MORRISTOWN REPUBLICAN (Morristown, Tennessee
21 August 1897
MELUNGEON THEORY KNOCKED OUT
NO PORTUGUES BLOOD IN THESE PEOPLE
They Are a Mixture of Indian, Negroe and White Races
Sneedville, Tenn., Aug. 13
-Much has been written by strangers and outsiders about the Melungeons of Hancock County and their origin, These writers have not yet learned, else they have failed to write it, and therefore the truth for them has not been told, and their origin is still a mystery to the outside world. People have come here to write them up and they represent them as a separate and distinct class of people. If they are from whence did they come?
Melungeon is a home-spun word in the mountains of east Tennessee and Southwest Virginia, and originated here from a cross of races of this section of country. When the Indians had treated with whites down about the Cumberland the more desperate savages moved west, while they left some of their tribes who had been friendly to the whites even in their wars with them, and these friendly Indians from the days of Powhatan on continuously up to the days of the American revolution and afterwards settled and remained with the whites on the Cumberland, in settlements of their own, and were called friendly Indians, and as white emmigration pushed west, these friendly Indians moved along with them, or perhaps a few miles in advance of the whites, and these Indians would all go and stay together in settlements of their own, and as has been in all ages, cross of the two races (miscegenation) took place and the off spring of the whites and friendly Indians was dubbed with the name- Melungeon.
These friendly Indians had all or nearly so, passed into half breed; only a few full blooded ever reached this section and they settled first in Russell and Scott counties, Va., and then many of them on to Newman's Ridge and Blackwater, and many of them now have gone to the mountains of Kentucky, and have formed settlements there. Some of the Virginia tribe which came here were named Collins, Gibson, Goodman, Bunch and Bolin, and later on there came here from North Carolina others who were dubbed Melungeons, and these were mixed, African and white, and also Indian and African. These settled with the others, and hence a kind of mongrel people.
Some of them were rich for the time in which they lived and had vast tracts of land and money. Especially rich was old Vardy Collins, who owned four or five square miles on Blackwater, and the noted Vardy Spring. Around it he built 50 houses for boarders and those who wished to live in them, until they were healed of whatever disease they had. The people have been misrepresented as savages and outlaws, and an uncertain race of people, but the stories are untrue. They are kind affable and all of them will treat you as well as they are able.
This is the history of the Melungeons of Hancock County and the term "Melungeon" and its origin, and these facts your correspondent has gathered from the oldest of the tribes and from those who ought to know. These people are like all other people, they have among them good and bad people, and not an over percent of the bad, and they have always had the voting franchise the same as the whites.
If this does not satisfy the minds of the public about this people your correspondent will prepare an article that will do them ample justice.
No Author but fairly sure it is Lewis M Jarvis
Hancock Co., Tennessee
