THE INDIANS OF ROBESON COUNTY NORTH CAROLINA
AND
HANCOCK COUNTY TENEESSEE
"An old Indian" George Lowery/Lowrie, made an address at the funeral [atteneded by whites and Indians] of his kinsmen killed by the Confederates in 1864.
Quoted in Lost Colony of Roanoke by Hamilton McMillan, George Lowery said;
"We have always been the friends of the white men. We were a free people long before the white men came to our land. Our tribe lived in Roanoke, in Virginia."
July 17, 1890
--Red Springs, North Carolina
Hamilton McMillan
63D CONGRESS 3D SESSION SENATE DOCUMENT NO. 677 INDIANS OF NORTH CAROLINA LETTER FROM THE SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR TRANSMITTING, IN RESPONSE TO A SENATE RESOLUTIONOF JUNE 30, 1914, A REPORT ON THE CONDITION AND TRIBAL RIGHTS OF THE INDIANS OF ROBESON AND ADJOINING COUNTIES OF NORTH CAROLINA JANUARY 5, 1915.--REFERRED TO THE COMMITTEE ON INDIAN AFFAIRS AND ORDERED TO BE PRINTED
The Croatan Tribe lives principally in Robeson County, N. C., though there are quite a number of them settled in counties adjoining in North and South Carolina. In Sumter County, S. C., there is a branch of the tribe and also in East Tennessee. In Lincoln County, N. C., there is another branch, settled there long ago. Those living in East Tennessee are called "Melungeans," *a name also retained by them here
The Melungeons
Paul Converse
Southern Collegian December 1912
This is quite a fine theory, but most people are more prosaic and hold the Melungeons to be a mixed race, having Indian, Negro, and Caucasian blood in their veins. This the word “Melungeon” itself would indicate and the Bureau of Ethnology at Washington classifies them as a branch or offshoot of the Croatan Indians of North Carolina, who are a people of obscure and mixed descent in whose veins Indian blood predominates..
AN INDIAN TO BE HANGED
Georgia Crotan to be Executed Next Month for Murder.
New York Times
February 28, 1897, Wednesday
ATLANTA, Ga., Feb. 27. -- For the first time in fifty years an Indian is under sentence of death in Georgia. He will be hanged in Glynn County next month. Marcellus Lowry, the condemned man, is a Crotan Indian from the celebrated band
in North Carolina, many of whom have drifted with the turpentine and timber men into Southern Georgia, where they are called "Melungeons."
Swan Burnett
Since the above communications was read before the Society I have received from several sources valuable information in regard to the Melungeons; but the most important contribution bearing on the subject, as I believe, is the little pamphlet published by Hamilton Mc Millan, A. M., on “Sir Walter Raleigh’s Lost Colony” (Wilson, N.C., 1888). Mc Millan claims that the Croatan Indians are the direct descendant of this colony. What connection I consider to exist between the Melungeons and the Croatan Indians, as well as other material I have accumulated in regard to the Melungeons, will be made the subject of another communication which is now in preparation.
* *Read before the Society at its regular meeting, February 5, 1889.
Smithsonian Institution Bureau of American Ethnology - Ethnology - 1907
Across the line in South Carolina are found a people, evidently of similar origin, designated "Red bones." In portions of w. N. C. and E. Temn. are found the so-called "Melungeons" (probably from French melangi', 'mixed') or "Portuguese," apparently an offshoot from the Croatan proper, and in Delaware are found the "Moors." All of these are local designations for peoples of mixed race with an Indian nucleus differing in no way from the present mixed-blood remnants known as Pamunkey, Chicka- hominy, and Nansemond Indians in Virginia, excepting in the more complete loss of their identity. In general, the physical features and complexion of the persons of this mixed stock incline more to the Indian than to the white or negro. See Mi-tis, Mixed bloods
The North Carolina Booklet: Great Events in North Carolina History
James Mooney
" The Croatan applied for recognition by the United States as Cherokee, but it was denied and the Cherokee acknowledge no relationship, having visited the Croatan country on a tour of inspection. There is a queer offshoot of the Croatan known as "Malungeons," in South Carolina, who went there from this state ; another the "Redbones," of Tennessee. Mr. Mooney has made a careful study of both of these branches also.
In a column called "The Southwest Conrner" published in the Roanoke News, Roanoke, Virginia, on February 25, 1934, Dr. Gooridge Wilson wrote the following .......
........"Mr. Robert Gray, one of the last survivors of those who drove the great herds of cattle, horses, and mules from the mountains to the sea, says that the Melungeons were in much demand for this work, being expert handlers of the stock on long treks...... ... when he was a boy some of the oldest of the clan told him that they were "Croatans," survivors of the Indians tribe
The Magazine of American History with Notes and Queries
Volume XXV 1890
Page 258
After the reports of various committees had been read, and other business transacted, Judge Lea addressed the society on the subject of the Melungeons. He outlined the early history of the settlement of North Carolina. A party under the protection of a friendly Indian chief had gone into the interior when the first settlers came to that coast and had been lost. No other settlers came till a century afterward, and they were told of a tribe who claimed a white ancestry, and among whom gray eyes were frequent. This people were traced to Buncomb and Robeson counties, where the same family and personal names were found as in the lost colonies.
They are now called Croatans, on account of a sign they made on the trees to keep their way. The Basques of the Spanish coast have been said to have settled in that country, but this theory was not thought to be trustworthy. It would be impossible for negroes to form a distinct race, because the number necessary for a colony would not have been allowed to run at large. The race has several old English words which are used as they were in England two hundred years ago, and a case of civil rights has been won in court by a Melungeon displaying his person and proving to the court that he was of Caucasian blood. North Carolina gives the Croatians $1,000 a year for a normal school, and they have excellent roads. This colony, whose early history is thus so clearly traced, lies within forty miles of the Tennessee Melungeons.
See Melungeons Redboned & Croatans - HERE
From 1890 into the 1900s Historians, Anthropologists, Ethnoligists, Smithsonian etc., declared the Melungeons were an offshoot of the Croatan/Lumbee Tribe.
TheCroatan/Lumbee lived on the Pee Dee River, the Melungeons lived on the Pee Dee River. The Cofitachequi, visited by DeAyllon - 1527. DeSoto - 1540 and Pardo - 1570, lived on the Pee Dee River.
One of DeSoto's ships were Portuguese explorers who mixed with the Indians from the Pee Dee River to the Mobile Bay.
Excerpt from the 1871 North Carolina Joint Senate and House Committee as they interviewed Robeson County Judge Giles Leitch about the ‘free persons of color’ living within his county:
Senate: Half of the colored population?
Leitch: Yes Sir; half of the colored population of Robeson County were never slaves at all…
Senate: What are they; are they Negroes?
Leitch: Well sir, I desire to tell you the truth as near as I can; but I really do not know what they are; I think they are a mixture of Spanish, Portuguese and Indian…
Senate: You think they are mixed Negroes and Indians?
Leitch: I do not think that in that class of population there is much Negro blood at all; of that half of the colored population that I have attempted to describe all have always been free…They are called ‘mulattoes’ that is the name they are known by, as contradistinguished from Negroes…I think they are of Indian origin.
Senate: I understand you to say that these seven or eight hundred persons that you designate as mulattoes are not Negroes but are a mixture of Portuguese and Spanish, white blood and Indian blood, you think they are not generally Negroes?
Leitch: I do not think the Negro blood predominates.
Indians of Robeston County Part II
