Report on Indians Taxed and
Indians Not Taxed in the United States (except. Alaska) at the Eleventh
Census: 1890.
Washington, DC: US Census Printing Office
Page 594 TENNESSEE the civilized
[self-supporting] Indians of Tennessee, counted in the general census,
number 146 [71 males and 75 female] and are distributed as follows. Hawkins county, 31; Monroe
county, 12' Polk county 10; other counties [8 or less n each]. 93
In a number of states small
groups of people, preferring the freedom of the woods or the seashore
to the confinement of regular labor in civilization, have become in
some degree distinct from their neighbors, perpetuating their qualities
and absorbing into their number those of like disposition, without
preserving very clear racial lines. Such are the remnants called
Indians in some states where a pure-blooded Indian can hardly longer be
found. In Tennessee such a group, popularly known as Melungeans, in
addition to those still known as Cherokee.
The names seems to have been
given them by early French settlers, who recognized their mixed origin
and applied to them the name Melangeans or Melungeans, a corruption of
the French word "melange" which means mixed. [See letter of Hamilton
McMillan, under North Carolina.]
The Melungeans or Malungeans,
in Hawkins county, claim to be Cherokees of mixed blood {white, Indian,
and negro], their white blood being derived, as they assert, from
English and Portuguese stock. They trace their descent primarily to 2
Indians [Cherokees] known, one of them as COLLINS, the other as GIBSON,
who settled in the mountains of Tennessee, where their descendants are
now to be found, about the time of the admission of that state into the
Union [1796]. One of the sources of their white blood is said to have
been an Indian trader names Mullins [Jim Mullins], the other was a
Portuguese named Denham, who is supposed to have been put ashore o the
coast of North Carolina from a pirate vessel for being troublesome to
his captain, or insubordinate. Their negro blood they trace to a negro
named Goins, perhaps a runaway slave, who joined Collins and Gibson
soon after they accomplished their purpose of settlement. The descent
of the Melungeans from such ancestors is readily observable, even those of
supposed Portuguese mixture being distinguishable from those of negro
mixture, thought it is not impossible that Denham was himself of mixed
blood, as the Portuguese pirates sometimes recruited their crews from
the ‘maroons’, or negroes, who had taken to the mountains of the West
India island as slave n rebellion against their masters. Some of these
were mixed Carib, or white blood [English, Spanish or Portuguese], the
former being the natives [Indians] of these islands.
__In the general census these
Melungeans were enumerated as of the races which they most resembled.__