Melungeons 1

Melungeons

Kelly Miller

ETH/125

June 8, 2010

Sean Napier

Melungeons 2 “O there are voices of the past, links of a broken chain, wings that bear me back to times which cannot come again; Yet God forbid that I should lose the echoes that remain!” --Author unknown Have you ever thought about the different kinds of ethnic and cultural groups and races that are in your area? Well I have, and since I am new to this area I went to the library and asked them the same question. The lady told me about a people that are prominent in this area that are called the Melungeons. By now you are wondering who and what the Melungeons are. Well I will gladly tell you, they are a group of people all their own. They are of a single mixed ethnic population that is centered in the southeastern part of the United States and into the southern parts of Indiana and Ohio. The Melungeons have been found to still be living in Kentucky, south western Virginia, eastern Tennessee, and southern West Virginia. “Some of the mixed-ancestry of the Melungeons includes the Carmel Indians of southern Ohio, the Brown people of Kentucky, the Guineas of West Virginia, the We-Sorts of Maryland, the Nanticoke-Moors of Delaware, the Cubans and Portuguese of North Carolina, the Turks and Brass Ankles of South Carolina and the Creoles and Redbones of Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Now for the possible kinship to various Native American groups include the Algonquin tribes in eastern and central Virginia, as well as the Lumbees, Monacans, Saponi, Catawba, Cherokee, and the Muskogee/Creek tribes of the deeper south” (Sullivan County Genealogical Society).

Melungeon 3
Even though all of these “subgroups” possess their own unique history and culture, there is historical and cultural evidence that suggests there is