THE LOST COLONY OF ROANOKE: ITS FATE AND SURVIVAL.
(Reprinted from Papers Am.
Hist. Asso., Vol. iv., No. 4., 1891.)
By Professor Stephen B.
Weeks, Ph.D., Trinity College, North Carolina.
Page 28-29
At one time the Croatans were
known as 'Redbones,' and there is a street in Fayetteville so called
because some of them once lived on it. They are known by this name in
Sumpter County, S. C., where they are quiet and peaceable, and have a
church of their own. They are proud and high-spirited, and caste is
very strong among them.
There is in Hancock county,
Tennessee, a tribe of people known by the local name of Malungeons or
Melungeons. Some say they are a branch of the Croatan tribe, others
that they are of Portuguese stock. They differ radically, however, in
manners and customs from the accounts which we have received of the
Croatans. Four articles in The Arena for the current year, by Miss Will
Allen Domgoole on "The Malungeons, a Forgotten People," "The Malungeon
Family Tree," "The Disfranchisement of the Malungeons," and "Malungeon
Music."
''Mr. McMillan favors the
view that they are a part of the colony of Roanoke, and on this
question Mr. John M. Bishop, a native of east Tennessee, now living in
Washington, writes to the author: "My theory is that they are a part of
the lost colony of Roanoke. Your utterances at the recent meeting in
this city on the subject of the Lost Colony of Roanoke [meeting of
Amer. Hist. Ass'n., Dec. 31, 1890] were so nearly in line with my ideas
in this matter that I now write to call your attention to the subject.
. . . You will mark the fact that the Malungeons are located on Newmans
Ridge and Black Water creek in Hancock county, Tenn., directly in the
path of ancient westward emigration. Dan Boone tramped all over this
immediate section. . . . The Malungeons, drifting with the tide of
early emigration, stranded on the borderland of the wilderness and
remained there."