Cherokee Choctaw & Portuguese
The Free Press
27 September 1901, Fri · Page 7
Bridger, Montana
How White Blood Preponderates in Certain Tribes.
North Carolina Croatans, who claim to be descendant of Raleigh's lost colony[1], are not the only peculiar people among the red inhabitants of these United States. The claim is not new. It has been more or less exploited these 30 years, along with that of the more curious Melungeons of East Tennessee. Their name, said to come from the French melange, a mixture, must be pre-eminently fit, since they show racial characteristics of the Cherokees, the Choctaws, the Portuguese [See Below Cherokee Chief Nimrod Smith 2] and the plain ordinary whites. Their language is as mixed as their blood, and their civilization is in somewhat the same condition.
Over against them set their neighbors, the Eastern Cherokees, who live in Qualla Boundary, in western North Carolina, and are so up-to-date that they formed themselves into a regular corporation, so as to share in the government benefits which were in danger of monopoly by the rich and out-reaching western Cherokee nation. [See Below lawsuit 3] Right here it may be proper to say that after the outcry against Indian population of today is not so very much less than that which Columbus found here, and the so-called Five Civilized Nations of Indian Territory, have quintrupled in numbers since crossing the Mississippi.
[1] The Crotans did not claim to be 'Lost Colony of Roanoke' Hamilton McMillan who had witnessed the speech of George Lowery in the 1860s and in McMillan's own words Lowery said in "Sir Walter Raleigh's Lost Colony, with the traditions of An Indian Tribe in North Carolina indicating the fate of the Colony";
ROANOKE IN VIRGINIA
NOT NORTH CAROLINA
[To Be Continued- Next Blog]
Chief Nimrod J Smith
[2] I said to myself, "This is not a modern face of the every-day world; it does not belong to any race admixture of which I know anything; it might have belonged to a Spanish cavalier of the olden time;" and as if in answer to my thought came the information that there was an admixture of Portuguese blood in his veins, or to speak in vernacular, he was "part Portygee."
[3] As principal chief Smith devoted most of his time to the Eastern Cherokee's legal battles. Hoping to gain access to the annuities and other trust funds held by the U.S. government for the Western (Oklahoma) Cherokee, the Eastern Cherokee filed suit in the court of claims against the United States and the Cherokee Nation West in 1883. Two years later the court handed down a decision adverse to the Eastern Cherokee, and the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the decision in 1886. The courts ruled that the Eastern Cherokee had dissolved their connection with the Cherokee Nation by their refusal to move west. The decision deprived them not only of the trust and annuity funds but also of their tribal status and consequently left them in an extremely ambiguous legal position."
https://the-melungeons.blogspot.com/search?q=nimrod+smith
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The next time you read the Melungeon or Croatan/Lumbee families or your family were rejected in the Cherokee applications consider this; The United States Government ruled the EASTERN CHEROKEE DISSOLVED THEIR CONNECTION TO THE WESTERN CHEROKEE BECAUSE THEY 'DID NOT WALK'
And it continues today.
January 19, 2007
TAHLEQUAH, Okla. -
"Every year thousands of people are told or "discover" they have Native American blood. Sometimes it's true, sometimes not. And the tribe people most commonly associate themselves with is Cherokee. A group of Cherokee Nation employees and officials recently formed a task force to deal with these "wannabe" Cherokees."
