[Coharie Roy]

As preposterous as it might seem, the full blooded child of a pure 100% Indian woman and a pure 100% Indian man, after October, 1705, in the great state of Virginia, that child was deemed legally to be a mulatto.

Unbelievable.

Here’s the reference:

Source: Hening, ed., The Statutes at Large, vol. 3, pp. 229-235. October 1705-CHAP. IV. An act declaring who shall not bear office in this country.

…. And for clearing all manner of doubts which hereafter may happen to arise upon the construction of this act, or any other act, who shall be accounted a mulatto, Be it enacted and declared, and it is hereby enacted and declared, That the child of an Indian and the child, grand child, or great grand child, of a negro shall be deemed, accounted, held and taken to be a mulatto.

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/vcdh/jamestown/slavelink.html

[Linda]

Great find! How did you stumble on that? I just looked at that link and read a few of them and gave up trying to find this one, the language was so garbled and trifling.

A lot of people are skeptical when you say that Indians in the south were considered mullatoes. I assumed it was so by the accounts of how people were treated, but now we can quote the statute. Good job.

I think I’ll go post this on one of those yankee Indian sites, hahaha, they never want to believe this. You know, you say, Indian people here were treated as mullatoes and they just kind of look at you like, “yeah, right, they were taken for mullatoes because they WERE mullatoes.”

[Author]

Posts