Malunjins Tribe in
Alabama
THE EMASSEEES AND
MALUNJINS
One
tribe of Indians and a community of mixed breed Indians were unmolested
by
the whites. These were
the Uchees or Emassees, kinsman of the Seminoles or
Creeks, who lived at
the mouth of the Emassee or O'Mussee or Mercer creek near
Columbia, and the
Malunjins, a mixed breed community residing some three to six
miles northeast of
Dothan toward Webb even as late as 1865. Where the Malunjins
came from nobody
knows; where they were dispersed to is the limbo of forgotten
men. B. P. Poyner,
Sr., father of Houston County Probate Judge, S.P.Poyner, was
born in the Malunjins'
community. Some of these mixed breed Indians brought milk
to Mr. Poyner's mother
while he was an infant. The Emassees were allied by
affinity with the
Creeks and Seminoles yet during all of Alabama's territorial
and state days were
friendly to the whites. Only a squatter white family settled
here and there and
lived in old Henry County prior to 1817. Save for these
squatters there were
no white settlers in Henry County at
the time of the Creek War of 1812-13.
The
Alabama Lawyer: Official Organ State Bar of Alabama
By Alabama State Bar
Published by The Bar,
1942
It
appears they must have been around the town of Smyma between Webb and
Dothan. The
father of S. P. Poyner, Benjamin P., was born in 1858 - son of
James Poyner, who is
found in the 1860 Henry County census of Abbeville
District, so
apparently this is where Malunjins were.