Indian Collins Family

 

HANCOCKS MALUNGEONS

MORRISTOWN GAZETTE

Will Allen Dromgoole in Nashville American, September 8: 1890

If the writer will take the cars to Chattanooga, Knoxville, Lone Mountain then get a horse at Mulberry Gap, then Sneedville and sit on the courthouse step half an hour, he will soon discover whether or not the Manlungeons are molattos.  In case he should decide affirmatively I should advise him not to make the announcement until he is wll out of Hancock county. 

If, as he says, the Malungeons are molattos, it is a blot upon the name of Tennessee; a disgrace so black that morality would hide her face, and, shrieking, leave the world forever, for these people have children of white mothers, fathers of white blood, and sons who would silence forever the tongue that dare to call them molattos. 

I send with this a picture of one of them, Calloway Collins, who declared his father was a full-blooded Cherokee.  CALLOWAY IS AN INDIAN IF EVER ONE LIVED ON TENNESSEE SOIL.   The picture was drawn by Mr. Thomas M. Sharpe, of Nashville, and is exceedingly well done.  Calloway was a soldier belonging to the First Tennessee, under Brownlow (See Below)  and to-day draws a pension for three bullet wounds.  His daughter Dorcas (one of Mr. Sharpe's drawings) speaks for herself.  The family group is from life.  We visited this family with Mr. John Tyler, the brother of Hon. A. J. Tyler of Sneedville.  I send the pictures along with this, and my anonymous critic can see them by calling at the American office. 

      Calloway Collins, son of Jordan, grandson of                                             Benjamin Collins

Dorcas Belle, daughter of Calloway Collins,

From Will Allen Dromgoole

• Calloway Collins is an Indian if ever one set foot on Tennessee soil.  He is very fond of his red skin, high cheek-bones and Indian like appearance.

• The man's very instincts are Indian.  He sleeps in leaves, inside or out, as he feels inclined.  He smokes almost unceasingly; so often, in fact, that his wife, Ann Calloway, finds it necessary to cultivate a 'torbacy spot'' for her ''ole man ter smoke up.''

•  They have fourteen children and grandchildren, but Calloway is especially fond of Dorcas, who, he declares, "shows the Injun in her."

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• Old Benjamin Collins, one of the pioneers, was older than Vardy, but came to Tennessee a trifle later. He had quite a large family of children, among them Edmond, Mileyton, Marler, Harry, Andrew, Zeke, Jordon. From Jordan Collins descended Calloway Collins who is still living today and from whom I obtained some valuable information.

• old Jordan Collins, had been a healer too, — a healer and a chief; a full-blooded Cherokee chief. No doubt about that: it was on the records.
• the old Cherokee — Jordan — had been sleeping for fifty years. A Cherokee! Such he claimed, and none have yet successfully denied the claim; 
• Old Jordan was an Indian, "Soft Soul" they called him, and he had been respected by the whites. No man had ever dared call old Jordan a negro: he was a Cherokee, feared and respected as a Cherokee.

The Malungeons need no defense from me.  They can speak for themselves, and all Hancock county can speak for them.  I first saw the name in the New York Worlds, and many old gentlemen of Hancock county have corroborated the existence of the people and the correctness of the name.  And the fact that one croaker rises to dispute their existence because he has not seen them does not in the least alter the fact of their existence. 

Colonel James P. and John Bell Brownlow

Sons of the Parson Brownlow

Calloway Collins served under Colonel James P. Brownlow

Colonel Edward M. McCook, reporting on the fight at Mossy Creek, wrote: “The gallant 1st East Tennessee Cavalry, and their brave young commander, Lieutenant Colonel Brownlow, added new laurels to their brilliant reputation by the splendid sabre charge they made.” The tribute would seem to have been well deserved, for the division had been entirely surrounded by Confederate forces under Generals Martin, Armstrong and John T. Morgan, and the charge of the 1st Tennessee enabled it to break the ring and escape. It should be stated that from the time the regiment reached Nashville the regiment had been under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Brownlow.   

These links are to two court cases, Wayne Winkler and the MHA want you to believe court cases don't mean anything, people lie.  But you can believe the people who claimed, not under oath, they were colored, Negro, Mulatto, etc., or the hundres of years old DNA, or the countless armchair researchers who make presentations at their gatherings.  The testimony of people who lived around them, their neighors etc., are not to be believed, they are 'eyewitnesses to history' but their opinions don't mean chit -- just ask one of these presenters who have read a book.    

Letter to the Editor; John Bell Brownlow  Remnant Indians 

"in this paper is the true story of a small number of people to be found in a few counties of East Tennessee, as in other sections of the Appalachian region, called Melungeons or Malungeons. I have traveled horse-back before, during and since the Civil War, in the counties where these people live, and have seen them in their cabin homes and from information received independently of what *Judge Shepherd says, I am satisfled his statement is to be relied upon."    

            Judge Lewis Shepherd     BOLTON TRIAL 

"The foremost jury lawyer of East Tenn. of his generation was the late Hon. John Netherland, the son-in-law of the John A. McKinney, referred to by Lucy S. V. King, and he gave me the same account, substantially, of the origin of these people that Judge Shepherd does." 

Hon John Netherland        Illegal Voting Trial

"In my boyhood days they were called Portugese. The word Mulangeon is comparatively modern as to its general use"

"I believe there was some mixture of these Portugese with the Cherokee Indians, but not with negroes".