KNOXVILLE SENTINEL (Knoxville, Tennessee
07 Oct 1911
Advent of "Melongeons"
to Eastern Tennessee
(By L.M. Jarvis.)
Sneedville, Oct. 7. -The Melongeons of Newman's Ridge and Blackwater in Hancock county I have known all my life. I will be 82 years old on October 26, and I have lived here at the base of Newman's Ridge, Blackwater, being on the opposite side for the last seventy-one years and well known the history of the these people on Newman's ridge and Blackwater enquired about as Melongeons. These people were friendly to Cherokee Indians who came west with the white imigration from New river and Cumberland, Va., about the year 1790. Before that date these Indians were com-_? because of their desertion of their tribe, their loyalty to the white people and their many betrayals of Indians plans and plots to kill the white people.
They came here with the white people and simultaneously settle on Newman's ridge and Blackwater in what is now Hancock county. White people settled in more desirable places. The name "Melongeon" was coined in derision, and was given them on account of their color.
I have seen the oldest and first settlers of this tribe who first occupied Newman's ridge and Blackwater and I have owned much of the lands on which they first settled. They obtained their land grants from North Carolina. I personally knew Vardy Collins, Solomon D. Collins, Shephard Gibson, Paul Bunch and Benjamin Bunch and many of the Goodmans, Moores, Williams, and Sullivans, all of the very first settlers and noted men of these friendly Indians. They took their sir names from white people of that name with who they came here. As a general thing they were reliable and truthful and faithful to any ting they promised, and with few exceptions, could be relied upon.
In the civil war most of the Melongeons went into the Union army and made good soldiers. Their Indian blood has about run out. They are growing white. The whites seem to keep on top.
I have written much of the history of these people heretofore. They have been misrepresented by many writers, as an original tribe of Indians found here by the first settlers and whose origin could not be traced to Indians.
In my former writings I have given their statons and stops on their way as they eimgrated to this country with white people, one of which places was at the mouth of Stony Creek on Clinch River in Scott county, Virginia where they built a fort and called it Fort Blakamore after Col. Blackamore who was with them.
When they left there they came to Newman" ridge and Blackwater, but a great many of these Indians, posterity whose ancestry -- in the neighborhood of Fort Blackamore to this good day.
When Daniel Boone was here hunting for three years probably from 1763 to 1767, there Melongeons were not here.
