TRENTON TIMES
Trenton, New Jersey
October 19, 1894
Some People In
Eastern Tennessee
(This article
originally appeard in the Lousville Examiner in 1848 and reprinted in
the
Knoxville Register and Littel’s Living Age. The words are pretty much
the same but have been
changed around a little almost 50 years later for this article that
apparently appeared in a New York paper--JP)
It is not generally
known that in the mountains of eastern Tennessee there is a class of
peculiar looking people whose origin is wrapped in mystery and who are
called by the whites, Melungeons. They resent this appellation and
proudly declare that they are Portuguese. The legend of their history,
which they carefully preserve, is this. A great many years ago, these
mountains were settled by a society of Portuguese Adventurers, men and
women--who came from the long-shore parts of Virginia, that they might
be freed from the restraints and drawbacks imposed on them by any form
of government.
They made themselves friendly with the Indians and freed, as they were
from every kind of social government, they uprooted all conventional
forms of society and lived in a delightful Utopia of their own
creation, trampling on the marriage relation, despising all forms of
religion, and subsisting upon corn (the only possible product of the
soil) and wild game of the the great forests.
They intermixed with the Indians, and subsequently with the negroes,
and thus formed the present race of Melungeons.
They are tall, straight, well-formed people, of a dark copper color,
with Circassian features. They were privileged voters in the old slave
days and accredited citizens. They are brave, but quarrelsome, and are
hospitable to strangers. They have no preachers among them and are
almost without knowledge of a supreme being.------NEW YORK RECORDER 