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From: Melungeon Movement <>
Subject: [Melungeon] "A history of Tennessee and Tennesseans" by Will T. page 182 - 185
Date: Sat, 1 Feb 2003 10:23:53 -0800 (PST)
In-Reply-To: <10798-3E3BD39F-2197@storefull-2117.public.lawson.webtv.net>


"A history of Tennessee and Tennesseans" by Will T. page 182 - 185



<< Page 182

*** In appearance they bear a striking resemblance to the Cherokees, and are believed by the people round about to be a kind of half-breed Indian. Their complexion is reddish brown, totally unlike the mulatto. The men are very tall and straight, with small sharp eyes, high cheekbones, and straight black hair worn rather long. The woman are small, below average height, coal black hair and eyes, high cheekbones, and the same reddish brown complexion. The hands of the Melungeons women are quite shapely and pretty. Also their feet, despite the fact that they travel the sharp mountain trials barefoot, are short and shapely. Their features are wholly unlike those of a Negro, except in cases where the two have cohabited, as is sometimes the fact. These instances can be readily be detected, as can those of cohabitation with the mountaineer, for the pure Melungeons present a characteristic and individual appearance. On the Ridge proper, one finds only the pure Melungeons; it is in th!
e unsavory limits of Black Water Swamp and on Big Sycamore Creek lying at the foot of the ridge between it and Powells mountain, that the mixed dwell ***



page 183



So nearly complete has been the extinction of the race that in but a few counties of Eastern Tennessee is it known. In Handcock you may hear them, see them, almost the minute you cross the county line. They are distinguished as the Ridgemanites or pure Melungeons. Those among whom the white or Negro blood has entered are called Blackwaters. The ridge is admirely adapted to the purpose of wildcat distilling, being crossed but by our road and crowned with jungles of chinquapin, cedar and wahoo ***

page 183



So nearly complete has been the extinction of the race that in but a few counties of Eastern Tennessee is it known. In Handcock you may hear them, see them, almost the minute you cross the county line. They are distinguished as the Ridgemanites or pure Melungeons. Those among whom the white or Negro blood has entered are called Blackwaters. The ridge is admirely adapted to the purpose of wildcat distilling, being crossed but by our road and crowned with jungles of chinquapin, cedar and wahoo ***





They are a great nuisance to the people of the countyseat, where, on any public day, and especially on election day, they may be seen squatted about the streets, great, strapping men, or little brown women baking themselves in the sun like mud figures to dry. The people of the town do not allow them to enter their dwellings, and even refuse to employ them as servants, owing to their filthy habit of chewing tobacco and spitting upon the floors, together with their ignorance or defiance of the difference between meum and tuum. **



Page 184:

The Melungeon visited by Miss Dromgoole were located on Newmans Ridge four miles of the beautiful little county seat, Sneedville. She found that they resort to a very peculiar method of distinguishing themselves. To illustrate, Jack Collins wife will be Mary Jack. His son will be Ben Jack. His daughters name will be similar - Nancy Jack or Jane Jack, as the case may be, but always having the fathers Christian name attached. There was one school among them at one time, taught by an old Melungeon whose literary accomplished to a meager knowledge of the alphabet and the spelling of simple words. Near the schoolhouse, on an eminence over looking the Clinch valley and the purple peaks beyond, is a Melungeon graveyard. The people are very careful of their dead. They build a kind of floorless house above each separate grave, sometimes for miles, afoot and in single file. Their burial ceremonies are interesting and peculiar.





"They expect enumeration for the slightest, and are so inquisitive that they will trail a visitor to the Ridge for miles through seemingly impenetrable jungles to discover, if maybe, the object of his visit. In many things they resemble the Negro. They are exceedingly immoral, yet are great shouters and advocates of religion. They call themselves Baptist, although their mode of baptism is that of the Dunkard.



*** The pure Melungeons, that is the old men and women, have no toleration for the negro, and nothing insults them so much as a sugesstion of negro blood. Many pathetic tales are told of their battle against the black race, which they regard as their downfall *** for when the races began to mix and to intermarry, and the expression "a Melungeon nigger," came into use, the last barriers vanished, and all were regrarded as some what upon a social level.



Miss Dromgooles summary is, that they are filthy, and have filthy homes; they are rogues; close, suspicious, inhospitable, untruthful, cowardly and sneaky.

More charitable is the opinion of Mrs. Eliz N. Heiskell, of Memphis, whose father, Col. John Netherland above mentioned, and was a staunch friend of these apparently down-trodden people. In an article contributed to the Arkansas Gazette, January 14, 1912, she says:



But there is also another people who have lived in the mountains, principally in the Clinch mountains, of eastern Tennessee for more than a century; separate and distinct from all others, whose ancestry is shrouded in mystery - the mystery of obscurity. They have lived their simple pastoral life and for more than a hundred years so quietly and obscurely that their name is unknown to many.



They are the Melungeons -their very name is a corruption of some foreign word unknown to them or to the few have given them any study. They have had no poet or seer to preserve their history.



The Melungeons have a tradition of a Portuguese ship mutiny, with the successful mutineer beaching the vessel on the North Carolina coast, then their retreat towards the mountains, farther and farther away from the avenging law of man, going on where natures barriers were their protection from a relentless foe-swept into heaven by the hand of fate.





Page 185



This strange people seem to have been forgotten by a century of civilization that has left its impress on everything else. They still have some names that suggest the Portuguese ancestry, such as Sylvestor, but their surnames are anglicized to such a degree that to trace them to their original would be impossible.



The Portuguese mutineer came to a region almost uninhabited, and because settlers were so few and scattered the strangers were unmolested. Beyond the mountains that hem them in was the institution of slavery; when they went beyond their narrow confines they were in contact with the influence and prestige of the slaveholder. In all slave- holding communities all persons not white, or Indians, were classes as Negroes, and the name Melungeon was generally understood to mean a class of mixed-blooded but free.



This they resented, and insisted on their Portuguese ancestry. By the Constitution of 1824 all persons of color were deprived of the franchise in Tennessee, and by a special act of the legislator these people were given the right to vote.



To prove they were not Negroes, the beautiful hands and feet of some of the race were examined, and the marked difference between them and the Negroes decided the question in their favor.



"The late John Netherland of Tennessee obtained the right of for them, and their deep gratitude was manafested towards him in every way as long as he lived.>>



Melungeon hugs,



Helen



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