THE LOST COLONY OF ROANOKE: ITS FATE AND SURVIVAL.
(Reprinted from Papers Am. Hist. Asso., Vol. iv., No. 4., 1891.)
By Professor Stephen B. Weeks, Ph.D., Trinity College, North Carolina.
Page 28-29
At one time the Croatans were known as 'Redbones,' and there is a street in Fayetteville so called because some of them once lived on it. They are known by this name in Sumpter County, S. C., where they are quiet and peaceable, and have a church of their own. They are proud and high-spirited, and caste is very strong among them.
There is in Hancock county, Tennessee, a tribe of people known by the local name of Malungeons or Melungeons. Some say they are a branch of the Croatan tribe, others that they are of Portuguese stock. They differ radically, however, in manners and customs from the accounts which we have received of the Croatans. Four articles in The Arena for the current year, by Miss Will Allen Domgoole on "The Malungeons, a Forgotten People," "The Malungeon Family Tree," "The Disfranchisement of the Malungeons," and "Malungeon Music."
''Mr. McMillan favors the view that they are a part of the colony of Roanoke, and on this question Mr. John M. Bishop, a native of east Tennessee, now living in Washington, writes to the author: "My theory is that they are a part of the lost colony of Roanoke. Your utterances at the recent meeting in this city on the subject of the Lost Colony of Roanoke [meeting of Amer. Hist. Ass'n., Dec. 31, 1890] were so nearly in line with my ideas in this matter that I now write to call your attention to the subject. . . . You will mark the fact that the Malungeons are located on Newmans Ridge and Black Water creek in Hancock county, Tenn., directly in the path of ancient westward emigration. Dan Boone tramped all over this immediate section. . . . The Malungeons, drifting with the tide of early emigration, stranded on the borderland of the wilderness and remained there."
