by Sara Mcgrath

Created on: April 20, 2008

Emerging evidence supports that Northern Europeans were not the first settlers of North America. With this evidence, a little-known ethnic group called Melungeons are challenging and rewriting American history.

On early expeditions from England, explorers recorded finding "Indians of yellowish color, their hair black for the most part, yet [they] saw children with fine auburn and chestnut-colored hair." The explorers assumed that these light-haired people were the descendants of earlier shipwrecked sailors.

Though opinions vary, general Melungeon history holds that they are descended from a mix of shipwrecked Portuguese sailors and their Mediterranean servants, and later perhaps from the lost colonists of Roanoke Island who arrived from England in 1557.

When supply ships came to Roanoke Island from England in 1560, all that remained of the 150 colonists were their broken-down houses and the word "Croatoan" carved in a tree. The English assumed that these colonists had traveled fifty miles south and sought refuge with the Indian tribe at the village called Croatan. This tribe later moved west to North Carolina. Among the members were blue-eyed, fair-haired people who spoke some Elizabethan English and who used surnames corresponding to those of the lost colonists.

These descendants of shipwrecked sailors and servants and lost colonists mixed with local natives and later with whites and blacks, creating a distinct mixed group now known as Melungeons. Blood typing has confirmed close similarities between present-day Melungeons and Mediterranean peoples including Spanish, Portuguese, Turks, Berbers, Moors, and Sephardic Jews. This mix varies from family to family and some Melungeons identify more strongly with one or more ethnic group.

As early as the mid-1600s, Melungeons were found living in communities in Appalachia in the southern United States (Northeastern Tennessee, Southwestern Virginia, Northwestern North Carolina, and Southeastern Kentucky). These communities produced a people of color who weren't easy for outsiders to classify. In areas where records were kept, Melungeons were often labeled as free persons of color or mulatto, thereby denying them the right to vote, attend school, or own property.

Melungeons tended to intermarry within their communities. Because they were often mistreated by the ever-increasing non-Melungeon population around them, they tended to move west farther into the mountains. These dark-skinned, isolated people became nearly invisible

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