State

eel History By Billy Arthur The Melungeons Could it be that these dark-skinned, black-haired immigrants of Portuguese and Spanish descent were North Carolina’s first settlers? It’s conceivable that someday schol¬ ars may possibly re-examine judi¬ ciously. if not rewrite the history of North Carolina and the Southeast, because it now appears possible that a mixed ethnic group of Berbers, Basques and Jews — not the English — were our first permanent settlers. Arriving about 20 years before the Roanoke Island colonists and about 10 before Jamestown was founded, these mobile people were called Melungeons. Melungeons? You never heard of them? No wonder. They arc not mentioned in any North Carolina history books, though they arc listed in genealogical ency clope¬ dias as "tri-racial isolates" and do turn up in oral myths and legends. The word Melungeon stems from the French “melange" meaning “mixed" and the Por¬ tuguese “melungo" meaning "shipmate." They were sent to the New Worltl in the mid-l500s as official Spanish and Por¬ tuguese settlers, much as the English later UScd the Scotch and Irish. The)1 had dark skin, black hair, thin lips, high cheek¬ bones and narrow fine sculptured faces. They spoke broken Elizabethan English, picked up in European commerce. Yet. as did other ethnic groups, they had "no body of literature of their own. no native historian to record their activi¬ ties. no native music, art or dancing." So Jean Patterson Bible wrote in 1975 in MHungrons . Yesterday and Today. And their oral history, until more recently, was kept secretive within fami¬ lies. because gradually and generally Melungeons became a bad word. Because of ridicule, they just didn't talk about their political and social status and how it came about. They were more concerned with subsisting. Therefore, they became a mys¬ terious people. Now, within die past decade, more than ever before they have been greatly researched and written about. Even a doc- Brent Kennedy’s gnat-grandparents in 1900. umentarv film is in the works. Such prob¬ ing challenges old theories that they were remnants of the Lost bribes of Israel, the Lost Colony. Hernando DcSoto’s and Juan Pardo's expeditions, and survivors of the ancient ship Atlantis that wrecked off the North Carolina coast. I argelv set in this stale, this fascinating update to an old story actually began when N. Brent Kennedy, now a promi¬ nent Atlanta executive who grew up in southwest Virginia, started wondering why his black hair, blue eyes and deep red¬ dish-brown complexion was unlike other Scoich-lrish people around him. He had been told that he. too. was Scotch-lrish. Then, in 1987 he was stricken with an au¬ toimmune disease called sarcoidosis, 80 percent of whose victims are of .Arabic or African descent. So. without scholarly help and with his own financing, he set out to trace his lineage. Today it extends backward in time to 710 A.D. when Moroccan Muslims invad¬ ed parts of Spain and Portugal and ruled them until the Spanish Inquisition of the 1 6th century. Then. Arabic converts were permitted to leave to colonize the New World. One cargo of these settlers, Kennedy has learned, was “undoubtedly" put ashore at w hat is now Parris Island. South Carolina, in 1566. More recent research shows that Sir Francis Drake, after sack¬ ing St. Augustine in 1586. left some cap¬ tive Portuguese, Arabs and Moors on Roanoke Island to make room for 108 men of Ralph Lane's colony to return to England, because their supply ships had not arrived. These could have later linked up with the South Carolina group, who had been into the interior. In their movements they passed through what now are Columbus, Bladen. Scotland, Robeson. I foke. Cum¬ berland. Person, Rockingham. Stokes. Surry. Wilkes. Watauga. McDowell. Ashe and Yancey counties. Along the way they made contact with the Lumbee and other Indian tribes, built three forts (one near Marion) and coexisted on Cherokee lands for some 200 years. Intermarriages took place, as indicated today by some Lumbces having Melungeon names. These migrants were first found by French explorers in 1690 in the Western North Carolina mountains. Though they identified themselves as “Portyghee." the French called them Moors. It was when the English later met up with them that their troubles began. Because the English were uncertain of their ancestry, the Melungeons were reviled, bullied and even classified in the early censuses its "free persons of color" or "mulattoes." As such, they were re¬ quired to pay taxes but denied rights of voting, attending school and even own¬ ing the property they were and had been occupying. This prevailed well into the 19th century. .And though they fought the British in the Revolutionary War, veterans with land grants awarded for war service contend¬ ed that persons of mixed color were excluded and forced them off their lands and farther back into the Appalachi¬ an/Blue Ridge Mountains of northeast Tennessee, northwest North Carolina, southwest Virginia and southeast Ken¬ tucky. This area eventually became their last place of survival. ol Brtni К toned) The Stalc/JuiK 1494