Melungeons: The 'Lost Tribe' of Appalachia
Deena Higgs
by Kristen Philipkoski -- The Melungeons make up about 50,000 of the
22 million people who live in the mountainous region just inside the
eastern seaboard, most of them in the southern edge of Appalachia in
the area where Tennessee, Virginia and Kentucky meet.
There seem to be as many stories of how these people came to be as
there are Melungeons to tell them: They're from the abandoned colony
of Roanoke, they're Portuguese shipwreck descendants, or maybe they're
one of the Lost Tribes of Israel. Many of these tales are greeted with
skepticism and even hostility from historians.
They were first documented at the end of the 18th century. But the
first Melungeons knew they were Melungeons simply because their
not-so-friendly neighbors said they were.
"Being in the same geographical region and being non-white, they had
to come up with something to call us because that's what white folks
did then, so they could segregate you and treat you differently," said
Wayne Winkler, president of the Melungeon Heritage Association.
The origin of the name, which was considered derogatory until
recently, is disputed as much as the heritage. It might be a version
of the French word for mix: mélange, or from an African word malungo,
meaning shipmate, or the Turkish melun jinn, meaning "cursed soul."
Now Melungeons are looking to new genetic research from Kevin Jones, a
molecular biologist at the University of Virginia's College at Wise,
for answers. Unfortunately, he thinks they'll be disappointed.
The results will give some hints and suggestions about the origins of
the population as a whole, he said, but won't tell anyone definitively
whether they are or aren't Melungeon, or exactly how they came to live
in Appalachia.
"I think it's a study that raised a lot of expectation and will
actually provide relatively few answers," said Jones, who has been
gathering and studying DNA samples from Melungeons for about two
years.
Jones will announce his results at a gathering of the Melungeon
Heritage Association on Thursday.
Throughout history Melungeons have either been discriminated against
because of their ethnicity, or denied an ethnic history altogether by
historians skeptical of their theories.
"The truth of the matter is, we probably would never have taken an
interest in DNA or genes except for the fact that scholars and
academia have historically dismissed the early Melungeon claims of
having at least some of their background in Mediterranean heritage,"
said Brent Kennedy, president of the Wellmont Foundation and author of
"The Melungeons: The Resurrection of a Proud People: An Untold Story
of Ethnic Cleansing in America."
His book suggests that Portuguese sailors brought Turkish slaves to
America -- they joined with female Cherokee Indians and other tribes
in the area to engender the first Melungeons in the 1500s.
He also asserts that Abraham Lincoln, Elvis Presley and Ava Gardner
may have had Melungeon ancestry.
One skeptic is David Henige, an oral tradition and historical
methodology expert at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He calls
Kennedy's book, which asserts that Melungeons may be of Turkish
descent, "bad history."
"My objection to Brent Kennedy's book was that it was so a historical
in its use of evidence," Henige said. "DNA testing might show that
they are descended from Turks like he said, and that's fine -- if
that's what it shows, that's what it shows. But I have no reason to
expect it would."
He said there is simply no evidence to corroborate the theory,
although he concedes that events in history have certainly taken place
that bear no evidence.
Jones' study might provide at least some proof of Middle Eastern
roots.
"There are some (DNA sequences) that clearly do reflect non-European
origin, that are of Middle Eastern or Northern Indian origin," Jones
said. He wouldn't say anything more specific about the results,
however.
Jones gathered the DNA of about 120 Melungeon women and sequenced
their mitochondrial DNA, a type of DNA that women pass down through
generations.
A lab in England is also helping analyze about 30 Y-chromosome DNA
samples from men, but Jones isn't sure if those will be ready in time
for the meeting.
While the study might provide a certain amount of information about a
population, it can't tell much about individuals, Jones said.
"It may be that 70 percent of a population shows a particular
sequence. So if a sequence matches that, statistically you have a
chance of that reflecting your background," Jones said. "But it's not
geared towards the individual like people want it to be."
He also said that some sequences associated with ethnicities stand out
in a person's genome more prominently than others.
"There are some unusual and fairly unique ones out there, but others
you find anywhere worldwide," he said.
European sequences are next to impossible to categorize according to
country because Europeans have migrated quickly through the centuries.
This historical intermingling of ethnicities has made modern European
DNA an unidentifiable mishmash.
"I think overall what the study will show is that the population is
very mixed," Jones said.
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Deena Higgs
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,53256,00.html
by Kristen Philipkoski -- Nancy Sparks Morrison was diagnosed in 1998
with Familial Mediterranean Fever, a rare disorder known to occur
mainly in people of Mediterranean descent.
The strange part is that Morrison grew up as a white girl in the
southern part of Appalachia, where her family has resided for over 200
years.
Her need for an accurate diagnosis of ailments she suffered most of
her life, combined with a passion for genealogy, made her realize that
her family history was more mysterious than she suspected.
"Who would have ever thought that a little girl from Appalachia would
have this exotic illness?" Morrison said.
Certainly not any of the dozens of doctors who diagnosed her with
17-odd diseases and prescribed 21 medications before she found a way
to treat her aching joints, stabbing side pains and severe fatigue,
among other symptoms.
Even after Morrison matched her symptoms to those of FMF, doctors
laughed when she suggested she might have the disease. Although one
doctor in particular didn't believe she had the illness, he was
finally convinced to prescribe a trial of colchicine, a fairly benign
but effective drug. She felt an improvement in just hours, she said.
Morrison's great-great-grandfather was the key to solving the mystery.
She could trace much of her family back to the 17th century, but
couldn't find any of his ancestors.
After getting on the Internet in 1997 and posting questions on
genealogy message boards, Morrison received an e-mail from a woman in
California who asked if she had ever considered her
great-great-great-grandfather might be Melungeon.
"My question was, who or what the heck are Melungeons?" she said.
Melungeons, she discovered through more Internet research, may be a
group first noticed in the Appalachian Mountains in 1654 by English
explorers, who described them as "dark-skinned with fine European
features."
Many historians dismiss this theory and believe they are a "tri-racial
isolate" who were once Irish- and English-indentured servants, local
Native American tribes such as the Cherokee, and escaped slaves.
Exiled into a common community by whites, these three ethnicities
became one, they believe.
But many Melungeons, like Morrison, believe firmly that there must be
some Mediterranean heritage in there, otherwise how could she -- and
many other Melungeons -- have FMF?
No one has researched whether Melungeons have unusually high instances
of FMF and other diseases. But one local physician, Dr. Chris Morris,
who diagnosed and treated Brent Kennedy, author of The Melungeons: The
Resurrection of a Proud People: An Untold Story of Ethnic Cleansing in
America, said he's never seen a case in someone who was not Melungeon.
According to medical literature, some small groups in southeastern
Philadelphia, Spain and Japan are the only other incidences outside
the Middle East where FMF has been detected.
The true origin of the Melungeons is hotly debated, especially on
Internet message boards.
When Kevin Jones, a molecular biologist at the University of Virginia
College at Wise, sought to research FMF and other rare diseases found
in people of the southern Appalachian region, he didn't realize he was
diving into the middle of many closely-held personal agendas.
"They are the most argumentative people I've ever come across," Jones
said.
Jones is about to announce DNA research results on FMF and the other
rare diseases found in people of the southern Appalachian region. He
hopes his research will increase awareness and encourage doctor
education of these diseases, so no one will ever again have to wait 30
years for a diagnosis.
Diseases of the Melungeons include Behcet's Syndrome, Machado-Joseph
Disease, Familial Mediterranean Fever, Sarcoidosis and thalassemia.
All of the diseases are associated with ethnicities not commonly found
in Appalachia: Mediterranean, Jewish, Arab, Turkish and African.
Therein lies the mystery of the Melungeons. They are not
African-American but also not fair-skinned like most Scottish-Irish
Appalachians. They have been called or have declared themselves to be
Native American, Middle Eastern, African American, Portuguese and
Turkish, among other ethnicities.
Because Jones' research could eventually settle the dispute
surrounding Melungeon ancestry, he has been heralded as well as
threatened by the subjects of his study.
Some cling to the possibility of Mediterranean ethnicity to dismiss
ideas they might be African American, because they lost rights and
faced discrimination throughout history based on that assumption.
Others have their own pet theories.
"Everybody wants blood, scandal and glory. I have some not-bad science
but it's not quite what some people want to hear, be it for better or
worse," Jones said.
Like Morrison, Kennedy struggled for years to get an accurate
diagnosis of his disease, which also turned out to be FMF.
"Since I was a child I've suffered fevers, joint pains, abdominal
discomfort, rashes on the legs and shoulders that couldn't be
explained," Kennedy said. "I never got any definitive diagnosis and
just accepted it as a part of my life."
As he got older, his symptoms worsened and became nearly unbearable
near his 50th birthday.
"My joints were now 'freezing' and the pain in my neck, shoulder,
feet, hip and elbows was excruciating," Kennedy said.
He was finally referred to Morris, who diagnosed him with FMF and put
him on colchicine.
"Within three hours I felt better than I'd ever felt in my life,"
Kennedy said. "It was remarkable."
Just a few months later he played three sets of tennis -- the first
time he's played more than one set in 20 years.
"That's when I realized I had really struck on something," Morris
said.
Morris has become a champion of victims of the disease, after closely
following Kennedy's case for the past five years. He is not Melungeon,
but is on board with the theory of their origin outlined in Kennedy's
book.
Kennedy suggests that Portuguese sailors brought Turkish slaves to
America -- they joined with female Cherokee Indians and other tribes
in the area to produce the first Melungeons in the 1500s.
His diagnosis of FMF seemed to lend even more credence to the
circumstantial evidence presented in Kennedy's book. But there is one
glitch. A DNA test found that Kennedy does not carry one of three gene
markers found in 70 percent of FMF patients.
Nancy Sparks Morrison doesn't carry the gene, either. But while it
would have been a tidy bit of proof had they carried the gene, the
fact that they don't carry it doesn't mean Melungeons are not of
Middle Eastern extraction.
First, 30 percent of patients don't carry one of the three FMF genes.
Second, if Melungeons did originate when Kennedy theorizes, gene
mutations surely would have been introduced over a period of 500
years, Morris said.
A researcher at the National Institute of Arthritis and
Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases, Dan Kastner, has seen Kennedy and
corroborated this possibility, Morris said. Kastner, who discovered
one of the FMF genes, declined to comment.
Morris toys with the notion that Melungeons have developed their very
own disease. He's even given it a name: Periodic Melungeon Fever.
Deena Higgs
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,53325,00.html
by Kristen Philipkoski -- Ask 10 Melungeons about their ethnic
identity and you'll likely get 10 different answers.
Even though historians have concluded that Melungeons, a
sub-population of southern Appalachia, are a "tri-racial isolate" made
up of whites, local tribes like the Cherokee, and escaped slaves,
nobody knows for sure.
"Anybody who tries to claim there's one ethnic background for the
Melungeons is like the story of the blind men and the elephant," said
Libby Killebrew, a Melungeon historian and genealogist with a
background in sociology. "It's not that everyone's wrong, it's that
everyone's right and they need to get together."
Over the centuries, so much ethnic mixing has occurred that all of the
theories are at least somewhat true.
A researcher at the University of Virginia's College at Wise could
offer tantalizing evidence at a gathering of the Melungeon Heritage
Association on Thursday.
Kevin Jones, a molecular biologist, has analyzed the DNA of about 120
Melungeon women and 30 men, and has hinted that his results will
reveal a very mixed background.
One thing that's certain is Melungeons were a disenfranchised group in
southern Appalachia, most of whom had darker skin and were
marginalized by the wealthier whites around them. They settled in
isolated communities such as Newman's Ridge in Hancock County,
Tennessee, or Stone Mountain in Wise County, Virginia.
They hid their backgrounds by saying they were Indian, orphans, or
adopted. They changed either the spelling of their surnames or took on
new ones. They called themselves black Dutch or black Irish --
anything but Melungeon.
In fact, Melungeon was considered a derogatory label until just a few
decades ago.
In the mid-1960s, Hancock County was one of the poorest counties in
the country, and its leaders were looking for a way to attract people
and money.
"The only thing that Hancock County had going for it was this story of
the Melungeons," said Wayne Winkler, president of the Melungeon
Heritage Association.
Kermit Hunter had seen success with a previous outdoor production in
Cherokee, North Carolina, called Unto these Hills, so officials formed
the Hancock County Drama Association and commissioned Hunter to write
a play about Melungeons.
The show, called Walk Towards the Sunset, was staged in Sneedville,
Tennessee, in 1969. Even though the town had no hotels, few
restaurants and was well off the beaten path, the drama ran for six
years (they had to skip 1973 because of the gas crisis).
Winkler believes it was only after Walk Towards the Sunset that
families begin to take pride in calling themselves Melungeon.
"It would be like saying: 'Our family is a low-class and trashy,
disreputable people,'" Winkler said. "It's not the kind of thing you
passed onto your children."
Even today, there are Melungeons who don't want to admit or discuss
their heritage. But those who do talk do so openly and often loudly.
In 1943, Walter Plecker, the director of Virginia's Department of
Vital Statistics, declared Melungeons "free persons of color," causing
people to deny they were Melungeon altogether.
But stories that deflected the possibility of African ancestry
temporarily helped them preserve their right to vote, send their
children to school, or marry whom they wanted. Later, it helped some
Melungeons escape discrimination.
One such yarn is that Portuguese sailors brought Turkish slaves to
America who joined with local American Indians. Some believe they are
Portuguese who fled Spain to escape the Spanish Inquisition.
Some scholars say that while these stories serve a convenient purpose,
history bears no proof for them.
"They're saying our ancestors were lying and that is what drove me on
to say, 'Look, maybe they weren't lying, maybe it's who they thought
they were,'" said Brent Kennedy, author of The Melungeons: The
Resurrection of a Proud People: An Untold Story of Ethnic Cleansing in
America.
Even now, some Melungeons feel an aversion to the possibility of
having African heritage.
"The controversy (when the DNA results are announced) will be that not
everyone, even today in our more enlightened times, is willing to
accept the possibility of African ancestry," Winkler said.
One is the Angolan theory, which suggests that all Melungeons are
descendants of the original Angolan servants, who were brought to
Virginia in 1619 and are widely regarded as the first African slaves.
They were not technically slaves. Early Africans in America were
actually indentured servants and were able to buy their own freedom,
become landowners, and sometimes married white women, Killebrew said.
"I like that theory because it gets rid of a lot of myths, and the
idea that 'I'm more American that you, or more white than you,'" she
said.
The list of hypotheses goes on and on, and it's unlikely one will come
out the winner, at least not as a result of the DNA study.
Perhaps it doesn't matter which is the true tale, because the basis of
racism against Melungeons was not necessarily the color of their skin,
but their socio-economic position, Killebrew said.
"In my experience you got called Melungeon only if you were poor
enough and low-class enough that people didn't respect you," she said.
"There are plenty of people who haven't been discriminated against who
have the same ethnic background as me. Race is a matter of perception
-- there's no genetic basis to race."
Deena Higgs
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,53383,00.html
by Kristen Philipkoski -- A small population from Appalachia may be
linked to an ancient tribe in India, according to a long-awaited DNA
study.
Kevin Jones, a biologist at the University of Virginia College at
Wise, announced the findings Thursday at the Fourth Union of the
Melungeons in Kingsport, Tennessee, after two years of work.
Gathered under a tent at a public park, about 150 Melungeons had come
from around the country (a show of hands indicated that about 70
percent came from states other than Tennessee) to hear results they
hoped would tell them something about their heritage.
Those who were looking for black-and-white answers didn't get them.
Jones' rather vague results showed that about 5 percent of the DNA
indicated African descent, 5 percent was Native American, and the rest
was "Euroasian," a group defined by clumping together Europe, the
Middle East and India.
The most surprising finding was evidence of a rare DNA sequence common
to a Northern Indian tribe called the Siddis. The Siddis are
descendants of African slaves, sailors and merchants who ended up in
India as a result of trade with East Africa, starting in the 12th
century and lasting into the 19th. Some of the people were stolen from
their homelands and taken as slaves.
They became part of the Indian population known as the "untouchables,"
and are still marginalized in northwest India.
Brent Kennedy, author of The Melungeons: The Resurrection of a Proud
People: An Untold Story of Ethnic Cleansing in America, had previously
discovered his genes contained this sequence through a private DNA
analysis company.
"I'm amazed and pleased to see that duplicated here," he said.
The study has not been through the peer-review process but Jones hopes
to publish by the end of the year.
The Melungeons have suffered discrimination throughout history because
their neighbors perceived them to be darker-skinned, and somehow less
entitled to good land and to money.
Jones never intended to jump into the middle of a debate on racial and
ethnic identity, but, alas, the Melungeons gave him no choice.
"I am not a Melungeon," Jones said, in a posh British accent rarely
heard in Tennessee.
"Some of the antipathy I've run into is because they remember how bad
it was to be labeled a Melungeon," Jones said. "They don't want some
twit like me coming along and saying: 'You look sort of Melungeon to
me.'"
The Melungeons involved in the study have been impatient for their
results, and still have not gotten the individual DNA analyses they're
eager for. They should see them within a few weeks, Jones said.
Several audience members wanted more specific breakdowns of
ethnicities, but Jones said the study was not large enough (120 women
and 30 men) to narrow it any further.
"Studying DNA hits a personal chord," Jones said. "I think in the case
of the Melungeons, the complexity of the phenomenon drives that on
because whether you regard yourself as a Melungeon or not might depend
on whether you managed to escape the things that were associated with
that."
Jones began the study to gain insight into diseases that seem to occur
more frequently in the Melungeons than in other populations, such as
Familial Mediterranean Fever, sarcoidosis and thalessemia.
"I didn't really care where you came from. Sorry," Jones joked.
Most of the Melungeons in the audience on Thursday did not look like
people who would need to escape discrimination. Some had an olive skin
tone, but the majority had fair complexions and looked quite
Caucasian.
"That's part of the beauty of the story," Kennedy said. "All of these
people are suddenly coming forward."
After a history of doing what they could to "pass" for white,
Melungeons are now doing just the opposite and staking claim to the
identity. The lighter complexions are at least in part due to
Melungeons mixing with fairer-skinned people.
"The neighbors with more money tried to keep their sons and daughters
away from us, but we were just so cute they couldn't do it," said
Wayne Winkler, president of the Melungeon Heritage Association.
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