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The Melungeon Indians

The legend of their history, which they carefully preserve, is this.  A great many years ago, these mountains were settled by a society of Portuguese Adventurers, men and women,  who came from the long-shore parts of Virginia, that they might be freed from the restraints and drawbacks imposed on them by any form of government.  These people made themselves friendly with the Indians and freed as they were from every kind of social government, they uprooted all conventional forms of society and lived in a delightful Utopia of their own creation."   The Melungens Newman's Ridge  1848   Melungeon DNA Projects DNA - Why it Won't Work A Scientific Researcher's View "That leaves mitochondrial and Y-chromosome tests. Regrettably, neither will work to solve the Melungeon mystery.  They simply can not determine Melungeon ethnicity even in properly selected subjects."  Read Here   DNA Research into the Benjamin Collins, Burgess Collins, etc., Read Here If you are going to use the research from this site please add a link back here. http://www.historical-melungeons.com/index.html This website is Copyright © 2003-2011     Whole Indian Nations have melted away like snowballs in the sun before the white man's advance. They leave scarcely a name of our people except those wrongly recorded by their destroyers.  ~Dragging Canoe   1776   Research Projects These are the projects I am working on currenty, would appreciate any help. Melungeons, Redbones & the Croatan Valentine Gibson & His Siblings Genealogies of the Pee Dee Families     This Website is not associated with Jack Goins or the Melungeon Historical Society and does not subscribe to their 'old school' ideas which is based on outdated research, most of which has been proven to be false   site search by freefind Web Site Hit Counters   Join the    Melungeon Yahoo Group REVIEW OF JOGG ARITCLE  REVIEW by Joanne Pezzullo   Walter Plecker Plecker’s work appears to be gaining strength by adopting the idea that the ‘one drop’ of African blood invalidates any claim to Native American ancestry. In other words if there is any trace of African ancestry they are no longer “Indians” but become Free African Americans. When the Native tribes mixed with the English they certainly did not become English and no one called them whites nor when they mixed with the French, Germans, etc. They were still ‘called’ Indians. Read Here  Letters from Bonnie S. Ball As to the Melungeons, I had known them since childhood, since my father had them living as tenants on our farm when I was 8 or 9 years old. He had grown up in the Blackwater, Va., area and known them all his life. So this has been a fascinating subject for me and I still feel convinced that they are a mixture of Moorish, Portuguese, Croatan Indians, and a small portion of Anglo-Saxon blood that was left from the final massacre of the Roanoke Island colony in North Carolina. If not, how can we explain why they use old Elizabethan English expressions and all the older ones said they were "Porty-gee." Read Here   Archived Featured Articles