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beeleaf: (my own family has lived there over 200 yrs)
Or about 14.000 years?
Until I met those of you here whose families have stayed on there, I never even thought about what that would feel like. You are equivalent in some respects to the Hopi and Navajo, very much apart of all the life and land there.
I certainly hope I can come one day. I especially want to see the flora described here that I’ve never seen.
Hi Everybody, You guys were talking about Presidents with Native American blood. I was surprised to find out President Clinton is 1/16th Cherokee. His GGGrandmother was Cherokee. I heard him talking about it on TV and looked and there was a lot about it on the Internet. I’m not sure if its true , but I have heard that Hillary Clinton has Native blood from a tribe in Canada, Barak Obama is part Cherokee from his Mothers side and that John Edwards is part Indian? I’m not sure about this but I am about President Clinton being part Cherokee. I just thought it was interesting? Thanks for letting me listen in on all your interesting and informative online coversations!!! Jeff in STL
Or about 14.000 years?
Hehehe. Guess I should have said 200+ years on records that have not been burned. ;~)
Hey, Jeff. Now you’ve got a “Washington crossing the Delaware” native joke formulating in my sick mind. Oh, I’d better not…
Beeleaf,
I wonder if the Ani Stohini Unami claim Nancy Hanks, do they claim other Hanks like Pittman, Chichester and Turner? All related. Very curious. These are all part of the Hanks clan out of Va and listed on census on the Melungeon website. These men share a father/grandfather with Nancy and are mixed into the Allen line, also Dale and Bond in Ky. Saj
Hey Saj,
Interesting question. Have no idea. Nancy was the only Hanks mentioned in that writing. His wording about her is, “Nancy Hanks was one of our people”.
Um, I should also backtrack and give credit to Charles for the “give or take 50” humour. Boy, until I just re-read the paper, I really thought I had said that. ;~)
Here is another interesting snippet–don’t think I posted it yet:
“The majority of confusion however seems to be the continued effort of writers to try to lump us in with the Cherokee or Shawnee in VA or the Catawba in NC, none of whom would have ever dared to reside within the boundaries of our lands. It is true we share a common kinship with both the CHerokee and the Shawnee throughout their histories as marriages took place between our peoples, but that kinship only went so far.”
let me back up a tad to the paragraph before that, as it may be of interest to several folks here:
“…when we were written about, we have been called the New River Indians, the Turtle Indians, the Salt Indians, The Sault Indians, the mysterious ones, the fierce ones, the Mondongachate Indians, the Chinodachaytha Indians, the Little River Indians and almost as many names as there were writers who wrote about us. George Washington referred to some of our people as “Giants”.
Those who had no idea about who they were writing about gave us some labels which definitely did not fit such as Tutelo, Tutera, or Mohetans. Some historians lumped ALL Indians in this part of the east as descendants of a people they called the Xualans or the Hanthaskies and a historical artist and some map makers even took one of our village sites on the North Fork of the Holston River and proclaimed it a Yuchi Village. This village was there during colonial times by the way and is documented at Fort Benning Georgia.”
Peace To All
The term Melungeon as associated with Hancock County seems to have deeper roots in Va and NC where those people were from. It also seems that some branches went to Louisiana- although they had good reason to be both open (in community) and closed (records, outsiders) about their heritage.
I think that Tim Hashaw’s research on the subject is hard to dispute, and it matches the Blackfoot/ Sapponi socio- politics of being Indian/ Artisan respected communities on the edges of core Colonial towns, see history threads on this site.
Although they may have been tri-racial in fact; the culture of the small closed communities seemed to have retained and adapted many NA and African customs (often similiar)that are key to survival “as a community” (even if not called a tribe).
community governance
family naming practices
land selection and intergroup travel
farming, food, music and crafts
Check out http://www.eclectica.org/v5n3/hashaw.html and take it from there. He begins with the African side, maybe in light of the fact that they (indentured and then free Africans who married white and NA.) bought the land (as opposed to other parts of the family on tribal land and therefore considered tribes and not Melungeons). It seems that they all came to be known as FPOC (Free People of Color). There’s lots of good traceable info.
Let me know what you think!
Sincerely,
Akhasa
Please be aware that there are a lot of descrepencies in Hanshaws theories. Not the part that there is no doubt some AA admixture in some NOT ALL of the Melungeon families, the DNA testing being done is showing this. The names being used by Heingg and Hanshaw are not all considered Melungeon, they might have developed other groups elsewhere called by different names, Turks, free issues,redbones, brass ankles etc. The core Melungeon names for Newmans Ridge are Collins, Gibson, Williams, Minor, Goins,with later Bollings, Mullins,Moore, Sextons and Bells. I am also a Sizemore desc and this is just a melungeon related line. Most of the early families are tracing themselves to the PEEDEE river area in SC. For the best historical research on Melungeons see:
http://www.geocities.com/ourmelungeons/genealogy.html
This site also has information on other groups called by other names, Croatans, Carmel Indians etc. Some of the core tribes and or families might have had a common ancestor, but the Melungeons were a specific people in a specific area. I am not trying to be exclusionist, but we need to be careful not to group every tri-racial group in the same category as they have different histories.
Because I am part Swedish, one of my many interests is Swedish history. Beginning in the late 16th century, Walloons from Wallonia in Belgium (roughly the southern half of Belgium) began migrating to Sweden to escape persecution in their own country. The Walloon Society of Sweden was founded in 1938 and continues in existence today. Another group that has close ties with Sweden are the Lapps (or Samis) of Lapland, a country lying to the north of Sweden. Over time, many Lapps have also migrated to Sweden and many of their descendants now live in Sweden.
Some of the descendants of the Walloons and the Lapps in Sweden have intermarried. In the United States, the term “Melungeon” has achieved almost cult status as a quasi-racial group, which is completely unscientific. As an analogy, what if, in Sweden, a Lapp married a Walloon? Would the Swedes simplemindedly refer to the mixed-race children of this union as “Lappoons”? This analogy points out how ridiculous it is for us to refer to mixed-race people in the southeastern U.S. as Melungeons.
Coining the term “Melungeon” is merely a simplistic attempt to deal with complexity and diversity. What we don’t understand and hence fear, we simplify by labeling, and this reduces our anxiety. There is no such thing as a “Melungeon,” i.e., a synthesized “race,” whose composition and origins cannot be proven. The whole concept is scientifically unsupportable.
Peace To All
Thanks for the reality check. I hope that we can continue to help each other track individuals; and not stereotypes.
One Colonial era trader or master craftsman can have a real complex history, in and of himself!
Akhasa
Yes, the label of Melungeon was applied to my ancestors. And you are right it is not a race. But they are a certain people in a certain area that surrounding people, newspapers, magazine articles etc referred to them as such because they were different. Out of fear or prejudice or simply due to culture we cannot be certain. We do know by certain people that used the term used it in a derogatory fashion. That is documented. The more likely origin of the word would be the term malageine which in Elizabethan English meant trickster and full of guile ( refer to Spensers Fairie Queen ) which would be a derogatory term but at the time the term was first used in writing was 1813 would have been a word in use although no longer in use today. Studies have been done to show how mountain/appalachian language held onto an Elizabethan English context and was very similiar.
BTW my husbands maternal side is third generation Swede. His paternal is Cajun. what a mix!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! LOL:eek:
beeleaf wrote: Nancy Hanks is claimed by a tribe in Virginia (Ani Stohini Unami).
Then you said quoted the author of the paper you mentioned (“Researching Native American Genealogy in Southwest Virginia”) as saying “Nancy Hanks was one of our people”. Does he cite anything with that or just make the statement? Any idea where I can get a hold of a copy of that paper?
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