[NOTE: My mother has internal bruising. More tests will be done this week. I'll keep you informed. I am considering starting another blog and publishing there, chapter by chapter, an unpublished (and unshopped) mystery I wrote as a one-off years ago. Stay tuned. I will try to publish two or three more in this series before a period of silence descends as my family takes Duncan on a cruise as a goodbye present before he ships to the Marine Corps. From February 19-28 I will not have access to phones or computers]

His name was N. Brent Kennedy, a kind and intelligent man who recently passed away after a long illness. In 1994 he broke the silence that had hung for hundreds of years around the Melungeons when he came down with a strange illness — just like me — and his doctor informed him that what he had thought was his family history was mythology instead. He was over half-Melungeon. He wrote the well received "The Melungeons: The Resurrection of a Proud People" and subtitled it "An Untold Story of Ethnic Cleansing in America." Mercer University Press out of Macon, Georgia took up the challenge of vetting and printing the book and has since launched a series of books on this and related subjects. Here is one of his opening paragraphs:

"A People of apparent Mediterranean descent who may have settled the Appalachian wildnerness as early as 1567 — forty years before Jamestown. A people who almost certainly intermarried with the Powhatans, Pamunkeys, Creeks, Catawbas, Yuchia, and Cherokee to form what some have called, perhaps a bit fancifully, a "new race." … and at least by the 1700’s [they] were practicing Christians. A people who were, a century and a half later, crushed and scattered  beneath the violent onslaught of unbridled Anglo jingoism."

There is a great scene in the classic movie "Matewan" where Melungeons appear as they often did in those days. In a very tense moment as the goons from the Pinkertons — with the blessing of the US government — were entering the tent camp of the dispossessed miners and their families; at the every moment when they were about to bring out the guns and commence a horrible slaughter, armed men walked out of the deep woods. They weren’t dressed like the miners or the goons. They were mountain men carrying flintlocks when others held Tommy guns and Smith and Wesson revolvers. But as they entered the camp and slowly walked through, saying nothing, the men who had been brave shrank back, knowing they were looking at something strange, ancient, and far better at war than they. The scene passes quickly and is never explained… but those of us who have studied these people and walked among them recognized them.

As late as two decades ago people in the mountains didn’t warn their kids against the boogeyman, but the Melungeons. Even after the Second World War people around Johnson City, TN kept their kids — and their men — away from town on some market days; the days when the Melungeons would enter to trade, buy, drink and fight. Their women were considered far too wild and beautiful for decent Christian men so white women would sequester their husbands for the duration.

The enmity between the groups was real. When the Scots-Irish and English came across the mountains to claim land sold to them, or promised to them, by men who had never been in the new territories, they were infuriated to find others already in possession of it. Unlike the Native Americans who would often turn nomad and move along, these people were tied to the land. They were territorial. Unable to withstand the onslaught of government backed, well armed colonists, some of the Melungeons retreated and, to this day, they inhabit the harshest ridges, the deepest, shadow-filled valleys, the poorest land. Others changed their names to make them sound Irish or Scottish. They claimed they were Portuguese or Welsh and said that accounted for their darker skin, dark eyes, and different ways. To this day many families with British names have not one drop of British blood in their veins. It was a survival move, similar to the adoption of our last name — Mead — by my forefather in 1640 when he ran from Virginia and took his new bride into the unexplored mountains, finding refuge among a people he already knew, a people already well established. Others said they were "black Irish" a term completely unknown in Ireland!

Through the years, the Melungeons were looked down on and tales were told of their evil, their lack of Christian morals, and their ignorance. They were called Free People of Color, one step up from slaves, but not white and, therefore, devoid of most human rights. Sometimes it got worse. Some, such as the lead registrar in Virginia, Dr. William Plecker, went through the records and crossed out "FPC" and wrote "black" or "indian" so that the Melungeon children couldn’t go to school or learn how to read. Or vote. Or know what was coming for them. He got away with that for decades, consigning tens of thousands to the trash heap.

In turn, the Melungeons began to deny who they were. Not only did they change their names, they changed their family histories and refused to discuss them with their children. Being Melungeon was a mark of shame. Even the name "Melungeon" is a curse. Many books mistakenly say it comes from the French word "melange" or "mixture." In fact, it comes from the Spanish and Arabic melun jinn meaning "an accursed person." One prominent theory of their beginnings is that they were part of the Iberians thrown out in the periodic ethnic cleansings that peninsula launched. Jews were kicked out, Moslems were kicked out,  Africans were kicked out. Each of these had to go somewhere and it is known that many took to the sea in ships knowing that no port was open to them. So… they struck out west in search of other lands… and disappeared from history until a people who called themselves "the accursed ones" was found in the 1600’s.

Many of the words used by Melungeons are only used in one other place — the rim of the Mediterranean around Turkey and Morocco. They put small houses over their graves just as the Iberians do to this day. The windows in their homes are usually pointed at top rather than square, as they are in North Africa and the Mediterranean rim. Avoiding census takers that would put them into "mulatto" or "black" categories, they kept to themselves and, in large part, still do. Few local centers of Melungeons are open and none are easy to get to. The easiest would be Sneedville in northeast Tennessee. The approach is via a long series of severe switchbacks where you gain height at a dizzying rate until you look down far below you into a misty valley where a couple thousand people live. Making your way down the other side of the guardian mountains is just as head-spinning as the ascent. It is here that the first Melungeon known to the public by name lived and sold her moonshine for decades. Mahala Mullins was a huge woman — so huge she couldn’t leave her poor shack of a home. The sheriff tried to arrest her several times but had to admit "she is ketchable, but not fetchable." When she died the community removed the whole side of the house to get her out for burial.

Some of the Melungeons are known today as "Guineas." They live in West Virginia — mainly Barbour and Taylor counties — and claim they are descendants of the lost soldiers of Spain from de Soto’s expedition. Others claim they are Indian. A probable Melungeon group, the Lumbees of eastern North Carolina, also claim to be Indians; a claim the US government has so far refused to accept. The government tends to call all of these groups "tri-racial i
solates" meaning groups that are isolated from the mainstream population and who have intermarried with Native American and black people until they have formed a new series of bloodlines unique to them. There is no question that the Melungeons — though often shy and suspicious — are the first to offer help and aid to the lost. And if that lost person is fleeing the government, they find a quick welcome, a new home with the Melungeons. Many, many runaway slaves were brought into the community and treated as equals as were Cherokees who didn’t make the long walk to Oklahoma but who ran into the woods instead.

I approached my father again. "Melungeons often ended up with an extra thumb or toe because of the intermarrying done over generations. We’ve had no one like that, right?" He was quiet for the longest time and then said, "Your uncle —– had an extra thumb." (names removed) "What uncle?" I asked. "I’ve never heard of him." Dad told me it was my grandfather’s brother. "You told me Pop didn’t have any brothers" I replied. "Well," Dad said, "there was ——-."

Two groups of Melungeons fought back when pushed too hard. The Melungeon Marauders of North Carolina fought an irregular war against the Confederates AND the Unionists who marched through their land and demanded their loyalty. After the war they disappeared back into their mountain redoubts. The other group were the Nashes of Coburn County — the Black Nashes. When an election was coming up where a sheriff had pledged to burn them out and drive them off their land, the Nashes came down and insisted on voting. They were run out by a mob hurling rocks and insults. The Nashes quietly armed themselves and came back into town — a veritable army — and demanded the right to vote. They did and they have ever since. This occurred in the middle of the last century!

My father has always hated the fact that I and my son love firearms, use them, compete with them, and are licensed to carry them. Once he shook his head and, before realizing his error, said "It’s just like Killer Bill all over again." I said, "Killer Bill? Who’s he?" That story hasn’t yet been fully told but I now know enough to know a relative of ours wore that name and walked mountain trails for hundreds of miles to settle issues with bullets that ballots and patience had failed to settle.

And there’s more…