March 11, 1889
The Melungeons
Meridian, Miss.,
March 11– Editors Constitution
Near a month ago an article appeared in The CONSTITUTION named Melungeons. I laid it aside in order to correspond with the writer, but the paper got destroyed and the name and address had not been noticed with care, and are forgotten. Excuse me then for addressing him through the same medium.
His name Melungeons is a local designation for this small peculiar race. Their own claim to be Portuguese is more generally known. Their original site is on the Pedee river in South and North Carolina . They were once especially strong in Georgetown and Darlington districts of the latter. Though called Portuguese – this does not indicate their true origin. I have no doubt local traditions, and the records still to be found in the Charleston library will give the true account. As dimly recollected, for I never made search with a purpose in view, it was thus in the primary colonial times of the Carolinas, Winyaw Bay was the best and most frequented harbor on the coast, and Georgetown more accessible, was more of a commercial town than old Charlestown., to that port British cruisers sometimes brought prizes.
Among these once was a Salee Rover, (*See Below) which was sold for the distribution of the proceeds as prize money. The crew consisting mostly of Moors, with a sprinkling of Arabs and negroes, were turned ashore free. Their complexion and religion prevented immediate absorption by the white race, and they found wives among Indians, negroes and cast off white women at a time when many of these last were sold by immigrant ships for their passage money. They became a peculiar people. They were the free people of color of the Pedee region so true to Marion during our revolutionary struggle and no other race in America retained such traditionary hatred of the British.
Your correspondent [whose name I am sorry to have forgotten] having a taste for ethnological studies will confer a favor upon that branch of early post-colonial record and legislative proceedings of South Carolina. He will find it sustained by the appearance of these people if he can find a few pure specimens–their physical structure, their hair, their teeth, and general features, though every trace of their Moslem religion and north African dialect may have long been lost.
Very respectfully,
Laurence C. Johnson
Johnson was a pioneer in the discovery and description of the phosphate fields of
He lived in
NATIONAL SURVEYS ARTICLE - NEW YORK TIMES June 29, 1885
Information provided by- Peggy Johnson Carey
*Salee Rovers
Salé was apparently colonised by the Phoenicians at approximately the same time that Chellah, across the Bou Regreg to the south. Researchers know a considerable amount about the Chellah[1] colony, probably because of the good state of preservation of the Chellah site.
In Pirate Utopias, Peter Lamborn Wilson says:
- "Salé ... dates back at least to Carthaginian times (around 7th century BC). The Romans called the place Sala Colonia, part of their province of Mauritania Tingitane. Pliny the Elder mentions it (as a desert town infested with elephants!). The Vandals captured the area in the 5th century AD and left behind a number of blonde, blue-eyed Berbers. The Arabs (7th century) kept the old name and believed it derived from "Sala" (sic., his name is actually Salah), son of Ham, son of Noah; they said that Salé was the first city ever built by the Berbers."[2]
In about 1630 Salé became a haven for Moriscos-turned-Barbary pirates. Salé pirates (the well-known "Sallee Rovers") roamed the seas as far as the shores of the Americas, bringing back loot and slaves. There is an American family van Salee descended from a Salee Rover who was captured by the Dutch and settled in New Amsterdam. The character Robinson Crusoe, in Daniel Defoe's novel by the same name, spends time in captivity of the local pirates and at last sails off to liberty from the mouth of the Salé river.
Salé has played a rich and important part in Moroccan history. The first demonstrations for independence against the French, for example, sparked off in Salé. A good number of government officials, decision makers and royal advisors of both France and Morocco were from Salé. Salé people, the Slawis, have always had a "tribal" sense of belonging, a sense of pride which developed into a feeling of superiority towards the "berranis", i.e. Outsiders. -- SOURCE
It was from this secure base that the free-ranging pirate squadrons known as the Sallee Rovers set out to harass the sea-lanes, merchant ships and harbours of Europe. They were brilliantly successful for their ships crews were a kaleidoscope of international talent that allied the military élan of Moroccans and exiled Spanish Moors with Dutch, German and English professional skills. The crews spoke a lingua franca that was based on Spanish with a mixture of French, Italian, Portuguese and Arabic loan words.
The Sallee Rovers did not just restrict their operations to the capture of shipping but took the war into the lands of the enemy; landing raiding parties that returned with captives. Their notoriety as white slavers reached a crescendo in the mid 17th century England when a series of daring slave raids seized captives from St Micheals Mount in Cornwall and Baltimore in south-west Ireland as well as intercepting the cod fishing fleet off Iceland. The boasting verses in Rule Britannia about Britons never shall be slaves could certainly not have been written in those years. It has been calculated that in this period that there were more Britons labouring away as slaves and concubines in North Africa than as settlers in all of the colonies of North America put together.
