MELUNGEONS IN APPALACHIA

According to evidence emerging, the suggestion is made that Melungeons may have been among America's very first settlers, arriving in Appalachia long before the Northern Europeans; Ottoman Turks.  Portuguese settlers brought Turkish servants with them in the 16th Century.  Sir Francis Drake unloaded hundreds of other Turks after he liberated them from the Spanish in 1587.The Melungeons were ‘discovered’ in the Appalachian Mountains in 1654 by English explorers and were described as being ‘dark-skinned with fine European features, (meaning they were not black) and as being a hairy people, who lived in log cabins with peculiar arched windows, (meaning they were not  Indians. Blood typing has confirmed close similarities between present day Melungeons and people of the Mediterranean region.    One recognized theory is that these people pushed inland and settled down with American Indian women, to begin life as farmers. in some areas.  Melungeons were a people who almost certainly intermarried with Powhatans, Pamunkeys, Creeks, Catawbas, Yuchis, and Cherokees to form what some have called, perhaps a bit fancifully, ‘a new race’.

They appear to have been in the southern Appalachia with mining as a common occupation before the English settlers explored the area. One theory is they are descended from people of mixed ancestry in Spanish settlements in the South East who kept moving into the interior to avoid English colonists. This is supported by genetic evidence. Genetic diseases appear in Melungeon populations which only seem to appear elsewhere in populations from the Iberian peninsula and north Africa.

 They practiced the Christian religion, and told the explorers in broken Elizabethan English, that they were ‘Portyghee,’ but were described as being ‘not white,’ that is, not of Northern European stock, even though some of them had red hair and others had VERY striking blue or blue/green eyes. Where did these people come from? Recent research is answering that question. And it appears that they may be a combination of Turks, Spaniards, Portugese, Moor, Berber, Jew and Arab. The theory is that when white settlers arrived in the region and saw the dark skinned people had already taken the best land in the valleys, they pushed them out and into the high mountain ridges where they live still today.