woods plantations along the James River. The Indians massacred over three hundred men, women and children. Every one of the settlements and plantations was destroyed and burned, except for Jamestown. This was the commencement of warfare that lasted for fourteen years. The remnants of the Virginia Indians were finally forced to make peace in 1636. But six years later, Opechancano, King of the Powhatans, launched another surprise attack. More than five hundred English settlers were massacred in another surprise attack in the back-country. Each time the English retaliated severely. Opechancano died in 1644 in captivity. The Powhatans again were forced to make peace with colonies. The oldest treaty written in this land is with the Powhatan Nations in the year 1646. The King of England declared the area between the York and James Rivers for English colonies.
Small reservations were set aside for the exclusive residence and use of the once great Powhatan Empire. These Virginia reserves have been more reduced over the centuries. The lands remain in Native ownership to this day.
The Melungeon peoples could be the remnants of North America's very first Old World explorers and settlements. Only the indigenous people were here to record the early voyagers arrivals. The majority of the indigenous people of the Americas died soon after their first contact with the explorers. These first Old World contacts lead the way for the extinction of many millions who witnessed the foreigners’ arrivals. In this new millennium we only have clues to remind us of our forefathers. Such clues can be found in the oral histories of the American Indians, in their language, in their customs, in their music, in their dance, in their traditional fashions, and the westerly migratory path of the Melungeons. After many centuries the genetics of these earliest forefathers still remain within the Melungeons. God has preserved a written record of our forefathers' existence; the evidence can be found in the chemical makeup and the physical features that have been passed on to their descendants over the centuries. The Melungeons truly are God’s mysterious peoples.
Elder, Pat Spurlock. (1999). Melungeons: Examinating An Appalachian Legend. Continuity Press.
Erdoes, Richard, and Ortiz, Alfonso. (1984). American Indian Myths and Legends. Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc.
Graff, Henry Franklin and Krout, John A. (1959, 1960). The Adventure of the American People. Rand McNally
Kennedy, N. Brent. (1994). The Resurrected Melungeon, The Resurrection of a Proud People, An untold Story of Ethnic Cleansing in America. Mercer University Press.
Kennedy, N. Brent. (May 21, 2000) Lecture at the Third Union at the University of Virginia College at Wise. Recorded by Wayne Winkler, Director, WETS-FM
The Reader's Digest Association, Inc. (1995). Through Indian Eyes. The Reader's Digest Association, Inc.
Hornbeck, Helen Tanner (Ed.). (1995). The Settling of North America. Swanston Publishing Limited.
Salazar, L. E. (200) Love Child: A Genealogist Guide to the Social History of Barbados. Family Find.
The Legendary Princess Pocahontas
By: HELEN CAMPBELL
King Powhatan had children one of whom was Matoka, later the English called Princess Pocahontas and "Lady Rebecca." She was born in the year 1594, at Werawocomoco (present day Wicomico, Gloucester County, Virginia) on the north side of the York River area. The York River was once called the Pamaunkee River.
In 1610, she married a Native tribal leader, Kocoum but the marriage was brief after three years Kocoum passed away. Little is known about the first marriage of Pocahontas.
In 1614, the English Captain Samuel Argall captured Pocahontas. He planned to exchange her for concessions from her father, King Powhatan. While a captive, she stayed in the home of a minister and was treated kindly. Pocahontas converted into a Christian and was given the name Rebecca at her baptism.
Pocahontas married a second time to John Rolfe, an Englishman born in Heacham, Norfolk, England in 1585. They were married on April 5, 1614. Virginia governor Sir Thomas Dale and her father King Powhatan blessed the marriage. The marriage brought several years of peace between the Powhatans and the colonists at Jamestown. When they married some objections were expressed in London against the union of a commoner with an Indian princess. Nowadays several of the "first families of Virginia" proudly trace their descent from the marriage of John and Pocahontas.
Ever since the colonial days great numbers of Indians have been assimilated into America life and millions of Americans have some Indian blood.
During her brief existence on earth, Pocahontas became a representative for the Powhatan people. In 1616, John Rolfe and Pocahontas went to England in search of sponsors to seek funds for the development of tobacco plantations at Jamestown. "Lady Rebecca" was presented as a Christian Indian Princess and was dressed in the finest European fashions. She became the center of attention and attended many banquets given in her honor. King James I and the London Society received "Lady Rebecca" with royal honor. Her diplomacy strengthened the alliance between the English and the Powhatans.
After seven-months of touring, in March 1617, the Indian Princess Pocahontas along with her son and husband, embarked on the ship "George" to return to Virginia. But, she became gravely ill with an Old World illness. Pocahontas, the peacemaker, "Lady Rebecca" died at Gravesend, England at age twenty-one. She was buried in a burial chamber beneath the chancel chapel of the St. George parish.
The couple had one son Thomas Rolfe; he was born in 1615 at Smith’s Fort Plantation in Virginia. Thomas was sent to England for his education. He returned to Virginia in 1640 when he was about the age of twenty-five. He became a militia officer and commanded a frontier fort in western Henrico on the James River. He became a wealthy landowner. Several Virginia families clam decent from his descendants. Thomas died 1675 in Virginia.
In 1584, an Englishman named Sir Walter Raleigh sent explorers to search for land in America that would be perfect to cultivate sassafras. The herb was used for medicinal purposes and for its flavor too. The explorers located an island off the coast of Virginia. In the year 1585, a ship sailed to the land the explorers located. The Englishman John White, the governor, named the colony Roanoke. Sir Francis Drake ransacked the Spanish settlements in the West Indies and New Spain. Drake stopped by Roanoke Colony and the colonists wanted to go back to England. Those who went on the voyage with White are; Unknown Acton, Allyne, Philip Amadas, John Anwike, William Backhouse, Edward Barecombe, Dennis Barnes, Valentine Beale, Silvester Beching, Robert Biscombe, Philip Blunt, Thomas Bookener, Joseph Borges, John Brocke, John Cage, John Chandeler, Vuncent Cheyne, Edward Chipping, Geffery Churchman, Erasmus Clefs, Marmaduke Constable, John Costigo, Rice Courtney, Roger Deane, George Eseven, John Evans, William Farthow, John Fever, Thomas Fox, Dougham Gannes, Humprey Garden, Unknown Gardiner, Richard Gilbert, Darby Glande, Rowland Griffyn, Unknown Hariot, Bennett Harrie, John Harris, Thomas Harvey, Thomas Heskit, Robert Holecroft, Thomas Hulme, Richard Humfrey, Richard Ireland, Edward Kelly, Unknown Kendall, Edward Ketchman, Edward Kettell, James Lacie, Roger Large, Randall Latham, John Linsey, Christopher Lowde, Thomas Luddington, Matthew Lyne, Jeremie Man, Christopher Marshall, Unknown Marvyn, James Mason, Randall Mayne, Walter Mill, William Millard, Francis Norris, Edward Nugen, Thomas Parre, Thomas Phillips, William Phillips, Michael Polison, Stephen Pomarie, Richard Poore, Henry Potkin, Unknown Predeox,William Randes, Philip Robins, Hugh Roger, Thomas Rottenbury, Anthony Russe, David Salter, Richard Sare, Edward Seclemore, Thomas Skevelabs, James Skinner, Thomas Smart, Unknown Smolkin, Unknown Snelling, Edward Stafford, Charles Stephenson, James Stephenson, John Taylor, Thomas Taylor, William Tenche, John Twit, Unknown Vaughan, Hance Walters, William Walters, William Wasse, William White, Francis Whitton, and David Williams.
The Lost Colonist of 1587
The English didn't give up on Roanoke Island, in 1587, another group left bound for America. These people were filled with hope and dreams of making a colony in the New World. The group of 1585 had learned a lot about the environment on the island. They were confident that they could build a prosperous settlement. The entire colony vanished with only clues as to where they went; somebody carved the letters "CROATAN" on a tree near the fort. The names of the colonist lost to history are; Maurice Allen, Arnold Archard, Joyce Archard, Thomas Archard, Richard Arthur, Roger Bailey, Mark Bennett, William Berde, Henry Berry, Richard Berry, Bishop Michael, John Borden, John Bridger, John Bright, John Brooke, Henry Browne, William Browne, John Burdon, Thomas Buttler, Anthony Cage, Alice Chapman, John Chapman, John Chevin, William Clement, Thomas Coleman, Unknown Colman, Christopher Cooper, John Cotsmur, Ananias Dare, Eleanor Dare, Richard Darige, Henry Dorrell, William Dutton, John Earnest, Robert Ellis, Thomas Ellis, Elizabeth Glane, Margery Harvie, George Howe, Thomas Humfrey, Jane Jones, James Lasie, Margaret Lawrence, Peter Little, Robert Little, William Lucas, Jane Mannering, George Martyn, Emma Merimoth, Michael Myllet, Henry Mylton, Humprey Newton, William Nichols, Henry Paine, Hugh Patterson, Rose Payne, Thomas Phevens, Jane Pierce, Edward Powell, Winifired Powell, John Prat, Roger Prat, Henry Rufoote, Jane Sampson, John Sampson, Thomas Scott, Richard Shabedge, Thomas Smart, Thomas Smith, William Sole, John Spendlove, John Starte, Thomas Stevens, John Stillman, Martyn Sutton, Audrey Tappan, Richard Taverner, Clement Taylor, Hugh Taylor, Richard Tompkins, Thomas Topan, John Tydway, Ambrose Viccars, Elizabeth Viccars, Thomas Warner, Joan Warren, William Waters, Cuthbert White, John White, Richard Wildye, Robert Wilkinson, and William Willes.
Broderbund Family Archive #354, Ed. 1, Passenger and Immigration Lists Index.
About The Author:
Helen Campbell was born in 1955 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Helen and her husband Tom live in the Pittsburgh area. They have two grown children and four grandchildren.
MELUNGEON MEMORIES
By: THOMAS McELWAIN
My grandmother, Evy Mullins, was often reticent about anything in her family that might suggest being not quite White. But there was no hiding it, and once she got to talking, there was plenty to say. She was quite willing to admit to having Indian ancestry, as long as it was not part of that "old dark bunch of Bus's." Bus was her son-in-law, against whom she held his regular visits to the Redman, a place where spirits ran high.
I have no idea if my grandmother'
Bill and Ellie Ann would get to scrapping, and she would say "I came to this house with a cow and hoe, and that's how I'm leaving." Then she would take a cow and a hoe and go off to her brother's. After a few days they would cool down, and she would be back, but always without the cow and the hoe. One time while she was gone Bill filed for divorce and then married my great grandmother Springer. Ellie Ann always treated my grandmother and her brothers and sisters just like her own. Why she even hid my great uncle out once when he was running from the law.
Of course John Mullins had had his moments too. They say there was a big freedman in Pike County, Kentucky right after the war who would run every white man he met off the boardwalk into the mud. Now the mud was deep in those days. John Mullins said he would shoot him if he ever tried to do it to him. He said that to warn him off, but it did not do any good. He ended up shooting the man dead. When we children heard the story we asked our grandmother if he didn't get in trouble for shooting the man. "Sh-t no" she said. "They was glad to git rid of him." That is the only time I heard her say a bad word. The Mullinses were Baptists, or at least pretended to be.
John Mullins lived a dangerous life in Pike County. Eventually they had to go back to West Virginia because of the Hatfield and McCoy affair. They were related to the Hatfields and no longer welcome in Pike County. There was another family of freedmen that lived right near the Mullins place in Pike County. They had a son that was always hitting them up for money to drink with. I don't know if they didn't have any money, or if they just refused to give it to him. Anyway, the two old folks came up to the Mullins place in the middle of the day and said the boy had cut off their ears and run off. They had their ears on a napkin they were carrying along. Grandma rang the dinner bell and everybody came running in from the fields. They went off after the boy and caught him and hung him right there where they caught him. His ma and pa were begging them not to kill him, but they figured it was good riddence of poor meat, and would save a lot of liquor to boot.
There was a woman John Mullins helped. She took in a lot of kids that didn't have a home, and she was known to be friendly with gentlemen who occasionally dropped by. They were having a revival at the church and somebody got to saying they had to clean up the community. So they all rode out to the woman's place, where they planned to give her a kerosene bath to put the fear of God in her. John Mullins got wind of it and rode out there with a rifle. He got there in time to stop it and said "Now a good many of you men have been here to see her under other pretences, and you can leave her alone now. And I want to know that her smokehouse is full of meat from now on, because if it isn't, I know who you are." They say she had meat from then on and didn't need to do any favors anymore to get it, either. I guess they figured John Mullins meant what he said.
That could be from the way he treated that corn thief. He noticed corn was missing from the corn crib, so he put a trap in it. It wasn't long till they heard somebody yelling one morning early. They all got out of bed and ran out. There was a man with his hand caught in the trap. Grandma and the girls were all crying to let him loose, but Grandpa Mullins just walked past him to the barn and milked the cows and let him scream. When he finished, he filled a sack with corn and put it on the man's horse. Only then did he let him go, and told him not to come back. Well, at least he got his corn.
But they had to come back to West Virginia. I asked my grandmother how they traveled, because I realized there were no cars in those days. I guess there was the train, though. She said "We walked." I don't suppose it was too much over a hundred miles. They settled on Brown's Mountain and my grandmother ended up marrying my grandfather. He was married to her best friend, Mary Crow, but Mary died of childbirth. Evy Mullins was engaged to one of the Coger boys, I believe, and was sitting in the parlor with him. The house was built around the fireplace, and there was a wall dividing the fireplace for the two rooms. My grandfather and Woodie Mullins threw a skunk over that wall. That wasn't enough to discourage the Coger boy, though. Finally my grandfather got the Coger boy drunk and Evy Mullins left him. The Cogers and McElwains were Methodists and took a drink now and then. But Evy Mullins was a Baptist, and she wasn't going to have anything to do with a boy that drank. Now dipping snuff was another thing. Her dad did that, and he was a decent as they come.
I came along on the tail-end of the old life. In the 1950s there were still a few old people in the hills who could talk Indian. They weren't too open about it, but they would open up to a kid, especially a kid that followed old people around and didn't ask for money. So I learned quite a bit of what they had to say. Indian words and stories about ghosts mostly, it was. The last one I ever heard talking Indian was Grandma Mullins in 1967, and I don't know if she was even Mellungeon or not. If she wasn't, she lived with them all her life and learned the language from somewhere. People along the Tygart River, the Cheat River, and the south fork of the Potomac used to use Indian language among themselves, but not to outsiders. And what they did talk was Iroquois, they called it Seneca or Mingo. But if you asked them about the Indian times, they would tell you about the days before the Iroquois, when people lived on hunting and picking up acorns.
They didn't think of Iroquois things, like gardening, as Indian at all. The real Indian ways were freer, when you didn't need to own land. You could take acorns and crack them between two rocks. Then you put them whole, shells and all, into water and wood ashes for the night. By morning they would be all swollen up and you could take the shells off easily and make meal out of them. Of course you had to wash the lye away and add something for taste. There wasn't any taste left after that treatment.
Aunt Virgie was the one who wanted to be Indian and nothing else. She looked the part, though, and she sounded the part too with her language. And she could tell the best ghost stories of anyone around, as well as the stories about the little people that lived under the rocks and the headless horse that rose up out of the pond on full moon nights with a real Indian warrior riding on its back. We all believed everything she said, though I doubt some of it now. She said before the settlers came they didn't have anything to eat but Algonquians, and they were stringy. But when the settlers came there was good, pork-fed meat to be had. Even now, she said, she would rather eat a white dog any day than a brown one.
Her brother was more interested in being Turkish than Indian, although he would admit to a Cherokee grandmother. He also tried to pass himself off as a relative of mad Anthony Wayne. There is no record of any of it. He did acquire a water-pipe from somewhere. There is not much to go on to know what these people actually were, aside from the marriage records and the German and Scots-Irish names. But they always claimed to be Indian, and sometimes even spoke Indian. And once in a while they mentioned a Turkish ancestor.
The Mullinses kept up some secrets, though, that raise more questions than they provide answers. Bill Mullins followed his father's practice of keeping Saturday for the Sabbath. This was before the days of Adventists. The Seventh Day Baptists came to West Virginia in 1792, but the Mullinses never joined them, never had anything to do with them aside from going to church once in a while. They had their own religion that wasn't quite Christian, wasn't quite Jewish, and was hauntingly reminiscent of Islam, not that they ever claimed to be Muslims. They would get together as a family around the fire on Friday evenings and tell stories. And later when there were people that could read and had a book, read the Psalms. Bill Mullins said his father told about the time that they didn't have calendars, but notched a stick every evening, so they would know when the Sabbath came. That was before the settlers ever got here.
Genealogy is not my cup of tea. My thing is listening to the old people. I am not far from becoming one of the old people myself now. What can I pass on? Some old stories and some Indian words are all I know personally. And the watching the sky for the Sabbath and the New Moon, and opening the Psalms of a Friday night. And suspicion of churches and preachers. And holding the iron integrity of the mountain people. And wondering, sitting on the porch of an evening, why some people in the family have such names as Tunis and Calendar.
A few years ago I met a young man from Turkey who invited me to visit him in his village on the banks of the Euphrates River. I was surprised to meet his little brother and hear that his name was Kalendar. I asked where the name came from. They said a Kalendar is the one who takes the shoes and keeps them when you go into a mosque. But it also means an order of dervishes, people who wander through the mountains alone, and have their own religion. "Is that so?" I said. "There is a distant relative of mine with that name. We always thought he was an Indian, though."
There is good documentation that the Eckerlin brothers were moving about in the area of West Virginia up until 1756. They had been expelled from the Ephrata Cloisters for their "Ishmaelite" faith. Considering that they observed Saturday and had other practices similar to those handed down in my family, I would not consider it improbable that they had some contact with each other. The Eckerlins were rather missionary-minded, but it is possible that such contact was based on similarity of belief and practice between the two groups, rather than that the Melungeons got their faith from the Eckerlins. Almost my sole reason for saying so is the tradition of marking a stick to keep track of time. That implies something more ancient, more primitive, and more deprived. The configuration of Bible and Sabbath does not necessarily imply Jewish roots, although the flight from Spain included Jews as well as Muslims and even heterodox Christians. Any combination of these three could be implied. The Judaism and Islam in the Spain of 550 years ago was quite different in many respects from what we think of as Judaism and Islam today. Furthermore, some unidentified syncretic or mystical society might have come into play. Although my family has not handed down a tradition including the words Moorish or Portuguese, only Indian and far more rarely Turkish, I would not discount an Iberian origin of the practices passed down.
About The Author:
Thomas McElwain is Associate Professor of Comparative Religion from the University of Stockholm, where he did a dissertation on Seneca story-telling in 1979. He has written a book in the same series, Our Kind of People, about the Melungeon community near Philippi, West Virginia.
ENIGMATIC "BLACKFOOT"
IDENTIFICATIONS
EAST OF THE MISSISSIPPI
and the
SIOUAN TRIBES
of the
VIRGINIA/NORTH CAROLINA PIEDMONT
By: LINDA KERES CARTER
Tutelo*: English:
asépi, asúp black
Isi’asepi Blackfoot
Sissipaha - A former small tribe of North Carolina, presumably Siouan, from their alliance and associations with known Siouan tribes. They must have been an important tribe at one time, as Haw River, the chief head stream of Cape Fear river, derives its name from them, and the site of their former village, known in 1728 as Haw Old Fields, was noted as the largest body of fertile land in all that region. It was probably situated about the present Saxapahaw on Haw River, in the lower part of Alamance County, North Carolina. - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 30.
The word "Blackfoot" is an identification of native ancestry that has been carried in a small but distinct group of families with roots east of the Mississippi, who could have no logical connection to the Blackfoot nation of the Plains. It appears that this word has been used as a catchall phrase, much as the word "Melungeon" has been used. In other words, it came to be used to describe people of many different heritages who weren’t "quite white."
What I’ve found in tracing my own family’s origins, however, is a trail leading back to what I believe is a seminal definition of this word. I am in communication at this point with perhaps a dozen individuals with this identification, all of which lead back, along similar migration paths, to the VA/NC Piedmont.
Let me first deal chronologically with what’s known about the village or tribe, the Sissipaha, which must translate as "Blackfoot." The Sissipaha are associated with the Shakori and Eno branches of the Piedmont Siouan family or confederation of tribes, which were extremely early casualties of English encroachment and simultaneous conflict with the Iroquois.
Perhaps the most influential branch at time of contact was the Occaneechi, whose language was the trade language of the region. They controlled the Roanoke trade routes of the Piedmont. In 1674 they agreed to assist Nathaniel Bacon in his pursuit of a Susquehannock remnant. Bacon turned on the Occaneechi unexpectedly (in a sucker punch, if you will) and destroyed their village on an island in the Roanoke in what is now Clarksville, VA.
There are perhaps 20 tribes or villages of Siouan speaking
people of the Piedmont who were constantly merging together for
protection through harrowing times. Eno (where, presumably,
Sissipaha survivors who would have been associated at that
point) are mentioned as one of the groups huddled at Fort
Christanna in 1713-1717. There is also mention of the
Sissipaha/Shakori/
During the Fort Christanna period Governor Spotswood of Virginia, for his convenience, dubbed all the Siouan tribes there as "Saponi." That, and the word Tutelo, dominated the naming of these people in historical references from then on. The historical record runs mainly as such:
Probably about 1740 the Saponi and Tutelo went north, stopping for a time at Shamokin, in Pennsylvania, about the site of Sunbury, where they and other Indians were visited by the missionary David Brainard in 1745. In 1753 the Cayuga formally adopted the Saponi and Tutelo, who thus became a part of the Six Nations, though all had not then removed to New York. In 1765 the Saponi are mentioned as having 30 warriors living at Tioga, about Sayre, PA, and other villages on the northern branches of the Susquehanna. A part remained here until 1778, but in 1771 the principal portion had their village in the territory of the Cayuga, about 2 miles south of what is now Ithaca, NY. After which they disappear from history [the Saponi, that is - the Tutelo survived a bit longer with the Cayuga on Six Nations reserve in Canada where some of their customs and ceremonies are still observed]. - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 30, page 464.
What has interested me, however, since it appears my own family was among those who "had not then removed to New York" are the other clues to migrations that did not end in total biological extinction.
I believe that a factor which motivated many Piedmont Siouan to resist adoption into the Six Nations was the bitter warfare which had existed between the Iroquois and the Piedmont Siouan for many years, going all the way back to the Mourning Wars of the 17th century. The attrition devouring the Piedmont Siouan from this bitter feuding was a major factor in routing them from their homelands. It would seem natural that some of them would have felt reluctant to capitulate so totally to their hereditary enemies.
Another factor would be the precocious Anglicization of the Piedmont Siouan, which would have adapted them well for life within the frontier economy. During their stay at Fort Christanna (circa 1720) an "Indian School" was instituted in which a number of children were taught by a Mr.Griffin. Unlike the horrendous abuse associated with most 19th and 20th century Indian schools, Mr. Griffin was reported to be a kindly teacher much enjoyed by his pupils. Piedmont Siouan children were also sent to a boarding school at William and Mary College.
There is a documentary associated with archeologists at George Washington Forest (just above Roanoke VA), "The Last of the Tutelo*," in which the narrative characterizes the northward bound Tutelo population as relatively worldly and sought-after for diplomatic purposes, for their knowledge of English, and in some cases, their literacy. It was reported in this piece, that Shikellimy, the Six Nations diplomat who coordinated the tributary tribes of Pennsylvania, was married to a Tutelo woman. (I have not yet found the original source material for this and have heard from others that he had a wife from another tribe, but that doesn’t preclude this wife.)
I found this to be particularly intriguing. I’ve been
corresponding for the past year and a half with the Mingo-EGADs
e-list, devoted to resurrecting Appalachian Iroquois, which was
still spoken in some isolated WV communities as late as the
1950’s. (<http://www.speech.
It’s a matter of record that there were Saponi adopted by the Cayuga, some of whom migrated to the Sandusky in Ohio, taking their Saponi adoptees along. This community was referred to as "The Seneca of the Sandusky" though there are reports from visitors to the area that there was ‘nary a Seneca amongst them.’ My understanding is that this was another tributary amalgamation supervised by the Seneca. Putting two and two together, "Blackfoot of the Seneca" would then easily be explained as Saponi people, referring to themselves as Blackfoot, who had just moved from the Sandusky settlement.
Corroborating this is the tidbit linking Shikellimy with a Tutelo wife. One of his sons was Logan, the "Mingo" famous in WV for his "Jeremiah Johnson" like rampage against whites for the murder of his family. There's a monument to him in Mingo County, with a speech he made. His story became legend in the popular press of the day. At any rate, this is another link between Piedmont Siouan people and native refugees to the WV mountains.
The first information I encountered linking the word Blackfoot to the Piedmont Siouan was in Richard and Vicky Haithcock’s book, "Occaneechi Saponi and Tutelo of the Saponi Nation: aka Monacan and Piedmont Catawba." The Haithcocks are part of the Ohio Saponi community, where the association of the word "Blackfoot" with Saponi has been held traditionally. I’ve presented the word "Sissipaha" as a link to the word "Blackfoot," simply because it fits so cleanly with the recorded Tutelo words. I may also be motivated by a desire to trace the word to a single, tangible source. It’s my understanding, however, that The Ohio Saponi feel that the word "Blackfoot" refers to the entire confederation of Piedmont Siouan - that the word "Saponi" itself is a corruption of words for "Blackfoot."
Lawrence Dunmore III, Esq., and former chairperson of the Occaneechi Saponi Band of the Saponi Nation in Hillsborough, NC, has studied the Tutelo language extensively and explained to me that there is confusion surrounding the English corruption of Saponi tribal names. The country farmers of North Carolina used badly mangled, abbreviated corruptions, while across the border, the plantation owners of Virginia used longer, more accurate corruptions, all pointing to the same villages or tribes. Richard Haithcock, in his book, asserts that the words Mansickapanaough, Monasiccapano, Monasukapanough, Saxapawha, Sissipahaw, Siccaponi, Siccasaponi, Sikaponi, Shaponi, Saponi are all corruptions related to this meaning.
Lawrence Dunmore points out some definitions of words that will be useful to keep in mind when researching these tribes. "The term Stuckenock was used by the Virginians to describe the Eno, Shakori and Sissipahau peoples, while individual terms were used for each group by the North Carolinians. All three were one people, recognized by Virginia as Stuckenock and were part of a larger group of people, Yésah" [the Piedmont Siouan]. Also, "the term Adshusheer was the name of an Eno village and the term Keyuawee was a Shakori village. They were not separate tribes."
There is a song recently written for the Pow Wow drum with the words,
Way ah way ah oh,
Way ah way ah oh,
Way ah pa way oh
Ohio, Kentucky, Carolina, Virginia,
Wataca asutupiah, Monisiccapano.
Way ah pa way oh
Tutelo, Saponi, Occaneechi, Monacan,
We are called the Blackfoot people, Monisiccapano
Way ah pa way oh.
The song is becoming popular along the Pow Wow circuit in Ohio, North Carolina and Virginia and is spreading the association with the word Blackfoot among descendants.
I’m wondering if there wasn’t a segment of the Eastern Siouan who called themselves Blackfoot and that these are the people who migrated into Appalachia and the Midwest (and as far as Texas, there are also some who took a southerly route through Alabama). Perhaps the Saponi and Tutelo who were adopted into the Iroquois League really were strictly Saponi or Tutelo, and this Blackfoot identification speaks for another segment of the population who decided to take other paths.
I found an interesting instance of an historic knowledge
of a Blackfoot/Saponi link. It was from a man whose family has
lived historically on the NC/SC border in Catawba territory.
This coincides with the historic record, which reports the
Sissipaha/Shakori/
The question of whether the word Blackfoot refers to a
segment of the Piedmont Siouan or can speak for the whole
Piedmont Siouan population is a subject for further inquiry.
Perhaps as more descendants surface, the answers will become
more clear. We have a website with a forum devoted to this
subject, www.saponitown.
The tradition in my own family is that we are "related to a Blackfoot chief." The line I believe this would derive from was named Harris. Our Thomas Harris appears on the 1810 census in Chambersburg, PA. Chambersburg lies along the Tuscarora Path, which was also used by Piedmont Siouan people migrating north, and is less than 100 miles, on all sides, from Shamokin and Paxtang, PA, and Elkins, WV. My great-grandfather reported that the family derived originally from Virginia.
Interestingly, there is a Chief Harris reported by John Buck, one of the last Tutelos at Six Nations, who was interviewed by anthropologist J. Owen Dorsey at Six Nations Reserve in 1882. John Buck said that this Chief Harris led a loyalist faction of Southern Saponi north to New York to join Joseph Brandt and the Loyalist Iroquois at the start of the Revolutionary War. There is a document to this effect in the National Anthropological Archives in Washington, D.C. I have also found mention of a Cheraw chief by the name of Harris. Richard Haithcock lists a number of Harrises in New York, Cayuga adoptees in the 1820’s. Not only was Harris a common name, the name Thomas Harris occurred frequently.
I live now in North Carolina, though I was raised in Chicago. My family has lived in Illinois or Wisconsin since the 1870’s. My husband and I met in Los Angeles 13 years ago. The subject of Indian ancestry never came up, other than to mention we both had some we knew nothing about. As it turns out, his family derives on one side a few miles from the old Occaneechi Island, from the other, on land within the boundaries of the Fort Christanna reservation in a community that has all the earmarks of a tri-racial isolate. By the theory of "who’s buried in Grant’s Tomb?" he is mostly likely one-third Saponi himself.
Bibliography
Hodge, Frederick Webb. Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico. Washington: Government Printing Offices, 2 vols., 1907-10.
Mooney, Siouan Tribes of the East. Bull. Bureau of American Ethnology, 1894
Right, Douglas L. The American Indian in North Carolina, Durham, NC, Duke University press, 1947.
Swanton, John R., The Indian Tribes of North America, Washington, Smithsonian Institution press, 1952.
Swanton, John R., The Indians of the Southeastern United States, Washington, U.S. Govt. Printing Office, 1946.
About The Author:
Linda Keres Carter lives in Snow Hill, North Carolina with her husband, Barry Carter, and her four young children. She produced a video dramatization for the educational market, Sister Becky’s Baby, a North Carolina folk tale, and does web design to support her own and her husband’s business ventures. The family is active with Eastern Bull Drum and Singers and attends many pow wows.
BARBADOS AND THE MELUNGEONS OF APPALACHIA
By: L.E. SALAZAR
For the past 375 years Barbados has been anglophone. Due to its position as the most easterly island in the Caribbean, it was early recognized to be of strategic naval and military importance. And with the popularity of sugar which was introduced to the island by the Dutch from Brazil, the tiny island loomed large as Britain's most prosperous colony. The spread of sugar plantations precipitated migration to the other colonies as those bondsmen who were to be paid in land at the end of their service were unable to secure the ten acres that was their due. May Lumsden states that from 1650 to 1680 nearly 30,000 of the 80,000 original settlers of Barbados moved on to the North American mainland or to other islands. And credits this outflow to the North American colonies with the introduction of "ideas, capital, agricultural know-how, a gracious life-style, as well as a determination to work and prosper."[1] Today, many of the descendants of early settlers of America can trace their ancestry to Barbados so that as a foremost colony with unbroken records of its English speaking inhabitants since 1637, Barbados' history cannot be discounted in any study of the English speaking Americas and its peoples.
Familiarity with those records of Barbados settlers indicates that there were small endogamous groups of non-English peoples who Anglicized their names. In comparing the oral history of my own family with that of the written records, I came to the conclusion that they had originally been Flemish and by 1715 had done what others were doing, and that was to bring their names in line with English domination of the island. This practice of accommodation by adjustment of surnames in Barbados is the precedent for the mystery to which Brent Kennedy points concerning Melungeon surnames and the Melungeon claim to be other than English.
In Brent Kennedy's history of the Melungeons, there is a marked pattern, a parallel, to be found in Barbados. It is not associated so much with the love child who was incorporated into the plantocracy both in North and South America and in Barbados but with the ones who were referred to as "abandoned people", a name which aptly describes what Kennedy translates from Turkish as being "melun-can" - a lost soul. Together, "lost soul" and "abandoned people" convey the sense of dispossession and of alienation from mainstream society in a period of history when in this hemisphere persons were forcibly removed from their homelands and left to fend for themselves in unaccustomed environments.[2]
On the other hand, Melungeon may be, as Kennedy also offers; simply the Portuguese word for mixed race and this would tie into their claims to be Portuguese. This then leads us to yet another group of unsettled people, in search of land, a new identity and acceptance and these would be persons connected with Jewish communities who had become conversos. Jewish emigres from Brazil migrated to Barbados in 1654. According to Shilstone by the end of the seventeenth century there were about 250 living on the island and "although mainly Portuguese, were gathered from all parts of the world". There was also reference to Jews in Barbados since 1628. This figure of 250 most likely can only apply to practicing Jews.[3] Under the Inquisition Jews had been persecuted for their religious beliefs so that fleeing from Mexico and Brazil, some of their households would have accepted Christianity as a protection and, in so doing, would have stressed their kinship with the Christian nations rather than with Judaism. Cromwell offered asylum to the Jews of Europe to settle in Barbados and a synagogue has been in existence in Barbados since 1664. Mixed race persons from Jewish households might therefore have found it preferable when removed to another colony to identify with the culture from which they had sprung. For instance, in 1729 Jacob Valverde made a bequest to his daughter of the "Indian Wench Sary" and to his son, "the negro Woman called Esparansa." Esparansa was no doubt an Anglicization of the Spanish 'Esperanza'.[4] When such mixed persons escaped to a better life it would have been more politic to stress their Spanish heritage to account for their darker skin.
Since Barbados was at the center of English colonialism, in this article, therefore, I would wish to give a brief outline of Barbados history and draw the parallels between the Melungeons and the poor whites and poor coloreds of Barbados - the red people, because they are brothers in poverty and the love child is their sister.
Displacement and the Melting Pot:
In the midst of later conflicting evidence as to the number of persons settled by Sir William Courteen on the island of Barbados, the Sloan Manuscript 2441, recorded in the Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society, sets out an Account of His Majesty's Island of Barbados and the Government Prepared about 1684 which describes the first ship load of settlers from England thus:
"In 1626 Courteen settled 1850 men, women and children - English, Indians and others." [5]
It is to those "Indians and Others" that historians and genealogists must now turn our attention as it demonstrates the genesis of the relegation of certain peoples to a non-existent status. Even though there is some evidence of a lively slave trade between North America and Barbados in Native Americans taken from the American accounts unearthed by Jack Forbes and Barbara Olexer, it has been the official position in Barbados that only a few Native Americans, mostly from South America, were enslaved here. Yet, as pointed out in Love Child, there are references to slaves whose names are re-echoed in North America.[6] Chief among these is Cumba/Coombah which Kennedy attributes to the Lumbee/Croatan of North and South Carolina.[7]
In Barbados, the term "abandoned people" was used to describe an endogamous group of poor, white-skinned people who were also called "poor backras or buckras", a name not far removed from the epithet "buck" used to describe male North American Natives and Natives of Guyana in South America. This reference to abandonment was used by the upper classes, the high whites and the high browns, and even though this community which has sister communities in the Grenadines and St. Vincent appeared to be Caucasians they were yet called, by visibly African people: "red". This is the same term used to describe Native Americans, as opposed to the Europeans who were always referred to as "white".
Added to this mosaic were the victims of the African slave trade moving from Africa to Barbados and on to the American colonies together with the other hidden trade in Native American slaves moving from the colonies to Barbados and other islands which is yet to be fully documented. But it is crucial to understanding the history of those light-skinned persons who, having been born outside the pale, whether separate or of combined Native American, European and African origin, saw a chance to remove themselves from the taint of slavery by transferring to the North American colonies. Those among them who had the means being assimilated into frontier society and those without, being cast out.
Since the belief was cemented that there were few Indians enslaved in Barbados, Price took the trodden path that the name Red Legs and Red Shanks which applied in South Carolina to persons of Indian descent could not have the same meaning in Barbados, but applied as he was told to kilted highlanders.[8] No one took the time to analyze the names in the slave inventories. For instance, in 1650 Colonel William Hilliard of Somerset leased Henley Plantation on the East Coast for 99 years to six gentlemen "... with all negroes Indians and other slaves with all cattel household stuff..." Six years later he deeded the plantation to his son in law "in consideration of marriage between Meliora daughter of the said William Hillyard" and one of the above lessees together "with all negroes Indians and others."[9]
Although the documents speak to Indians in the plural only one woman is singled out as being such. In the first deed, her name is given as Simmy and in the other as Syminige which name is phonetically the same as the Yoruba Sheminige. All other slaves are called "negro" and the Mareahs of the first document are spelt in the second in their Spanish form which is Maria. This tiny clue bears witness to a later statement by a Governor of Spanish Florida that the English were kidnapping Mestizos - half-breeds. The Hilliard inventory therefore marks a sinister trend and that is that Native American ancestry was being officially erased or subsumed under the European or African partner's category.
A footnote to the Hilliard Deeds is the appearance of a paradox. Hilliard records that 23 new slaves who are obviously second generation since they have Christian names were brought to Barbados on the May Flower commandeered by Captain Hunte. It would be ironical if this is the same good ship the Mayflower which brought passengers to religious freedom in North America and alternatively brought others to be shackled in Barbados.
As for Moors in the Caribbean, Pere Labat left that record of them in the French islands. In the English colonies, the West African peoples of Nigeria, Ghana and Senegal were the ones who were highly favored and the ones most likely to be chosen as overseers. And, more importantly, to be given Native American wives before the influx of African women made it unnecessary. The first baptismal records of Barbados also indicate that several people were baptized without reference to their parents and, especially, without reference to their mothers, which leads to the very simple conclusion that these mothers were in fact non-Europeans. Stemming from Barbados, therefore, one could find a multi-racial group of people of varying hues who could claim an ancestor who was Portuguese, Dutch, English, Scotch-Irish, West African or Native American but who were themselves anglophone.
Parallel Surnames
Of the Barbados Census of 1680, David Kent remarks that among those of the Hebrew nation are people with Portuguese surnames but Lumsden further elucidates that many of the emigrants from Brazil had earlier had their abode in Amsterdam. This combination of Dutch and Portuguese speaking Jews may comprise a small part of the claim of some Melungeons to be of Dutch or Portuguese descent since the Jewish people were particularly versatile in adapting their surnames to suit their temporary abode, for example, Navarrh could have been derived from Navarrhoe, an early Barbados Jewish name. The names Gibson and Davis which feature in Kennedy's lists as being Redbones are re-echoed in Price's reference to transplanted Barbadian Red-Legs to St. Vincent and Bequia, neighboring islands.
The history of Flemish ingenuity and their resistance to Spanish oppression by settlement in the Netherlands and in Britain is a key to understanding social relationships and inter-marriage patterns in Barbados and elsewhere because it shows that people who have been separated by nations often seek out their ethnic groups when they come into unfamiliar surroundings. By this period, the Flemish people had either become British like Sir William Courteen or were known as Dutch like Governor Groenewegen to whom Courteen's men resorted for assistance in setting up the colony.
In 1651, however, Sir George Ayscue with his fleet banished the Dutch from Barbados. So where did they go when thrust out of Barbados? The American frontier is the most likely place. The appearance of people on the mainland who have no previous record among the so-called white inhabitants of Barbados may be explained by the possibility that some persons had slipped abroad without licenses to travel to another colony. By 1663, Barbadians were showing interest in colonizing Carolina and many of the Melungeon names are to be found in Barbados.
Kennedy astutely pointed to the presence of Turkish artisans among the English and the possibility of gypsies being among early colonists, a hypothesis which is ably confirmed for the latter group by The Calendar of State Papers of 1679 which records the following proposal to the King and Council:
"to constitute an office for transporting to the plantations all vagrants, rogues, and idle persons that can give no account of themselves, felons who have the benefit of clergy, such as are convicted for petty larceny, vagabonds, gypsies, and low persons, making resort to unlicensed brothels, such persons to be transported from the nearest seaport, and to serve four years according to the laws and customs of those islands, if over twenty years of age."[10]
Slavery and Prejudice
The sense of superiority which naturally arises when one group takes control of another's destiny is no new phenomenon. It runs through the history of mankind and this is why this writer considers the Melungeon movement to be so important at this juncture in history as a force resistant to racist rhetoric so that persons who acknowledge the contribution of their multi-ethnic ancestors reflected in their own lives powerfully disprove charges of intellectual inferiority which the bigoted would like to see as inherent in any one people.
On one hand, the South Carolina courts[11] were in essence saying that a mixed race person with property and known association with whites could be deemed white with all the attendant privileges of that status. But on the other hand, a slave, no matter how far he was removed from his African ancestry, could have no such aspirations. In Barbados, the principle was the same, though strongly denied. The closeness that obtained between Barbados and the Carolinas and Virginia in particular, with so many persons of the pioneer companies having proceeded from Barbados, makes this phenomenon very understandable as the genesis for the need for isolation and the imparting of extreme prejudice to subsequent generations. In Barbados, gave birth to a visibly white community yet known as Red, their original status.
Other Parallels
The Calendar of State Papers for 1657 gives the unique description of the labor policies on Barbados in which the Irish "were derided by the negroes as white slaves" and records that negroes were being employed at trades rather than the English, Scotch and Irish. Two years before the official report it was recorded that the import of Irish people as labor was being resisted by the English because the Irish were wont to throw in their lot with the escaped slaves. Yet the written record on Barbados is that the Irish never intermarried with the escapees they joined forces with.
1) Isolation
Forbes came to the conclusion that many of the removed Native Americans were engaged in fishing activities. Early Barbados history confirms that the captured natives were being used as fishermen as well as house servants and coincidentally, pockets of white communities with a non-European culture were springing up being termed Red-Legs or Poor Backras marrying among themselves. Early photographs of Red-Legs show a marked resemblance to some of Kennedy's portraits of Native American and Melungeon families.
On Barbados, the Red-Leg community centered on the hilly, isolated areas of Irish Town and the Scotland District which has led historians to believe that they were an unmixed remnant of Scotch-Irish. The eating habits formerly ascribed to them of eating lice, crickets and bonavist, a type of bean, however indicates more than Irish origins. Impoverished through lack of opportunity these communities were referred to as "abandoned people".
2) Degradation:
The accounts of the Red-Leg during slavery
is that of collaboration with slaves to steal their masters'
goods and of care extended to them by slaves who were better
clothed and fed. These accounts are at variance with that of an
editorial written in the Barbadian newspaper of 1861which stated
that "they became the armed protectors of the proprietary
against the insurrection of the slaves." It is the same job
description for Amerindians in Guyana and Indian trackers
elsewhere. In that editorial, emphasis was loaded on their being
descended from "gentlemen, clergy, officers of the army and
navy, industrious families of the middle classes in England,
sturdy English labourers...
Early accounts of their lifestyle of squalor, loose living and thievery were not explained except by the word "abandoned". Their poverty was accepted and even their education was limited by the plantocracy as being suitable for an underclass. Some Red Legs of Barbados, as the Melungeons of Appalachia, eventually removed themselves from European aggression and African infiltration but this is only half the story. The other half I attempted to cover in the story of the love child, the ones who were assimilated into European communities as they settled in England, the Commonwealth and North America.
In conclusion, the rediscovery of the history of the Melungeons, as related by Brent Kennedy, is of one people linked by our Native American ancestry throughout the Caribbean and the Americas. To be melungeon in today's world is to have the courage to acknowledge the mosaic of our ancestral heritage and to revel in the various aspects of those cultures which have formed us; but it goes further than that. I believe that it must rank as the start of a movement to uncover the truth of human history without racial bias. Because it is clear that if, within 400 years, the record of some peoples' existence can be so mangled that only a glossy official record remains, then what has been accepted as truth concerning ancient empires must be challenged so that there are no missing gaps; and that, I think, must be our mission.
About The Author
L.E. Salazar is a multi-racial person. She graduated from
the University of
the West Indies, having fulfilled the requirements for a B.A. (Hons.)
degree
in History. She researches genealogies and has a special
interest in
ethnicity. She is the author of Love Child: A Guide to the
Social History of
Barbados.
Website:
http://www.geocitie
NOTE:
This next article is not specifically about American Indians. But I thought you might be interested in learning about another fascinating group of people that mixed with the American Indian Melungeons. The Melungeon DNA released in July of 2002 clearly showed an American Indian component in Melungeon ancestry. It also showed another interesting component, that of the Roma Gypsy.
A Possible End to the Mystery of Melungeons
By: HENRY ROBERT BURKE
I am rather proud of the fact that after all the different ideas that have been expressed about Melungeons in recent years, there has been surprisingly little hostility shown between researchers. I think this is a very encouraging sign and I hope the good will continues, because I can see the possibility of some answers. It is my feeling that the Riddle of the Melungeons will finally be understood. In the end, I believe that all of us researchers will have been a little bit right and all of us researchers will have been a little bit wrong, but that all of will have enjoyed and profited from each others research.
To me Melungeons are a tremendously interesting subject. No matter what the final conclusion turns out to be, Melungeons are exclusively American. The term Melungeon would hardly fit in any language except (American) English. Melungeon Culture would hardly be appropriate anyplace except Appalachia. Melungeons hardly matter to anyone except Melungeons and perhaps a few sociologists. Could it be possible that Melungeon and American mean the same thing?
What does the word Melungeon mean? The dictionary or encyclopedia does not even carry a definition for the word. The word Melungeon means different things to different people. To some it may mean a culture or sub-culture, to some it may mean an ethnic group and to some it may mean a lifestyle. There are names like Black Dutch, Black Irish and dozens of other terms which may connected the word Melungeon. The word has connotations with Native American, African American and with people from the Middle East. Perhaps when incorporated, all of the above apply to Melungeons.
We have all researched, we have all postulated, we have all developed theories, but to date, no one seems to have been able to prove anything conclusive, except that Melungeons appear to have originated in Appalachia and we all knew that when we started.
The good news is, that we now have DNA analysis to sort out the genealogy of any given human being or group of human beings. DNA is the abbreviation for deoxyribonucleic acid organic chemical a complex molecular structure that is found in all prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells and in many viruses. DNA codes genetic information for the transmission of inherited traits.
Genetic studies have been used to help decipher the origins of human populations and the history of their movements across the world. In the 1960's, genetic studies focused on differences in proteins and blood groups to reconstruct relationships among human populations.
With the advent of the new genetic technology based on the study of recombinant DNA the focus has shifted to the abundant variation found in the hereditary material of DNA. The small, circular DNA found in the mitochondria (mtDNA) of the cytoplasm of our cells has been particularly useful for tracing maternal lineages of contemporary populations to their ancestral roots. These kinds of studies have begun to produce a preliminary picture of how contemporary populations are related to each other.
(For example), a pattern has emerged indicating a considerable degree of genetic differentiation among Siberian populations, especially among those populations living in the extreme North. These differences may be due in part to random fluctuations (genetic drift) caused by low population densities and small tribal numbers in this region. On the other hand, genetic data have demonstrated a close resemblance between the aboriginal Siberian tribes living east of the Yenisey River and northern Mongoloid populations, and similarities among populations dwelling to the west of the Yenisey River and to some European populations. This same technology can be used to solve the riddle of the origins of Melungeons!
But do we really want to solve the mystery of the origins of Melungeons? I even wonder about my own motives. I know I will miss researching about the mysterious Melungeons. This has been a great adventure for me. I have met some wonderful people and enjoyed some lively discussions concerning the subject. When there is no longer any mystery, I wonder what I will have to concentrate on. This situation reminds me of a line from a movie named KING KONG. Kong was a fictional giant Ape who had for many years, terrorized an isolated primitive population of humans on a small remote island. Kong was both feared and revered by the island's natives, yet ironically he also gave the incentive. Then the island was discovered by modern men. They captured and removed King Kong to America. Someone commented that the natives were lucky to be rid of that monster. A wiser voice spoke up and stated very eloquently, that the natives had lost their god, i.e., their best friend. After Kong was gone, they had anything to motivate them. Without Kong, life on the island was so easy that social decay ensued and most of the natives became drunks.
Well, I am so confident that DNA will at least give us some very good answers, that I am already looking for some interesting new project of research. I have enjoyed researching the Melungeons. It has occupied a fair amount of my time and has in fact taken a fair amount of my energy. I am seriously going to miss the hours of pondering over possible explanations. My only consolation is that be I will not be alone in misery!
My Case for Gypsy or Roma Origins of the Melungeon Appalachian Sub-Culture - is based in part on the history of how Gypsies were treated in Eastern Europe, Western Europe and later in the Americas.
The Roma, or "Gypsies," entered south-eastern Europe in the last quarter of the 13th Century, caught up in the Ottoman expansion westwards. Originating in India as a composite, non-Aryan military population assembled to resist the Muslim incursions led by the Ghaznavids, they left through the Hindu Kush during the first quarter of the 11th Century, moving through Persia, Armenia and the Byzantine Empire towards the West. (Hancock, 1995:17-28).
The condition of slavery in Eastern Europe emerged later, out of the increasingly stringent measures taken by the landowners, the court and the monasteries to prevent their Romani labor force from leaving the principalities, as they were beginning to do in response to the ever more burdensome demands upon their skills, and from the shift of their "limited fiscal dependency upon the Romanian princes" to an "unlimited personal dependency on the big landlords of the country, the monasteries and the boyars" (Gheorghe, 1983:23).
The Code of Basil the Wolf of Moldavia, dated 1654, contained references to the treatment of slaves, including the death penalty in the case of the rape of a white woman by a Rom. (The same offense committed by a non-Rom warranted no punishment, according to the same Code). Gheorghe (loc. cit.) saw the process of the enslavement of Roma as an abuse committed by the feudal landlords, without any legal base or legitimation; certainly their outsider status denied Roma any power to resist, and qualified them for this status according to the Islamic world-view of the occupying Ottomans, for whom dominated non-Muslim populations were "fit only for enslavement" (Sugar, 1964:103). By the 1500s, the terms rob and tsigan had become synonymous with "slave," although the latter was originally a neutral ethnonym applied by the Europeans to the first Roma. The fact that in 1995 tsigan was adopted by the Romanian government as the official designation for Roma in that country has generated much pain and anger, and is indicative of the ongoing racism against the Romani minority in contemporary Romania. (See Szente, 1996, and Zenk, 1991).
Slave Sale Advertisement:
"For sale, a prime lot of Gypsy slaves, to be sold by auction at the Monastery of St.Elias, 8 May 1852, consisting of 18 men, 10 boys, 7 women and 3 girls: in fine condition." Wallachia. (From Ian Hancock, The Pariah Syndrome, 1987.)
House slaves were forbidden to speak Romani, and their descendants, the Beyash (also Boyash or Bayash), today have a variety of Romanian, a Latin-based language, rather than Romani, as their mother tongue. Female house slaves were also provided to visitors for sexual entertainment (Colson, 1839); the half-white children of such unions automatically became slaves. In the 16th Century, a Romani child sold for the equivalent of 48¢. By the 19th Century, slaves were sold by weight, at the rate of one gold piece per pound. Treatment of the slaves included flogging, the falague or shredding the soles of the feet with a whip, cutting off of the lips, burning with lye, and wearing a three-cornered spiked iron collar called a cangue. Slaves were able to escape periodically and take refuge in maroon communities in the Carpathian mountains; these are called netoti in the literature.
By 1800 the laws codified by Basil the Wolf in 1654 had been forgotten, and the treatment of the slaves had become a matter of the whim of those in charge of the estates or the monasteries. The Ottoman court attempted to make the laws more stringent, and in 1818 incorporated into the Wallachian Penal code the following laws: §2 "Gypsies are born slaves," §3 "Anyone born of a mother who is a slave, is also a slave," §5 "Any owner has the right to sell or give away his slaves," and §6 "Any Gypsy without an owner is the property of the Prince." But Ottoman rule was thwarted by a takeover by the Russians in 1826, and Paul Kisseleff was appointed governor in 1829. He was firmly opposed to slavery, but because of pressure from the boyars, among other things, he did not abolish it. Instead in 1833 he incorporated stringent, conservative revisions in the Moldavian civil code, including the following: §II(154) "Legal unions cannot take place between free persons and slaves," §II(162) "Marriage between slaves cannot take place without their owner's consent," §II(174) "The price of a slave must be fixed by the Tribunal, according to his age, condition and profession," and §II(176) "If anyone has taken a female slave as a concubine, she will become free after his death. If he has had any children by her, they will also become free."
While the enslavement of Roma in the Balkans is the most extensively documented, Gypsies have also been enslaved at different times in other parts of the world. In Renaissance England King Edward VI passed a law stating that Gypsies be "branded with a V on their breast, and then enslaved for two years," and if they escaped and were recaptured, they were then branded with an S and made slaves for life. During the same period in Spain, according to a decree issued in 1538, Gypsies were enslaved for perpetuity to individuals as a punishment for escaping. Spain had already begun shipping Gypsies to the Americas in the 15th century; three were transported by Columbus to the Caribbean on his third voyage in 1498.
Spain's later Solucion Americans involved the shipping of Gypsy slaves to its colony in 18th century Louisiana. An Afro-Gypsy community today lives in St. Martin's Parish, and reportedly there is another one in central Cuba, both descended from intermarriage between the two enslaved peoples. In the 16th century, Portugal shipped Gypsies as an unwilling labor force to its colonies in Maranhão (now Brazil), Angola and even India, the Romas' country of origin which they had left five centuries earlier. They were made Slaves of the Crown in 18th century Russia during the reign of Catherine the Great, while in Scotland during the same period they were employed "in a state of slavery" in the coal mines.
England and Scotland shipped Roma to Virginia and the Caribbean as slaves during the 17th and 18th centuries; John Morton, in his West India Customs and Manners (1793), describes seeing "many Gypsies (in Jamaica) subject from the age of eleven to thirty to the prostitution and lust of overseers, book-keepers, Negroes, &c. (and) taken into keeping by gentlemen who paid exorbitant hire for their use."
A large measure of my thesis rests with the fact that a substantial number of Gypsies were brought to North America. In general, the Gypsies became dispersed through out the American population as Black Dutch, Black Irish, Melungeons and various other descriptive names. Some mixed with Native Americans, some mixed with African Americans and many mixes with European Americans. Some of the Gypsies who migrated to Appalachia as groups, formed the basis for the Melungeon Culture. With this I rest my case, for now I am confident that there is sufficient incentive to warrant the DNA Study that I have been suggesting for a few years.
AFTERWORD
To my thinking the man that started the current Melungeon "Revival" was a man named Brent Kennedy. I cannot count the number of people that have told me they became interested in Melungeons after reading his book: "The Melungeons: The Resurrection of a Proud People" So I think it only fitting to let this modern day Melungeon pioneer have the last word in this book. And I would like to publicly thank him for the great efforts he has put into the Melungeon Movement.
K.D.
A NEW PATH
A Statement from Brent Kennedy
June 24, 2002
The long-awaited DNA results are in and as many of us have maintained, the Melungeons are indeed a mixture of all races and many ethnic groups. The DNA samples in this study represent the oldest, most established Melungeon male and female lines in the Hancock County community, and the Wise County community. Extensive genealogies for these two populations – and those sampled - are known and documented. Respected members of each community assisted in the collection of the samples, and these samples can be examined separately (by community) and compared against one another.
In addition to Native American (approximately 5% of the
sample), African (approximately 5%) and European (approximately
83% of the sample, but representing Europeans from north to
south), the study also showed approximately 7% of the samples
matching populations in Turkey, Syria and northern India. In
other words, the surviving genes from Middle Eastern and East
Indian ancestors are in equal proportion to those of Native
Americans and Africans. My gut feeling is that the original,
seventeenth-
Very importantly, this study is only a sampling. It’s impossible to get to every single bona fide Melungeon descendant. Consequently, all this – or any other – DNA study can do is CONFIRM heritages – it cannot dismiss them. But via the genetic sequences found, it can give us a hint at the ethnic make-up of the earliest Melungeons. In this regard, I am still keeping an open mind regarding the theories that are out there. Four hundred years has allowed a great deal of time for population admixture and each family has its own distinct cultural and ethnic legacy. The original people referred to as Melungeons may have been Africans, or East Indians, or Native Americans, or Turks, or Gypsies or Portuguese or whatever. Not one of us knows with absolute certainty. What we do know is that very early on these various populations combined into one people known as Melungeons.
As those who attended Fourth Union heard, from both Dr. Jones and Dr. Morris, this finding is incredibly important from a healthcare standpoint alone. Native Americans, Europeans, and African Americans can – and do – carry Middle Eastern and Mediterranean diseases. It takes very few individuals in a founding population to have a dramatic impact on a gene pool. African Americans and Native Americans can – and do – have Familial Mediterranean Fever. White Americans can – and do – have Sickle Cell Anemia. Having the genetic and genealogical data to explain why is critical to improving healthcare.
The study also underscores another important aspect of the origins debate: nearly all theories are correct to some extent. The only ones wrong are those that have been exclusive in their premise. The long-standing academic position that Melungeons are a "tri-racial isolate" consisting of strictly northern Europeans, strictly West Africans, and Native Americans is incorrect. Those unwilling to add any other ethnic group to the mix have been wrong. This is what I stated in my book and have maintained for years: we are mixed and highly inclusive, and that inclusiveness includes Mediterranean, Middle Eastern and East Indian.
We should also keep in mind that these non Native-American ethnic groups could have arrived in a myriad of ways, and likely did. Those who have read my book or heard me speak know that this has always been my position. I have never been wed to any theory of arrival – what I have been wed to is, simply, arrival. Santa Elena and its outlying forts continue to help explain how some of these people - and their genes - might have gotten here. There were Gypsies and Conversos (e.g., Jews, Arabs, Berbers, East Indians, Turks, Moors, Africans, etc.) at Santa Elena who, even as "good Catholic Spaniards and "good Catholic Portuguese" would have carried their ancestral genes from their ancestral homelands. The finding of Turkish genes (both male and female lines) in the Melungeon population seems to indicate full families, so Santa Elena remains an origin possibility for some of the Melungeon ancestors. There were no women with Drake's Turks and the Turks themselves weren't sending families here, at least as far as I know. The British, however, were doing so. Turkish and Armenian families were documentably present in Jamestown, serving the English colonists as indentured servants and artisans. Whatever the case, historians are best equipped to determine HOW the genes arrived. Finally, East Indians were brought to these shores in significant numbers from the early 1600s on and Romany (Gypsies) are also well documented in Virginia and the Carolinas during the same time period. There was, simply said, no shortage of the people necessary to provide the genetic proof to back up the Melungeon claims of origin.
I don’t yet know my full family DNA results but when I do I, and hopefully others, will share the information in an effort to help solve the roles specific families have played in the Melungeon odyssey. But I do know one sequence and this single piece of information is enlightening. My Mitochondrial DNA, which I inherited from my Mother, matches the Siddis of India. The dark-skinned Siddis likely originated from what today is Ethiopia, Eritrea, or Somalia – sub-Saharan, east Africa. They were transported to India in a variety of ways, most not so pleasant, and formed a major component of what became known as the Untouchable Caste. Their lives- and the life of my ancestral Mother – must have been horribly difficult. But she survived long enough to have at least one daughter and that daughter did likewise. And generation after generation this original Ethiopian girl’s DNA was passed along until, in 1950, it came to me.
How my particular East Indian ancestor made her way to
America remains unclear. It may have been as the wife of a
sixteenth-century New World Portuguese settler (the
sixteenth-century Portuguese soldiers married northern Indian
women by the thousands). Or she may have been the spouse of a
seventeenth-
So, what is the meaning of all this? For me, I can sum it up this way:
While I am likely – and proudly – of northern European heritage, I am also of Siddi heritage. And I am equally kin to the Scotsman tilling his field outside Glasgow, the Chickahominy Indian fighting to keep tribal pride alive, and the various east Africans at one another’s throats in Somalia. The Israelis and Palestinians dealing out death on a daily basis, the Appalachian blue grass banjo picker, the Indian and Pakistani soldiers staring one another down in Kashmir, and – yes – the down-beaten Untouchable in the poorest ghettos of southern India are also family. All are literally, not just figuratively, MY people. Genocide in the Balkans, earthquakes in Turkey, riots in Argentina, and repressive regimes in Afghanistan are no longer faraway occurrences of little consequence. In every tragedy on this Earth, a relative is suffering. And this leads me to a deeper understanding of just what the Melungeon story really means, and the transition that I must make.
We in Appalachia are known for our powerful storytelling tradition. Beginning today we have the opportunity to tell the most important story in our history – the story of the Oneness of Mankind and how this Oneness is exemplified in the Appalachian heartland. The irony that we in Appalachia and those whose roots lie in these mountains – long considered the lowest of the low – could play a role in World ethnic harmony is staggering in its implications. But it’s not a pipe dream. We can send a powerful message to all people everywhere, that:
No place, no region, no human being is too small, too remote, or too insignificant to justify dismissal. We are all of the same flesh and each of us matters.
From this point on, our mission lies in spreading this message beyond these mountains. And we need to start at the earliest levels of teaching – our elementary schools – well before the seeds of racism and hate have been sown.
Beginning this week, I commit myself to this mission. The time has come for me to leave the historical and origins research, further DNA analysis, and other academic pursuits to those more qualified. My task was to be a catalyst – an instigator. Fourteen years ago, very few people cared about the Melungeons or any other mixed race population for that matter. That deeply bothered me, as I felt that these various populations deserved more attention from academia and, indeed, had played a far larger role in building this nation than they’d ever been given credit for. Placing them all into a box labeled "tri-racial isolate" and closing the lid seemed a grave injustice. I wrote my book to force the acknowledgement of our multi-racial communities and, in a sense, to help bring them out of the closet in which academia had shoved them. I believe I’ve contributed to an increased awareness and, hopefully, an increased pride. The level of interest and the sheer volume of books and articles being written today is enormous compared to the late 1980s and early 1990s. This was my dream and I am now confident that this interest will not dissipate.
There are a myriad of talented researchers exploring a variety of Melungeon related issues. Dozens of younger scholars are joining the older established writers and researchers in the search for Melungeon origins and the meaning of that search. Over the past decade, people like Jack Goins, Manuel Mira, Eloy Gallegos, James Nickens, Pat Elder, Mike Nassau, Wayne Winkler, Tim Hashaw, Carroll and Betty Goyne, and Virginia DeMarce have added substantial knowledge to what we might soon begin calling "Melungeon Studies." Each of these individuals deserves our gratitude and our praise. My long-standing hope has been, and continues to be, that all those researching this important topic can somehow pull together. That we acknowledge our differing opinions on historical matters, but that we come to recognize our shared commitment to (1) caring for these people and their culture, and (2) abhorring racism in any form. These shared commitments far outweigh the debate over who showed up first, where the name came from, or what color John Doe might have been. Perhaps my greatest disappointment over the years has rested in the inability or unwillingness of what should have been fellow travelers on a very bumpy road to travel together. It’s not too late.
In closing, I’ve done all that I can do for those who came before us. From this point on, I plan on devoting my efforts to making this Earth a better place for the living. If I’ve learned anything in this nearly fifteen-year journey, it’s the sobering reality that human prejudice exists everywhere – even within the very groups that have been the target of such prejudice. The heated debates over who can – or cannot be – a Melungeon are reminiscent of the earlier debates over who can – or cannot be – white. I know we don’t intend it to be this way, but this is what invariably happens when we humans insist on categorizing and refining human ethnicity. It’s this same mindset that, when carried to an extreme, results in prejudice, ethnic cleansing and, ultimately, genocide. "Race" is cultural, not genetic. I’ve been accused time and again of "diluting" Melungeon ethnicity to the point of blurring the boundaries and, in the words of one critic, "making them related to everybody." This is precisely what I intended to do and the DNA study results have supported this contention. That’s the underlying beauty of this story, and to miss that point is symptomatic of the too narrow focus that inevitably leads to ethnic tensions.
And so, what energy and time I have will be expended in bringing people together wherever and whenever I can. In teaching and engaging in projects that can impact how human beings – and especially our children – view their fellow human beings. That we are not just figuratively – but literally – one human family. From Africa and India, to Turkey, Portugal, and the United States of America, we are one race. Where I can make a difference in helping others to understand this, I will. Where I cannot, I’ll try.
And I pledge to live by our Melungeon creed, "One People, All Colors."
I thank God for an amazing fourteen years of Chapter One and, God-willing, at least that many more for Chapter Two
HISTORY LINKS
Noontide Press Moors Paper Writing :: Book Reports :: American ... KKK SITES
Moroccan African Moors Mulims First to America? Islam in America
Muslim Legacy in Early Americas - W. Africans, Moors tribal Terrorism
American History From About African-Amercian History The African African Americans Indians
The African-American Mosaic Exhibition (Library of Congress) Native Americans
The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History America's West - Development & History
American Indian Genealogy and Media Sites by Phil Konstantin American Indian History Resources
On This Date in North American Indian History by Phil Konstantin African Americans - Black Indians
American President: Presidential History Resources American President
The North Star: A Journal of African-American Religious History THE SLAUGHTER
Black Indians (Afro-Native Americans) American Women's History: A Research Guide
Documents For The Study Of American History American Military History LYNCHINGS
American History, Page 1, Spanish Conquest of Native America American History Sites
Europe blackantiquity
African Presence in the Americas 1492 - 1992
The 1700's
http://www.phoenixmasonry.org/masonicmuseum/fraternalism/red_men.htm
http://www.abaris.net/freemasonry/marin_red_men.htm
The African Presence in the Americas many centuries before Columbus
http://www.abaris.net/freemasonry/marin_red_men.htm
Colonization: African-American Mosaic Exhibition
http://freepages.history.rootsweb.com/~shannara/Emblems/emblemidx.htm
Colonization Civil Rights AFRO-AMERICAN ALMANAC - African-American History Resource
Our Shared History, African American Heritage African American History: Welcome
www.martygrant.com/gen/origins.htm
Hitchhiker's
Guide to American History
Popular Songs in American History
VODOUN
American Cultural History - Decade 1920-1929 Center for History of Physics Home Page
The Avalon Project : Chronology of American History Money in North American History
American History Government
African American History - Black History Resources - Academic Info
Colonial American History Social Studies Resources Historical Text Archive BLACK INDIANS
The Journal of the Moorish Paradigm First Nations Histories
LATIN AMERICA-COLONIAL ECONOMIC HISTORY NEVADA-19TH-CENTURY MINING HISTORY
Civil War American History 1860 1865 Timeline Battle Map Maps of Native American Nations, History, Info
Bibliography II NATIVE AMERICANS A History of RACISM
1499 Amerigo Vespucci and Alonso de Hojeda sail for South America and reach mouth of Amazon
1502 Vespucci, after second voyage, concludes South America is not part of India and names it Mundus Novus.
1513 Balboa crosses Isthmus of Panama and reaches Pacific for the first time, but believes it to be part of the Indian Ocean.
1513 Ponce de Leon, searching for the "fountain of youth" reaches and names Florida.
1519 Cortes enters Tenochtitlan (Mexico City); Domenico de Pineda explores Gulf of Mexico from Florida to Vera Cruz.
1522 Andagoya discovers Peru
1523 Jamaica founded.
1531 Pizarro invades Peru, conquers Incas.
1535 Lima founded.
1536 Buenos Aires founded.
1538 Bogota founded.
1539 First printing press in New World set up in Mexico City.
1540 Grand Canyon discovered.
1541 De soto discovers Mississippi River; Coronado explores from New Mexico across Texas, Oklahoma, and eastern Kansas.
1549 Jesuit missionaries arrive in South America.
1551 Universities founded in Lima and Mexico City;
1565 ST. Augustine founded (razed by Francis Drake in 1586).
1567 Rio de Janeiro founded.
1605 Santa Fe, New Mexico founded (date in dispute; some say 1609).
A Lesson in
Black History
The Statue of Liberty
It is hard to believe that after my many years of schooling (secondary and
post) the following facts about the Statue of Liberty were never taught.
Hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of people including myself have
visited the Statue of Liberty over the years but yet I'm unable to find one
person who knows the true history behind the Statue...amazing!
Yes, amazing that so much important Black history (such as this) is hidden
from us (Black and White). What makes this even worse is the fact that the
current twist on history perpetuates and promotes white supremacy at the
expense of Black Pride!
During my visit to France I saw the original Statue of Liberty. However,
there was a difference...the statue in France is BLACK!!!!!!
"Ya learn something new everyday!"
The Statue of Liberty was originally a Black woman. But, as memory serves,
it was because the model was Black. In a book called "The Journey of The
Songhai People," as Dr. Jim Haskins (a member of the National Education
Advisory Committee of the Liberty-Ellis Island Committee, professor of
English at the University of Florida, and prolific Black author) points out
that is what stimulated the original idea for that 151 foot statue in the
harbor. He says that the idea for the creation of the statue initially was
to acknowledge the part that Black soldiers played in the ending of Black
African Bondage in the United States.
It was created in the mind of the French historian Edourd de Laboulaye,
Chairman of the French Anti-Slavery Society, who, together with sculptor
Frederic Auguste Bartholdi, proposed to the French government that the
people of France present to the people of the United States through the
American Abolitionist Society, the gift of a Statue of Liberty in
recognition of the fact that Black soldiers won the Civil War in the United
States. It was widely known then that it was Black Soldiers who played the
pivotal role in winning the war, and this gift would be a tribute to their
prowess.
Suzanne Nakasian, director of the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island
Foundations' National Ethnic Campaign said that the Black Americans' direct
connection to Lady Liberty is unknown to the majority of Americans, BLACK
or WHITE.
When the statue was presented to the US. Minister to France in 1884, it is
said that he remonstrated that the dominant view of the broken shackles
would be offensive to the U.S. South because the statue was a reminder of
Blacks winning their freedom. It was a reminder to a beaten South of the
ones who caused their defeat, their despised former captives.
Documents of Proof:
1.) You may go and see the original model of the Statue of Liberty, with
the broken chains at her feet and in her left hand. Go to the Museum of the
City of NY, Fifth Avenue and 103rd Street (212) 534-1672 or call the same
number and dial ext. 208 and speak to Peter Simmons and he can send you
some documentation.
2.) Check with the N. Y. Times magazine, part II May 18, 1986.
3.) The dark original face of the Statue of Liberty can be seen in the N.
Y. Post June 17, 1986, also the Post stated the reason for the broken
chains at her feet.
4.) Finally, you may check with the French Mission or the French Embassy at
the U.N. or in Washington, D.C. and ask for some original French material
on the Statue of Liberty, including the Bartholdi original model. You can
call (202) 944-6060 or 6400.
Please pass this information along! Be sure to send it to people with
children! Open a dialog and discuss it with your friends! Let this be the
beginning of your quest for the Truth about American History past and
present!
ORIGINS
OF THE POLICE DEPARTMENT
The contests herein give a historical development of
Police forces in the U.S.
19th Century
Organized polices forces as we know them today are a comparatively recent thing in U.S. history. Until the middle of the 19th century, the cities were usually guarded by what was called the “watch system”, meaning a handful of men who patrolled the streets during the night, sometimes calling out the time and the state of the weather. The night watch system was noted for disorganization and inefficiency. Little was expected of it and it wasn’t considered an important service to deserve much money or attention. Watchmen were notorious for falling asleep or being drunk on the job.
1838
The first major change in this system came when Boston introduced a “DAY” watch, composed of six men, to compliment its night watch.
1844
New York City created a “Day and Night Police”, the first to combine both day and night watches into a single force. This was the forerunner of the modern city police, and its example was followed by many cities;
1851 Chicago
1852 Cincinnati and New Orleans
1854 Philadelphia and Boston
1857 Baltimore and Newark
By the 1870’s, virtually every major city in the U.S. had created an organized police force along the lines that are still the basis of most police organizations in this country.
The usual answer given by liberal police historians stresses the increasing population density and ethnic diversity in the cities that came with the beginning of massive immigration from the 1830’s onward. This explanation only scratches the surface and is basically misleading. Although increasing population and ethnic diversity were important features of this period, there is no reason why, in themselves, they should call forth greatly increased use of police force.
The basic social process going on from the 1830’s to the 1860’s was the beginning of industrial capitalism in the United States, and the emergence of the typical class structure that industrial capitalism creates. Before this time, of course there were poor people in the cities: but capitalist industrialization dramatically increased their numbers, their visibility, and their militancy, and therefore increased the problems of “social control.”
Regional Police Department: Northeast/Midwest
Immigration from the American countryside and from overseas (at this time mainly from Ireland and Germany) provided a steady supply of cheap labor for the growing factories of the industrial Northeast and Midwest. Between 1810 and 1870, the number of factory workers in the U.S.; as a whole increased from about 75 thousand to about 2.5 million. This early industrial work force was subject to harsh exploitation in the factories and grim living conditions in the growing slums of the industrial cities.
Militant conflict between workers and owners began on a large scale with the first stirrings of a significant American Labor Movement. At the same time, rioting in the cities was common and rates of crime were high. The wealthy and powerful began to define working people and the unemployed poor as the “dangerous classes” and to demand more effective means of controlling and disciplining them. They had an example available over seas since England had undergone the process of capitalist industrialization somewhat earlier, they also were the first to develop modern police forces, and most of the early U.S. police departments took their basic form from the London police , created in 183?
The development of the police was somewhat different in the south and southwest. In the south, the early urban police forces were designed mainly to control slave and free blacks in the cities, and in the southwest the early police were developed in connection with the subordination of Mexicans and Native Americans, rather than an immigrant industrial working class.
Brutality and unpredictability in behavior.
Although these early police forces were designed as instruments of class domination, they were generally ineffective instruments and were usually regarded as such. There were two main reasons for this;
1. The early police were sometimes to close to the
Classes and communities they were suppose to
Be controlling
2. When they were not, they relied almost entirely
On the most primitive method of control, BRUTE FORCE
Although designed to intimidate and control the “dangerous classes”, the police were usually recruited at least partly from those classes and were therefore unreliable often as enforcers of the interests of property and power. It’s doubtful that the police forces of many cities ever consistently represented the interests of the poor, but they were sometimes sympathetic with them to a significant extent. This became especially clear during some of the labor violence of the 1880’s, when several local police forces refused to intimidate strikers, and military troops had to be called in.
The development of the National Guard system, which took place between 1877 and 1892, was one result of this unreliability of the local police. Originally officered mainly by business and professional men, and sometimes directly subsidized by wealthy industrialists, the National Guard was specifically designed to be a more direct and therefore more reliable instrument of the wealthy and propertied.
Bell
did not invent telephone, US rules
Scot accused of finding fame by stealing Italian's ideas
Rory Carroll in Rome
Monday June 17, 2002
The Guardian
Italy hailed the redress of a historic injustice yesterday after the
US Congress recognised an impoverished Florentine immigrant as the
inventor of the telephone rather than Alexander Graham Bell.
Historians and Italian-Americans won their battle to persuade
Washington to recognise a little-known mechanical genius, Antonio
Meucci, as a father of modern communications, 113 years after his
death.
The vote by the House of Representatives prompted joyous claims in
Meucci's homeland that finally Bell had been outed as a perfidious
Scot who found fortune and fame by stealing another man's work.
Calling the Italian's career extraordinary and tragic, the resolution
said his "teletrofono", demonstrated in New York in 1860, made him
the inventor of the telephone in the place of Bell, who had access to
Meucci's materials and who took out a patent 16 years later.
"It is the sense of the House of Representatives that the life and
achievements of Antonio Meucci should be recognised, and his work in
the invention of the telephone should be acknowledged," the
resolution stated.
Bell's immortalisation in books and films has rankled with
generations of Italians who know Meucci's story. Born in 1808, he
studied design and mechanical engineering at the Academy of Fine Arts
in Florence, and as a stage technician at the city's Teatro della
Pergola developed a primitive system to help colleagues communicate.
In the 1830s he moved to Cuba and, while working on methods to treat
illnesses with electric shocks, found that sounds could travel by
electrical impulses through copper wire. Sensing potential, he moved
to Staten Island, near New York City, in 1850 to develop the
technology.
When Meucci's wife, Ester, became paralysed he rigged a system to
link her bedroom with his neighbouring workshop and in 1860 held a
public demonstration which was reported in New York's Italian-
language press.
In between giving shelter to political exiles, Meucci struggled to
find financial backing, failed to master English and was severely
burned in an accident aboard a steamship.
Forced to make new prototype telephones after Ester sold his machines
for $6 to a secondhand shop, his models became more sophisticated. An
inductor formed around an iron core in the shape of a cylinder was a
technique so sophisticated that it was used decades later for long-
distance connections.
Meucci could not afford the $250 needed for a definitive patent for
his "talking telegraph" so in 1871 filed a one-year renewable notice
of an impending patent. Three years later he could not even afford
the $10 to renew it.
He sent a model and technical details to the Western Union telegraph
company but failed to win a meeting with executives. When he asked
for his materials to be returned, in 1874, he was told they had been
lost. Two years later Bell, who shared a laboratory with Meucci,
filed a patent for a telephone, became a celebrity and made a
lucrative deal with Western Union.
Meucci sued and was nearing victory - the supreme court agreed to
hear the case and fraud charges were initiated against Bell - when
the Florentine died in 1889. The legal action died with him.
Yesterday the newspaper La Repubblica welcomed the vote to recognise
the Tuscan inventor as a belated comeuppance for Bell, a "cunning
Scotsman" and "usurper" whose per- fidy built a communications
empire.
From:
EIngram517
Startling Facts.....
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
These facts are very interesting. Here are
a few of the things learned
at the Black Think Tank this week.
Facts:
1. The first Americans or native Americans going back to
13,000 BC were
black! Look up the Folsom people who
lived in Arizona.
2. Best reason to stop our use of the term African
American and say
Black. A white person who was born in Africa, who moves
to America is an
African American and qualifies for financial aid, etc., but will get the
jobs/pay privileges afforded to whites.
3. Look up the Slavery Law of 1665 (which stayed
in effect until 1968)
and the Maryland Doctrine of Exclusion (1638): both laws
state that
blacks must be excluded from the benefits afforded whites and
that
blacks must remain noncompetitive with whites, except in
sports and
entertainment.
4. Two white men: Bill Gates and Larry Elision,
combined have more
wealth than the combined wealth of all 36 million
blacks in America.
Civil Rights did not change the economic landscape or the
balance of power
in America.
5. Asians received 80% of all government
minority set aside contracts.
Hello!!!!!!!
6. Blacks eat more fish than whites by a
four to one margin. For every
dollar whites spend on fish, blacks spend nine
dollars on fish. Fish
sold wholesale for will retail at $2.50 --$3.00.
Guess what business we
should be in as Blacks?
7. There are no black owned national cable or
major network television
stations. The black woman who owns our only black owned radio
stations,
plans to sell to white owners after hearing the deal
Bob Johnson
received for selling BET. (Cathy Hughes is from OMAHA, ya'll!)
8. There are no black owned companies on the Wall
Street Stock Exchange
where blacks own the majority or controlling interest of the stock.
9. 96% of all black inmates are men.
10. Over the next two years 440,000 black inmates will be
released from
prison. The State has no place to put them as they
reenter society.
Halfway house business!
11. In 1860, 98% of all Blacks in America worked
for White people.2001,
98% of all Blacks in America still work for white
people.
12. In 1860, blacks in America had a combined net
worth of half of one
percentage point. Guess what in 2001, after Civil
Rights, Jesse Jackson,
Oprah, Shaq, NAACP, and Urban League, our combined net worth
is half a
percentage point.
13. For every dollar earned by a Jewish person, that dollar
touches
12-18 Jewish hands before it leaves their community. For
every dollar
earned by a black person it leaves the community soon as he
or she earns
it.
14. Last week in Washington, DC black teenagers where
arrested and
booked for eating McDonalds on the metro subway. Cops cited
the recent
5-4 court decision as the permission to arrest lawbreakers
even for minor
offenses.
15. 67% of all hate crimes in America are against blacks. After we
get
through being pleased that we have carpet in our office, a
secretary, our
name on the door and make six figures, we do not own anything. What
will
happen if you miss six months of work without pay? All we have left
our
children is debt not an inheritance. You cannot pass
welfare or food
stamps onto our kids as a nest egg! We are not even in the
race. By the
way, the word "race" hit the English language in the
16th century when
Europeans held a contest to see who will win the race
to gather the most wealth through exploitation of
blacks.
You must read Powernomics by Claude
Anderson. This is our blueprint to
create wealth, not just have a job,
but be a business owner, so you can
hire people, be listed on the stock
exchange, develop businesses to meet
our needs.
African Spirituality
and its Influences on
Christianity
Howard University- Blackburn Center / Room 148
Tony Browder s book. Nile Valley Contributions to Civilization, is
about
correcting some of the misconceptions so the reader, in fact, can be
introduced to a Nile Valley civilization in order to understand its
role as
the parent of future civilizations.
These events are free and open to the public and are
sponsored by NCOBRA, UBIQUITY and IKG.
For information call 301-853-2465.
Click Here:
http://www.auser.org/tour.html"
African Centered Tour of Chocolate City
BOOKS by Anthony Browder3
1) From The Browder Files
2) Nile Valley Contributions To Civilization
3) Survival Strategies For African Americans
Washington, D.C. is significant because it was the first city, built
in
modern times, which was laid out on paper before construction began.
The
layout and design of the city was based on plans of city planning and
temple
orientation which were first developed in ancient Kemet (Egypt) andÂ
incorporated in the building of many cities in Europe. The founding
fathers
of the United States borrowed many aspects of Nile Valley symbolism
and
philosophy and incorporated them into the very fabric of the creation
of this
nation. Their intention was to recreate the spiritual essence of Egypt
in the
Americas. The African origins of architecture, symbolism and temple
orientation are discussed during the tour. Also established is the
African
origins of Masonry and the Masonic influence on the development of the
United
States and the District of Columbia.
The African Centered Tour of Washington, D.C. was designed by Tony
Browder in
1986, after his travel to Egypt and realization that many symbols of
ancient
Africa were perpetuated in Washington, D.C. architecture. His tour,
designed
in part to 'instill a sense of self-worth in black Americans about
their
heritage', underscores the architectural and symbolic relationships
between
the Nation's Capital and ancient Egypt.
WASHINGTON, D.C.
The sites visited include:
DISCOVER AMERICA'S BEST KEPT SECRETS IN AN AFRICAN CENTERED TOUR OF
WASHINGTON, D.C.
The sites visited include:
Meridian Hill Park
Scottish Rite Temple
The House of the Temple
Lafayette Park
The White House
The Lincoln Memorial
The Washington Monument
L'Enfant Plaza
The Library of Congress
The Capitol
This tour will reveal:
The Egyptian Origins of Architecture & Masonry
Sacred Architecture & Symbolism
The True Meaning of the Washington Monument
The Spiritual Significance of 16th Street
Masonic Influences on the Design of Washington, D.C.
A Symbolic Interpretation of Numbers
The Library of Congress & the African Origins of Mankind
Recommended Reading
RECOMMENDED READING. YOU CAME INTO THIS WORLD WITH ALL THAT YOU NEEDED
TO
KNOW IN ORDER TO FULFILL YOUR PURPOSE IN THIS LIFE BUT THE YEARS OF
BULL SHIT
HAVE TAKEN OVER YOUR MIND. THIS LIST WILL...
http://www.fearkiller.com/new_page_1.index.htm
THE BILLS OF RIGHTS
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.
In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
The judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by citizens of another state, or by citizens or subjects of any foreign state.
The electors shall meet in their respective states and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves; they shall name in their ballots the person voted for as President, and in distinct ballots the person voted for as Vice-President, and they shall make distinct lists of all persons voted for as President, and of all persons voted for as Vice-President, and of the number of votes for each, which lists they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the seat of the government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate;--The President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall then be counted;--the person having the greatest number of votes for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of electors appointed; and if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President. But in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote; a quorum for this purpose shall consist of a member or members from two-thirds of the states, and a majority of all the states shall be necessary to a choice. And if the House of Representatives shall not choose a President whenever the right of choice shall devolve upon them, before the fourth day of March next following, then the Vice-President shall act as President, as in the case of the death or other constitutional disability of the President. The person having the greatest number of votes as Vice-President, shall be the Vice-President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of electors appointed, and if no person have a majority, then from the two highest numbers on the list, the Senate shall choose the Vice-President; a quorum for the purpose shall consist of two-thirds of the whole number of Senators, and a majority of the whole number shall be necessary to a choice. But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.
The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several states, and without regard to any census or enumeration.
The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each state, elected by the people thereof, for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote. The electors in each state shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the state legislatures.
When vacancies happen in the representation of any state in the Senate, the executive authority of such state shall issue writs of election to fill such vacancies: Provided, that the legislature of any state may empower the executive thereof to make temporary appointments until the people fill the vacancies by election as the legislature may direct.
This amendment shall not be so construed as to affect the election or term of any Senator chosen before it becomes valid as part of the Constitution.
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.
Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
A number of electors of President and Vice President equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives in Congress to which the District would be entitled if it were a state, but in no event more than the least populous state; they shall be in addition to those appointed by the states, but they shall be considered, for the purposes of the election of President and Vice President, to be electors appointed by a state; and they shall meet in the District and perform such duties as provided by the twelfth article of amendment.
Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty-one days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office.
No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened.
1788
THE FEDERALIST PAPERS
NO 1: Introduction
by Alexander Hamilton
-
AFTER an unequivocal experience of the inefficiency of the
subsisting federal government, you are called upon to deliberate on
a new Constitution for the United States of America. The subject
speaks its own importance; comprehending in its consequences nothing
less than the existence of the UNION, the safety and welfare of the
parts of which it is composed, the fate of an empire in many
respects the most interesting in the world. It has been frequently
remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this
country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important
question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of
establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether
they are forever destined to depend for their political
constitutions on accident and force. If there be any truth in the
remark, the crisis at which we are arrived may with propriety be
regarded as the era in which that decision is to be made; and a
wrong election of the part we shall act may, in this view, deserve
to be considered as the general misfortune of mankind.
This idea will add the inducements of philanthropy to those of
patriotism, to heighten the solicitude which all considerate and
good men must feel for the event. Happy will it be if our choice
should be directed by a judicious estimate of our true interests,
unperplexed and unbiased by considerations not connected with the
public good. But this is a thing more ardently to be wished than
seriously to be expected. The plan offered to our deliberations
affects too many particular interests, innovates upon too many local
institutions, not to involve in its discussion a variety of objects
foreign to its merits, and of views, passions, and prejudices little
favorable to the discovery of truth.
Among the most formidable of the obstacles which the new
Constitution will have to encounter may readily be distinguished the
obvious interest of a certain class of men in every State to resist
all changes which may hazard a diminution of the power, emolument, and
consequence of the offices they hold under the State establishments;
and the perverted ambition of another class of men, who will either
hope to aggrandize themselves by the confusions of their country, or
will flatter themselves with fairer prospects of elevation from the
subdivision of the empire into several partial confederacies than from
its union under one government.
It is not, however, my design to dwell upon observations of this
nature. I am well aware that it would be disingenuous to resolve
indiscriminately the opposition of any set of men (merely because
their situations might subject them to suspicion) into interested or
ambitious views. Candor will oblige us to admit that even such men may
be actuated by upright intentions; and it cannot be doubted that
much of the opposition which has made its appearance, or may hereafter
make its appearance, will spring from sources, blameless at least,
if not respectable- the honest errors of minds led astray by
preconceived jealousies and fears. So numerous indeed and so
powerful are the causes which serve to give a false bias to the
judgment, that we, upon many occasions, see wise and good men on the
wrong as well as on the right side of questions of the first magnitude
to society. This circumstance, if duly attended to, would furnish a
lesson of moderation to those who are ever so much persuaded of
their being in the right in any controversy. And a further reason
for caution, in this respect, might be drawn from the reflection
that we are not always sure that those who advocate the truth are
influenced by purer principles than their antagonists. Ambition,
avarice, personal animosity, party opposition, and many other
motives not more laudable than these, are apt to operate as well
upon those who support as those who oppose the right side of a
question. Were there not even inducements to moderation, nothing could
be more ill-judged than that intolerant spirit which has, at all
times, characterized political parties. For in politics as in
religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and
sword. Heresies in either can rarely be cured by persecution.
And yet, however just these sentiments will be allowed to be, we
have already sufficient indications that it will happen in this as
in all former cases of great national discussion. A torrent of angry
and malignant passions will be let loose. To judge from the conduct of
the opposite parties, we shall be led to conclude that they will
mutually hope to evince the justness of their opinions, and to
increase the number of their converts by the loudness of their
declamations and the bitterness of their invectives. An enlightened
zeal for the energy and efficiency of government will be stigmatized
as the offspring of a temper fond of despotic power and hostile to the
principles of liberty. An over-scrupulous jealousy of danger to the
rights of the people, which is more commonly the fault of the head
than of the heart, will be represented as mere pretence and
artifice, the stale bait for popularity at the expense of the public
good. It will be forgotten, on the one hand, that jealousy is the
usual concomitant of love, and that the noble enthusiasm of liberty is
apt to be infected with a spirit of narrow and illiberal distrust.
On the other hand, it will be equally forgotten that the vigor of
government is essential to the security of liberty; that, in the
contemplation of a sound and well-informed judgment, their interest
can never be separated; and that a dangerous ambition more often lurks
behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people than
under the forbidding appearance of zeal for the firmness and
efficiency of the government. History will teach us that the former
has been found a much more certain road to the introduction of
despotism than the latter, and that of those men who have overturned
the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their
career by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing
demagogues, and ending tyrants.
In the course of the preceding observations, I have had an eye, my
fellow-citizens, to putting you upon your guard against all
attempts, from whatever quarter, to influence your decision in a
matter of the utmost moment to your welfare, by any impressions
other than those which may result from the evidence of truth. You
will, no doubt, at the same time, have collected from the general
scope of them, that they proceed from a source not unfriendly to the
new Constitution. Yes, my countrymen, I own to you that, after
having given it an attentive consideration, I am clearly of opinion it
is your interest to adopt it. I am convinced that this is the safest
course for your liberty, your dignity, and your happiness. I affect
not reserves which I do not feel. I will not amuse you with an
appearance of deliberation when I have decided. I frankly
acknowledge to you my convictions, and I will freely lay before you
the reasons on which they are founded. The consciousness of good
intentions disdains ambiguity. I shall not, however, multiply
professions on this head. My motives must remain in the depository
of my own breast. My arguments will be open to all, and may be
judged of by all. They shall at least be offered in a spirit which
will not disgrace the cause of truth.
I propose, in a series of papers, to discuss the following
interesting particulars:- The utility of the UNION to your political
prosperity- The insufficiency of the present Confederation to preserve
that Union- The necessity of a government at least equally energetic
with the one proposed, to the attainment of this object- The
conformity of the proposed Constitution to the true principles of
republican government- Its analogy to your own State constitution- and
lastly, The additional security which its adoption will afford to
the preservation of that species of government to liberty, and to
property.
In the progress of this discussion I shall endeavor to give a
satisfactory answer to all the objections which shall have made
their appearance, that may seem to have any claim to your attention.
It may perhaps be thought superfluous to offer arguments to prove
the utility of the UNION, a point, no doubt, deeply engraved on the
hearts of the great body of the people in every State, and one,
which it may be imagined, has no adversaries. But the fact is, that we
already hear it whispered in the private circles of those who oppose
the new Constitution, that the thirteen States are of too great extent
for any general system, and that we must of necessity resort to
separate confederacies of distinct portions of the whole. *001 This
doctrine will, in all probability, be gradually propagated, till it
has votaries enough to countenance an open avowal of it. For nothing
can be more evident, to those who are able to take an enlarged view of
the subject, than the alternative of an adoption of the new
Constitution or a dismemberment of the Union. It will therefore be
of use to begin by examining the advantages of that Union, the certain
evils, and the probable dangers, to which every State will be
exposed from its dissolution. This shall accordingly constitute the
subject of my next address.
- PUBLIUS
NO 2: Concerning Dangers from Foreign Force and Influence
by John Jay
-
WHEN the people of America reflect that they are now called upon
to decide a question, which, in its consequences, must prove one of
the most important that ever engaged their attention, the propriety of
their taking a very comprehensive, as well as a very serious, view
of it, will be evident.
Nothing is more certain than the indispensable necessity of
government, and it is equally undeniable, that whenever and however it
is instituted, the people must cede to it some of their natural
rights, in order to vest it with requisite powers. It is well worthy
of consideration therefore, whether it would conduce more to the
interest of the people of America that they should, to all general
purposes, be one nation, under one federal government, or that they
should divide themselves into separate confederacies, and give to
the head of each the same kind of powers which they are advised to
place in one national government.
It has until lately been a received and uncontradicted opinion, that
the prosperity of the people of America depended on their continuing
firmly united, and the wishes, prayers, and efforts of our best and
wisest citizens have been constantly directed to that object. But
politicians now appear, who insist that this opinion is erroneous, and
that instead of looking for safety and happiness in union, we ought to
seek it in a division of the States into distinct confederacies or
sovereignties. However extraordinary this new doctrine may appear,
it nevertheless has its advocates; and certain characters who were
much opposed to it formerly, are at present of the number. Whatever
may be the arguments or inducements which have wrought this change
in the sentiments and declarations of these gentlemen, it certainly
would not be wise in the people at large to adopt these new
political tenets without being fully convinced that they are founded
in truth and sound policy.
It has often given me pleasure to observe, that independent
America was not composed of detached and distant territories, but that
one connected, fertile, wide-spreading country was the portion of
our western sons of liberty. Providence has in a particular manner
blessed it with a variety of soils and productions, and watered it
with innumerable streams, for the delight and accommodation of its
inhabitants. A succession of navigable waters forms a kind of chain
round its borders, as if to bind it together; while the most noble
rivers in the world, running at convenient distances, present them
with highways for the easy communication of friendly aids, and the
mutual transportation and exchange of their various commodities.
With equal pleasure I have as often taken notice, that Providence
has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united
people- a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the
same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same
principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs,
and who, by their joint counsels, arms, and efforts, fighting side
by side throughout a long and bloody war, have nobly established
general liberty and independence.
This country and this people seem to have been made for each
other, and it appears as if it was the design of Providence, that an
inheritance so proper and convenient for a band of brethren, united to
each other by the strongest ties, should never be split into a
number of unsocial, jealous, and alien sovereignties.
Similar sentiments have hitherto prevailed among all orders and
denominations of men among us. To all general purposes we have
uniformly been one people; each individual citizen everywhere enjoying
the same national rights, privileges, and protection. As a nation we
have made peace and war; as a nation we have vanquished our common
enemies; as a nation we have formed alliances, and made treaties,
and entered into various compacts and conventions with foreign states.
A strong sense of the value and blessings of union induced the
people, at a very early period, to institute a federal government to
preserve and perpetuate it. They formed it almost as soon as they
had political existence; nay, at a time when their habitations were in
flames, when many of their citizens were bleeding, and when the
progress of hostility and desolation left little room for those calm
and mature inquiries and reflections which must ever precede the
formation of a wise and well-balanced government for a free people. It
is not to be wondered at, that a government instituted in times so
inauspicious, should on experiment be found greatly deficient and
inadequate to the purpose it was intended to answer.
This intelligent people perceived and regretted these defects. Still
continuing no less attached to union than enamored of liberty, they
observed the danger which immediately threatened the former and more
remotely the latter; and being persuaded that ample security for
both could only be found in a national government more wisely
framed, they, as with one voice, convened the late convention at
Philadelphia, to take that important subject under consideration.
This convention, composed of men who possessed the confidence of the
people, and many of whom had become highly distinguished by their
patriotism, virtue, and wisdom, in times which tried the minds and
hearts of men, undertook the arduous task. In the mild season of
peace, with minds unoccupied by other subjects, they passed many
months in cool, uninterrupted, and daily consultation; and finally,
without having been awed by power, or influenced by any passions
except love for their country, they presented and recommended to the
people the plan produced by their joint and very unanimous councils.
Admit, for so is the fact, that this plan is only recommended, not
imposed, yet let it be remembered that it is neither recommended to
blind approbation, nor to blind reprobation; but to that sedate and
candid consideration which the magnitude and importance of the subject
demand, and which it certainly ought to receive. But this (as was
remarked in the foregoing number of this paper) is more to be wished
than expected, that it may be so considered and examined. Experience
on a former occasion teaches us not to be too sanguine in such
hopes. It is not yet forgotten that well-grounded apprehensions of
imminent danger induced the people of America to form the memorable
Congress of 1774. That body recommended certain measures to their
constituents, and the event proved their wisdom; yet it is fresh in
our memories how soon the press began to team with pamphlets and
weekly papers against those very measures. Not only many of the
officers of government, who obeyed the dictates of personal
interest, but others, from a mistaken estimate of consequences, or the
undue influence of former attachments or whose ambition aimed at
objects which did not correspond with the public good, were
indefatigable in their efforts to persuade the people to reject the
advice of that patriotic Congress. Many, indeed, were deceived and
deluded, but the majority of the people reasoned and decided
judiciously; and happy they are in reflecting that they did so.
They considered that the Congress was composed of many wise and
experienced men. That, being convened from different parts of the
country, they brought with them and communicated to each other a
variety of useful information. That, in the course of the time they
passed together in inquiring into and discussing the true interests of
their country, they must have acquired very accurate knowledge on that
head. That they were individually interested in the public liberty and
prosperity, and therefore that it was not less their inclination
than their duty to recommend only such measures as, after the most
mature deliberation, they really thought prudent and advisable.
These and similar considerations then induced the people to rely
greatly on the judgment and integrity of the Congress; and they took
their advice, notwithstanding the various arts and endeavors used to
deter them from it. But if the people at large had reason to confide
in the men of that Congress, few of whom had been fully tried or
generally known, still greater reason have they now to respect the
judgment and advice of the convention, for it is well known that
some of the most distinguished members of that Congress, who have been
since tried and justly approved for patriotism and abilities, and
who have grown old in acquiring political information, were also
members of this convention, and carried into it their accumulated
knowledge and experience.
It is worthy of remark that not only the first, but every succeeding
Congress, as well as the late convention, have invariably joined
with the people in thinking that the prosperity of America depended on
its Union. To preserve and perpetuate it was the great object of the
people in forming that convention, and it is also the great object
of the plan which the convention has advised them to adopt. With
what propriety, therefore, or for what good purposes, are attempts
at this particular period made by some men to depreciate the
importance of the Union? Or why is it suggested that three of four
confederacies would be better than one? I am persuaded in my own
mind that the people have always thought right on this subject, and
that their universal and uniform attachment to the cause of the
Union rests on great and weighty reasons, which I shall endeavor to
develop and explain in some ensuing papers. They who promote the
idea of substituting a number of distinct confederacies in the room of
the plan of the convention, seem clearly to foresee that the rejection
of it would put the continuance of the Union in the utmost jeopardy.
That certainly would be the case, and I sincerely wish that it may
be as clearly foreseen by every good citizen, that whenever the
dissolution of the Union arrives, America will have reason to exclaim,
in the words of the poet: "Farewell! A Long Farewell to All My
Greatness."
- PUBLIUS
NO 3: The Same Subject Continued
by John Jay
-
IT IS not a new observation that the people of any country (if, like
the Americans, intelligent and well-informed) seldom adopt and
steadily persevere for many years in an erroneous opinion respecting
their interests. That consideration naturally tends to create great
respect for the high opinion which the people of America have so
long and uniformly entertained of the importance of their continuing
firmly united under one federal government, vested with sufficient
powers for all general and national purposes.
The more attentively I consider and investigate the reasons which
appear to have given birth to this opinion, the more I become
convinced that they are cogent and conclusive.
Among the many objects to which a wise and free people find it
necessary to direct their attention, that of providing for their
safety seems to be the first. The safety of the people doubtless has
relation to a great variety of circumstances and considerations, and
consequently affords great latitude to those who wish to define it
precisely and comprehensively.
At present I mean only to consider it as it respects security for
the preservation of peace and tranquillity, as well as against dangers
from foreign arms and influence, as from dangers of the like kind
arising from domestic causes. As the former of these comes first in
order, it is proper it should be the first discussed. Let us therefore
proceed to examine whether the people are not right in their opinion
that a cordial Union, under an efficient national government,
affords them the best security that can be devised against hostilities
from abroad.
The number of wars which have happened or will happen in the world
will always be found to be in proportion to the number and weight of
the causes, whether real or pretended, which provoke or invite them.
If this remark be just, it becomes useful to inquire whether so many
just causes of war are likely to be given by United America as by
disunited America; for if it should turn out that United America
will probably give the fewest, then it will follow that in this
respect the Union tends most to preserve the people in a state of
peace with other nations.
The just causes of war, for the most part, arise either from
violations of treaties or from direct violence. America has already
formed treaties with no less than six foreign nations, and all of
them, except Prussia, are maritime, and therefore able to annoy and
injure us. She has also extensive commerce with Portugal, Spain, and
Britain, and, with respect to the two latter, has, in addition, the
circumstance of neighborhood to attend to.
It is of high importance to the peace of America that she observe
the laws of nations towards all these powers, and to me it appears
evident that this will be more perfectly and punctually done by one
national government than it could be either by thirteen separate
States or by three or four distinct confederacies.
Because when once an efficient national government is established,
the best men in the country will not only consent to serve, but also
will generally be appointed to manage it; for, although town or
country, or other contracted influence, may place men in State
assemblies, or senates, or courts of justice, or executive
departments, yet more general and extensive reputation for talents and
other qualifications will be necessary to recommend men to offices
under the national government,- especially as it will have the
widest field for choice, and never experience that want of proper
persons which is not uncommon in some of the States. Hence, it will
result that the administration, the political counsels, and the
judicial decisions of the national government will be more wise,
systematical, and judicious than those of individual States, and
consequently more satisfactory with respect to other nations, as
well as more safe with respect to us.
Because, under the national government, treaties and articles of
treaties, as well as the laws of nations, will always be expounded
in one sense and executed in the same manner,- whereas adjudications
on the same points and questions, in thirteen States, or in three or
four confederacies, will not always accord or be consistent; and that,
as well from the variety of independent courts and judges appointed by
different and independent governments, as from the different local
laws and interests which may affect and influence them. The wisdom
of the convention, in committing such questions to the jurisdiction
and judgment of courts appointed by and responsible only to one
national government, cannot be too much commended.
Because the prospect of present loss or advantage may often tempt
the governing party in one or two States to swerve from good faith and
justice; but those temptations, not reaching the other States, and
consequently having little or no influence on the national government,
the temptation will be fruitless, and good faith and justice be
preserved. The case of the treaty of peace with Britain adds great
weight to this reasoning.
Because, even if the governing party in a State should be disposed
to resist such temptations, yet, as such temptations may, and commonly
do, result from circumstances peculiar to the State, and may affect
a great number of the inhabitants, the governing party may not
always be able, if willing, to prevent the injustice meditated, or
to punish the aggressors. But the national government, not being
affected by those local circumstances, will neither be induced to
commit the wrong themselves, nor want power or inclination to
prevent or punish its commission by others. So far, therefore, as
either designed or accidental violations of treaties and the laws of
nations afford just causes of war, they are less to be apprehended
under one general government than under several lesser ones, and in
that respect the former most favors the safety of the people.
As to those just causes of war which proceed from direct and
unlawful violence, it appears equally clear to me that one good
national government affords vastly more security against dangers of
that sort than can be derived from any other quarter.
Because such violences are more frequently caused by the passions
and interests of a part than of the whole; of one or two States than
of the Union. Not a single Indian war has yet been occasioned by
aggressions of the present federal government, feeble as it is; but
there are several instances of Indian hostilities having been provoked
by the improper conduct of individual States, who, either unable or
unwilling to restrain or punish offenses, have given occasion to the
slaughter of many innocent inhabitants.
The neighborhood of Spanish and British territories, bordering on
some States and not on others, naturally confines the causes of
quarrel more immediately to the borderers. The bordering States, if
any, will be those who, under the impulse of sudden irritation, and
a quick sense of apparent interest or injury, will be most likely,
by direct violence, to excite war with these nations; and nothing
can so effectually obviate that danger as a national government, whose
wisdom and prudence will not be diminished by the passions which
actuate the parties immediately interested.
But not only fewer just causes of war will be given by the
national government, but it will also be more in their power to
accommodate and settle them amicably. They will be more temperate
and cool, and in that respect, as well as in others, will be more in
capacity to act advisedly than the offending State. The pride of
states, as well as of men, naturally disposes them to justify all
their actions, and opposes their acknowledging, correcting, or
repairing their errors and offenses. The national government, in
such cases, will not be affected by this pride, but will proceed
with moderation and candor to consider and decide on the means most
proper to extricate them from the difficulties which threaten them.
Besides, it is well known that acknowledgments, explanations, and
compensations are often accepted as satisfactory from a strong
united nation, which would be rejected as unsatisfactory if offered by
a State or confederacy of little consideration or power.
In the year 1685, the state of Genoa having offended Louis XIV.,
endeavored to appease him. He demanded that they should send their
Doge, or chief magistrate, accompanied by four of their senators, to
France, to ask his pardon and receive his terms. They were obliged
to submit to it for the sake of peace. Would he on any occasion either
have demanded or have received the like humiliation from Spain, or
Britain, or any other powerful nation?
- PUBLIUS
NO 4: The Same Subject Continued
by John Jay
-
MY LAST paper assigned several reasons why the safety of the
people would be best secured by union against the danger it may be
exposed to by just causes of war given to other nations; and those
reasons show that such causes would not only be more rarely given, but
would also be more easily accommodated, by a national government
than either by the State governments or the proposed little
confederacies.
But the safety of the people of America against dangers from foreign
force depends not only on their forbearing to give just causes of
war to other nations, but also on their placing and continuing
themselves in such a situation as not to invite hostility or insult;
for it need not be observed that there are pretended as well as just
causes of war.
It is too true, however disgraceful it may be to human nature,
that nations in general will make war whenever they have a prospect of
getting any thing by it; nay, absolute monarchs will often make war
when their nations are to get nothing by it, but for purposes and
objects merely personal, such as a thirst for military glory,
revenge for personal affronts, ambition, or private compacts to
aggrandize or support their particular families or partisans. These
and a variety of other motives, which affect only the mind of the
sovereign, often lead him to engage in wars not sanctified by
justice or the voice and interests of his people. But, independent
of these inducements to war, which are more prevalent in absolute
monarchies, but which well deserve our attention, there are others
which affect nations as often as kings; and some of them will on
examination be found to grow out of our relative situation and
circumstances.
With France and with Britain we are rivals in the fisheries, and can
supply their markets cheaper then they can themselves, notwithstanding
any efforts to prevent it by bounties on their own or duties on
foreign fish.
With them and with most other European nations we are rivals in
navigation and the carrying trade; and we shall deceive ourselves if
we suppose that any of them will rejoice to see it flourish; for, as
our carrying trade cannot increase without in some degree
diminishing theirs, it is more their interest, and will be more
their policy, to restrain than to promote it.
In the trade to China and India, we interfere with more than one
nation, inasmuch as it enables us to partake in advantages which
they had in a manner monopolized, and as we thereby supply ourselves
with commodities which we used to purchase from them.
The extension of our own commerce in our own vessels cannot give
pleasure to any nations who possess territories on or near this
continent, because the cheapness and excellence of our productions,
added to the circumstance of vicinity, and the enterprise and
address of our merchants and navigators, will give us a greater
share in the advantages which those territories afford, than
consists with the wishes or policy of their respective sovereigns.
Spain thinks it convenient to shut the Mississippi against us on the
one side, and Britain excludes us from the Saint Lawrence on the
other; not will either of them permit the other waters which are
between them and us to become the means of mutual intercourse and
traffic.
From these and such like considerations, which might, if
consistent with prudence, be more amplified and detailed, it is easy
to see that jealousies and uneasinesses may gradually slide into the
minds and cabinets of other nations, and that we are not to expect
that they should regard our advancement in union, in power and
consequence by land and by sea, with an eye of indifference and
composure.
The people of America are aware that inducements to war may arise
out of these circumstances, as well as from others not so obvious at
present, and that whenever such inducements may find fit time and
opportunity for operation, pretenses to color and justify them will
not be wanting. Wisely, therefore, do they consider union and a good
national government as necessary to put and keep them in such a
situation as, instead of inviting war, will tend to repress and
discourage it. That situation consists in the best possible state of
defence, and necessarily depends on the government, the arms, and
the resources of the country.
As the safety of the whole is the interest of the whole, and
cannot be provided for without government, either one or more or many,
let us inquire whether one good government is not, relative to the
object in question, more competent then any other given number
whatever.
One government can collect and avail itself of the talents and
experience of the ablest men, in whatever part of the Union they may
be found. It can move on uniform principles of policy. It can
harmonize, assimilate, and protect the several parts and members,
and extend the benefit of its foresight and precautions to each. In
the formation of treaties, it will regard the interest of the whole,
and the particular interests of the parts as connected with that of
the whole. It can apply the resources and power of the whole to the
defence of any particular part, and that more easily and expeditiously
than State governments or separate confederacies can possibly do,
for want of concert and unity of system. It can place the militia
under one plan of discipline, and, by putting their officers in a
proper line of subordination to the Chief Magistrate, will, as it
were, consolidate them into one corps, and thereby render them more
efficient than if divided into thirteen or into three or four distinct
independent companies.
What would the militia of Britain be if the English militia obeyed
the government of England, if the Scotch militia obeyed the government
of Scotland, and if the Welsh militia obeyed the government of
Wales? Suppose an invasion; would those three governments (if they
agreed at all) be able, with all their respective forces, to operate
against the enemy so effectually as the single government of Great
Britain would?
We have heard much of the fleets of Britain, and the time may
come, if we are wise, when the fleets of America may engage attention.
But if one national government had not so regulated the navigation
of Britain as to make it a nursery for seamen- if one national
government had not called forth all the national means and materials
for forming fleets, their prowess and their thunder would never have
been celebrated. Let England have its navigation and fleet- let
Scotland have its navigation and fleet- let Wales have its
navigation and fleet- let Ireland have its navigation and fleet- let
those four of the constituent parts of the British empire be under
four independent governments, and it is easy to perceive how soon they
would each dwindle into comparative insignificance.
Apply these facts to our own case. Leave America divided into
thirteen or, if you please, into three or four independent
governments- what armies could they raise and pay- what fleets could
they ever hope to have? If one was attacked, would the others fly to
its succor, and spend their blood and money in its defence? Would
there be no danger of their being flattered into neutrality by its
specious promises, or seduced by a too great fondness for peace to
decline hazarding their tranquillity and present safety for the sake
of neighbors, of whom perhaps they have been jealous, and whose
importance they are content to see diminished. Although such conduct
would not be wise, it would, nevertheless, be natural. The history
of the states of Greece, and of other countries, abounds with such
instances, and it is not improbable that what has so often happened
would, under similar circumstances, happen again.
But admit that they might be willing to help the invaded State or
confederacy. How, and when, and in what proportion shall aids of men
and money be afforded? Who shall command the allied armies, and from
which of them shall he receive his orders? Who shall settle the
terms of peace, and in case of disputes what umpire shall decide
between them and compel acquiescence? Various difficulties and
inconveniences would be inseparable from such a situation; whereas one
government, watching over the general and common interests. and
combining and directing the powers and resources of the whole, would
be free from all these embarrassments, and conduce far more to the
safety of the people.
But whatever may be our situation, whether firmly united under one
national government, or split into a number of confederacies,
certain it is, that foreign nations will know and view it exactly as
it is; and they will act towards us accordingly. If they see that
our national government is efficient and well administered, our
trade prudently regulated, our militia properly organized and
disciplined, our resources and finances discreetly managed, our credit
re-established, our people free, contented, and united, they will be
much more disposed to cultivate our friendship than provoke our
resentment. If, on the other hand, they find us either destitute of an
effectual government (each State doing right or wrong, as to its
rulers may seem convenient), or split into three or four independent
and probably discordant republics or confederacies, one inclining to
Britain, another to France, and a third to Spain, and perhaps played
off against each other by the three, what a poor, pitiful figure
will America make in their eyes! How liable would she become not
only to their contempt, but to their outrage; and how soon would
dear-bought experience proclaim that when a people or family so
divide, it never fails to be against themselves.
- PUBLIUS
NO 5: The Same Subject Continued
by John Jay
-
QUEEN Anne, in her letter of the 1st July, 1706, to the Scotch
Parliament, makes some observations on the importance of the Union
then forming between England and Scotland, which merit our
attention. I shall present the public with one or two extracts from
it: "An entire and perfect union will be the solid foundation of
lasting peace: It will secure your religion, liberty, and propert
