Malungeons

OF ALL THINGS

 Dickenson County herald

 October 20, 1949

Last Sunday, I saw some Malungeons in their narrow mountain valleys and on their tablelands.  Malungeons are a separate race of people found in the counties of Hancock and Hawkins, Tennessee; and in Lee and Scott in Virginia.  They cannot be called white; they do not want to be called black; and they are probably neither.  They are not fish or fowl," simply a people set apart; and no one knows how they got that way. 

It is said, fairly commonly, that the Malungeon is a mixture of Indian and Negro.  There is a story that nearly two hundred years ago some runaway slaves found sanctuary among the Cherokee Indians of East Tennessee and that a separate race came from the fusion.  This would be an easy answer to the puzzle of their origin were it not that Malungeons do not have the features of the Negro race.  You might fancy that some copper-skinned boy or girl has a trace of colored blood but the thin lips, long keen nose, straight hair and slender writs and ankle bones tell another story.

Another theory, romantic but seemingly slight in fact, is that the Malungeons are the descendants of Raleigh's Lost Colony.  The speculation runs that the colonists from Roanoke Island wandered into the wilderness, where they mixed with but were not absorbed by the Red race.  There is, however, no tradition among these people to color the theory with truth.  Traditions have a way of living a long time, and one going back to the Lost Colony would, it seems, have been strong enough to have kept alive to this day. 

Another speculation is that some of De Soto's Spaniards and Portuguese, weary of their long wandering, dropped out in the hills of East Tennessee and there with Cherokee women brought forth a different race.  One fact lends some color to this theory.  It is the seemingly inborn reverence these people hold for the cross.  It is said that the cross, either in picture or rude form is found in almost every Malungeons home.  De Soto's Spaniards and Portuguese were, of course, Catholics who set much store by the symbol of the cross.  It would be romantic, but not too strange, to believe that the adventures bequeathed the sign of their faith to so many generations then unborn. 

Where did that racial name --Malungeon--come from?  The word players, who call themselves philologists, have not, so far as I know, made any study of that question.  There is a French term -melange- meaning mixture, that might be a key to open the door of mystery.  Could fusion of Spanish, Portuguese and Indian have been made more complex by the admixture of early adventurers, criminals perhaps, who flocked across the mountains between 1750 and 1800?  Some person might have shown off his learning by a contemptuous reference to this race as a "Melange".  In such surroundings, that word could easily have grown into the racial name of Malungeon. 

They have clung - as so many disinherited people have done -- to the mountain tops.  Their seclusion has kept alive their primitive ways.  Having been persecuted a bit and always looked down upon, they have become sensitive and suspicious.  they hate the name of Malungeon and that is one word that a stranger had better never utter among them.  The other people around them will tell you that it is not safe to ask them questions about their race or let them get the idea that you intend to write about them.  Without doubt, they have been the subject of some slander and have received some mistreatment. All this has helped to build a dangerous social barrier about them. 

The state of Virginia has never classified the Malungeons as a distinct race.  The newborn are registered as white, and such adults qualify to vote are listed with the white.  The state of Tennessee has passed laws grouping the Malungeons with the colored race, but these laws were later repealed.  The existence of this peculiar people was noted in the statues before the Civil War.  Possibly on account of feelings over Reconstruction, a Tennessee statute of 1878 forbade these "persons of color" in the counties of Hawkins and Hancock from entering white schools.  Twenty five years later, this act was repealed. We noted one youth of clearly marked Malungeon features, possibly at home on a week-end wearing a neat University of Tennessee cadet uniform.  The Malungeons fiercely resent any imputation of Negro blood. Most of their white neighbors, however, look on them as people of color, regardless of their official standing. 

Within late years, the social barriers hemming the Malungeons in have been breached, but not broken.  Some of them have gone from their native tablelands into the mines, and a few went into war industries.  They were, in new surroundings, able to pass as white, and a number of them took white wives or husbands.  The voting lists of Lee County show their family names in almost every precinct.  There are whispers about those who have come out this way, but the sounds are growing fainter.  The principal of Jonesville School says that a great number of the children are enrolled in the primary and elementary grades but that few of them ever reach high school. 

And there they are; a people whose origin is lost in the mist of time, a people with natural disadvantages, a people who have not been helped by the attitudes and treatment of their more fortunate neighbors.  But they are a people who have been stirred by the ferment of this age who will, it seems, gradually lose their racial identity, and for better or worse, be absorbed into the normal society of the future. 

The Melungens

The legend of their history, which they carefully preserve, is this.  A great many years ago, these mountains were settled by a society of Portuguese Adventurers, men and women,  who came from the long-shore parts of Virginia, that they might be freed from the restraints and drawbacks imposed on them by any form of government.  These people made themselves friendly with the Indians and freed as they were from every kind of social government, they uprooted all conventional forms of society and lived in a delightful Utopia of their own creation."  

These intermixed with the Indians, and subsequently their descendants (after the advances of the whites into this part of the state) *with the negroes and the whites, thus forming the present race of Melungens. 

Vardy and Peggy Collins - Newman's Ridge  1848

J. G. Rhea

Griffin, Georgia

April 14, 1918

To:

Miss Martha B. Collins

Bristol Tenn

Dear Niece

Now about the Collins boys, I knew when I was a boy Navarrh, or as he was called, "Vardy" Collins was a fine old patriarch, said to be of Portuguese Nationality coming to this country with De Soto-he settled on Black water Creek and owned Vardy Mineral Spring-I was at his home often with other boys, his grandsons, He was highly respected in his time and founded a church at his home-He has sons and daughters, Alfred Collins, Morgan Collins and Allen Collins were his sons-Etha Goins, Clarkia Biggs, and Lettitia Williams were his daughters-All had families and they are one Tribe.

 

Some scholars speculate that Cofitachequi politically controlled a cluster of towns around present-day Camden, an 80 to 100 mile (130–160 km) stretch of the Wateree River and vicinity in South Carolina, and a similar portion of the Pee Dee River. 

They are descendants of some ancient Phoenicians who removed from Carthage to a place near Camden, South Carolina and from there to Hancock County, Tennessee.  

J Patton Gibson Hancock County 1928.

The Spanish explorers' accounts of Chiaha provide a rare first-hand glimpse of life in a Dallas phase Mississippian-era village. The Dallas culture, named after Dallas Island near Chattanooga, where its distinct characteristics were first observed, dominated much of East Tennessee between approximately 1300 and 1600 AD.^[3] Both the de Soto and Pardo expeditions spent several days at Chiaha's principal village.

The Melungeons never hid their ancestry.  They never denied they mixed with Negroes. No cover story! 

The Portuguese People
https://the-melungeons.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-portuguese-people.html

https://the-melungeons.blogspot.com/2023/05/cofitachequi-desoto.html

Lucas de Ayllon and his 100 slaves who mixed with the Indians 1526
https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/events-african-american-history/san-miguel-de-gualdape-slave-rebellion-1526/

The Indians mixed with the deSotos Spaniards Portuguese and slaves

DESOTO JOURNALS 
Gentleman of Elvas
Puplished 1587

• They captured a hundred head, among Indian men and women. Of the latter, there, as well as in any other part where forays were made, the captain selected one or two for the governor and the others were divided among themselves and those who went with them.
• As soon as the governor had crossed the stream, he found a village called Achese a short distance on. Although the Indians had never heard of Christians they plunged into a river. A few Indians, men and women, were seized,
• At the time of his departure, because of the importunity of some who wished more than was proper, he asked the cacique for thirty Indian women as slaves.....The Indians gave the governor thirty Indian women and the necessary tamemes [for DeSoto's men to wed then populate his planned settlement at Mobile Bay].
• 
  

https://the-melungeons.blogspot.com/2014/12/the-portugues-desoto-indians-mixed.html

I do not know how people can continue to deny that the Spanish, Portuguese and Africans mixed with the Indians as early as 1526.  Why do they not want to admit some of the AA Y DNA is likely from these early explorers.  That the Indians were carrying European Y DNA as early as 1526?  

Why does the MELUNGEON HERITAGE ASSOCIATION continue to put forth the 'African men and European women' theory when this information above has been 'in their face' for 20 years?  It's your HERITAGE - TAKE IT BACK!!