Posted on 01/18/2006 5:43:33 AM PST by Atlantic Bridge
That didn't mean they weren't Indians ~ just that they were not Cherokee.
I read several newspaper articles about a book published in the 1990s, written by someone up in this area, that supposedly tied, with the help of DNA,the Melungeons to early middle eastern explorers. Very interesting story, the Melungeons.
Can't remember the title or author, but I'd bet the East Tennessee State University library could locate it, and most of what has been written about them.
The Melungeons are in one small pocket up here at the Tennessee/Kentucky/Virginia borders. Their history has been all but wiped out because the vital statistics records in the past had no way of identifying their race, and they were recorded as Indian, black American, etc.
My own personal theory is that the Melungeons are descendants of men held as POWs at the Spanish POW camp in what is now South Carolina back in the 1500s. For the most part, the POWs were Eastern Orthodox, or Hindu, or anything but Moslem. I think the Spanish regularly tossed Islamic prisoners overboard.
At the same time there'd been a regular traffic of folks leaving Europe for America and winding up out in the woods in Virginia, etc. One estimate I ran across had about 20,000 such people running around what is now Maryland when Jamestown was founded. What were those folks doing and just where did they come from?
Compounding the problem of figuring out who and what the Melungeons were, there was a really serious drought on the East Coast from about 1575 to 1610. Simultaneously the Indian settlements at Angel Mounds, Cahokia and Terre Haute broke up, and you had all sorts of Indians traveling East, West, North and South, creating all sorts of mayhem and disruption. The Cherokee, who'd been West of the Mississippi, somehow ended up in the Appalachians. The "Eastern Cheyenne" were created. The Sioux obtained the horse and a whole new culture was created ~ but this time one that used what are clearly Sheng Dynasty Chinese characters as the basis for their sign language ~ which probably demonstrates that more than one Chinese cook on a Spanish ship checked out in South Carolina and ran as far as he could to escape those people.
America in the immediate post-Columbus period was exciting and disastrous. No doubt the Melungeon people came into being in those days.
It is entirely possible he was scammed.
A papoose isn't a baby it's divice made of wood and cloth to carry a baby.
You know exactly nothing about Natives and your attempt at a joke isn't funny in fact it's quite pathetic.
You're delusional...and the word is spelled "device."
And apparently lacking a sense of humor.
I hate the spelling police.
I guess I won't be invited to your next party.
Sure you're invited to the next party. LOL
Just don't climb onto my case if my grammar fails me.
Okay. I'll RSVP. Just hire someone else to tell the jokes. I'll leave it to the professionals. :-)
You're harsh behond measure.
I admetted my mistake and went so so far as to point out my mistake.
And I still get kicked in the balls.
Be a graceful winner why doncha
I was trying to be polite and let you pick the comedian...since my efforts apparently flopped.
I did I did. That was the reason that I wrote "some".
WOW!
I have a photo of my grandmother, and she has very definite Native American features, such as high cheekbones. Most of us grandkids inherited it to a degree.
Probably a flyover only, alas.
It's a huge airshow, though, and we routinely get the B-1, B-2, etc.
Buffalo jumps(sometimes called pushkins) were used by several tribes to facilitate the killing of buffalo.
It's amazing how the revisionist history of some recent historians/folks concerning American Indians has developed.
Increasingly, observations and research are attacked because they were/are made by non-Indians. As an example, non-indians such as Lewis & Clark, etc made observations of American Indians. Indeed, Lewis made some of the first observations of the Clatsops, Chinooks, Nez Perce, and Shoshone. A good historian and researcher needs to be able to discern between what is reported as observation and the commentary made in regards to that observation. It also would be helpful if more historians made use of oral histories which are central to many tribes.
Revisionists are trying to remark American Indians into all being paragons of upstanding virtue, but that is off the mark, as is painting all American Indians as bloodthirsty savages. Some tribes did scalp, practice cannibalism, abortion, fratricide, slavery, etc - most did not. And the same can be said for many non-Indian societies - then and now.
Educators such as Deven Mihesuah, etc have made a point of writing about the negative stereotypes of Indians - and then themselves try to re-make the image of Indians with the use of stereotypes. Attempts to question them on these issues can sometimes lead to the fallback position of "I'm an Indian, you're not, so you're not capable of performing a fair and balanced study of issues pertaining to American Indians".
The American history in the 1800's and 1900's was as wrong to portray Indians as wild savages, as is a growing number of folks are wrong to portray Indians as being without faults until the white man arrived.
Oops. Just noted that Deven Mihesuah should be *Devon* Mihesuah.
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