Beginning
of the false claims about the Melungeons
http://melungeon.org/2016/10/14/the-malungeons-by-will-allen-dromgoole-1891-article/
“The Malungeons” by Will Allen Dromgoole (1891 article)
October
14, 2016 Resources for Research
“The
Malungeons”
The Arena, March 1891
Were
you ever when a child half playfully told “The Malungeons will get you?” If
not, you were never a Tennessee child, as some of our fathers were; they tell
all who may be told of that strange, almost forgotten race, concerning whom
history is strangely silent. Only upon the records of the state of Tennessee
does the name appear. The records show that by act of the Constitutional
Convention of 1834, when the “Race Question” played such a conspicuous part in
the deliberations of that body, the Malungeons, as a “free person of color,”
was denied the right of suffrage. Right there he dropped from the public mind
and interest. Of no value as a slave, with no voice as a citizen, what use
could the public make of the Malungeon? When John Sevier attempted to organize
the State of Franklin, there was living in the mountains of Eastern Tenessee a
colony of dark-skinned, reddish-brown complexioned people, supposed to be of
Moorish descent, who affiliated with neither whites nor blacks, and who called
themselves Malungeons, and claimed to be of Poruguese descent. They lived to
themselves exclusively, and were looked on as neither negroes nor Indians.
All
the negroes ever brought to America came as slaves; the Malungeons were never
slaves, and until 1834 enjoyed all the rights of citizenship. Even in the
Convention which disfranchised them, they were referred to as “free persons of
color” or “Malungeons.”
Their
condition from the organization of the State of Tennessee to the close of the
civil war is most accurately described by John A. McKinley, of Hawkins County,
who was chairman of the committee to which was referred all matters affecting
these “free persons of color.”
Said
he, speaking of free persons of color, “It means Malungeons if it means
anything. Although ‘fleecy locks and black complexion’ do not forfeit Nature’s
claims, still it is true that those locks and that complexion mark every one of
the African race, so long as he remains among the white race, as a person
doomed to live in the suburbs of society.
“Unenviable
as is the condition of the slave, unlovely as slavery is in all its aspects,
bitter as is the draught the slave is doomed to drink, nevertheless, his
condition is better than that of the ‘free man of color’ in the midst of a
community of white men with whom he has no interest, no fellow-feeling and no
equality.” So the Constitutional convention left these the most pitiable of all
outcasts; denied their oath in court, and deprived of the testimony of their
own color, left utterly helpless in all legal contests, they naturally, when
the State set the brand of the outcast upon them, took to the hills, the
isolated peaks of the uninhabited mountains, the corners of the earth, as it
were, where, huddled together, they became as law unto themselves, a race
indeed separate and distinct from the several races inhabiting the State of
Tennessee.
So
much, or so little, we glean from the records. From history we get nothing; not
so much as the name, – Malungeons.
In
the farther valleys they were soon forgotten: only now and then and old
slave-mammy would frighten her rebellious charge into subjection with the
threat, – “The Malungeons will get you in you ain’t pretty.” But to the people
of the foot hills and nearer valleys, they became a living
terror;
sweeping down upon them, stealing their cattle, their provisions, their very
clothing, and household furniture.
They
became shiftless, idle, thieving, and defiant of all law, distillers of brandy,
almost to a man. The barren height upon which they located, offered hope of no
other crop so much as fruit, and they were forced, it would appear, to utilize
their one opportunity.
After
the breaking out of the war, some few enlisted in the army, but the greater
number remained with their stills, to pillage and plunder among the helpless
women and children.
Their
mountains became a terror to travelers; and not until within the last half
decade has it been regarded as safe to cross Malungeon territory.
Such
they were; or so do they come to us through tradition and the State’s records.
As to what they are any who feel disposed may go and see. Opinion is divided
concerning them, and they have their own ideas as to their descent. A great
many declare them mulattoes, and base their belief upon the ground that at the
close of the civil war negroes and Malungeons stood upon precisely the same
social lfooting. “free men of color” all, and that the fast vanishing handful
opened thier doors to the darker brother, also groaning under the brand of
social ostracism. This might, at first glance, seem probable, indeed,
reasonable.
Yet
if we will consider a moment, we shall see that a race of mulattoes cannot
exist as these Malungeons have existed. The race goes fromt mulattoes to
quadroons, from quadroons to octoroons, and there it stops. The octoroon women
bear no children, but in every cabin of the Malungeons may be found mothers and
grandmothers, and very often great-grandmothers.
“Who
are they, then?” you ask. I can only give you their own theory – If I may call
it such – and to do this I must tell you how I found them, and something of my
stay among them.
First.
I saw in an old newspaper some slight mention of them. With this tiny clue I
followed their trail for three years. The paper merely stated that “somnewhere
in the mountains of Tennessee there existed a remanant of people called
Malungeons, having a distinct color, characteristics,and dialect. It seemed a
very hopeless search, so utterly were the Malungeons forgotten, and I was
laughed at no little for my “new crank.” I was even called “a Malungeon” more
than once, and was about to abandon my “crank” when a member of the Tennessee
State
Senate, of which I happened at that time to be engrossing clerk, spoke of a
brother senator as being “tricky as a Malungeon.”
I
pounced on him the moment his speech was completed. “Seantor,” I said, “what is
a Malungeon?”
“A
dirty Indian sneak,” said he. “Go over yonder and ask Senator _____; they live
in his
district.”
I
went at once.
“Senator,
what is a Malungeon?” I asked again.
“A
Portuguese nigger,” was the reply. “Representative T____ can tell you all about
them, they live in his county.”
From
“district” to “county” was quick travelling. And into the House of
Representatives I went, fast upon the lost trail of the forgotten Malungeons.
“Mr.
____,” said I, “please tell me what is a Malungeon?”
“A
Malungeon,: said he, “isn’t a nigger, and he isn’t an Indian, and he isn’t a
white man. God only knows what he is. I should call him a Democrat, only he
always votes the Reublican ticket.” I merely mention all this to show how the
Malungeons to-day are regarded, and to show show I tracked them to Newman’s
Ridge in Hancock County, where within four miles of one of the prettiest county
towns in Tennessee, may be found all that remains of that outcast race whose
descent is a riddle the historian has never solved. In appearance they bear a
striking resemblance to the Cherokees, and they are beleived by the people
round about to be a kind of half-breed Indian.
Thier
complexion is a reddish brown, totally unlike the mulatto. The men are very tall
and straight, with small, sharp eyes, high cheek bones, and straight black
hair, worn rather long. The women are small, below the average height, coal
black hair and eyes, high cheek bones, and the same red-brown complexion. The
hands of the Malungeon women are quite shapely and pretty. Also their feet,
despite the fact that they trravel the sharp mountain trails barefoot, are
short and shapely. Their features are wholly unlike those of the negro, except
in cases where the two races have cohabited, as is sometimes the fact. These
instances can be readily detected, as can those of cohabitation withthe
mountaineer; for the pure Malungeons present a characteristic and individual
appearance. On the Ridge proper, one finds only pure Malungeons; it is in the unsavory
limits of Black Water Swamp and on Big Sycamore Creek,lying at the foot of the
Ridge betweenit and Powell’s Mountain, that the mixed races dwell.
In
Western and Middle Tennessee the Malungeons are forgotten long ago. And
iundeed, so nearly complete has been the extinction of the race that in but few
counties of Eastern Tennessee is it known. In Hancock you may hear them, and
see them, almost the instant you cross into the county line. There they are
distinguished as
“Ridgemanites,”
or pure “Malungeons.” Those among them whom the white or negro blood has
entered are called the “Black-Waters.” The Ridge is admirable adapted to the
purpose of wild-cat distilling, being crossed by but one road and crowned with
jungles of chinquapin, cedar, and wahoo.
Of
very recent years the dogs of the law have proved too sharp-eyed and bold even
for the lawless Malungeons, so that such of the furnace fires as have not been
extinguished are built underground.
They
are a great nuisance to the people of the county seat, where, on any public
day, and especially on election days, they may be seen squatted about the
streets, great strapping men, or little brown women baking themselves in the
sun like mud figures set to dry.
The
people of the town do not allow them to enter their dwellings, and even refuse
to employ them as servants, owing to their filthy habit of chewing tobacco and
spitting upon the floors, together with their ignorance or defiance of the
difference between meum and tuum.
They
are exceedingly shiftless, and in most cases filthy.They care for nothing
except their pipe, their liquor, and a tramp “ter towin.” They will walk to
Sneedville and back sometimes twice in twelve hours, up a steep trail though an
almost unbroken wilderness, and never seem to suffer the least fatigue.
They
are not at all like the Tennessee mountaineer either in appearance or
characteristics. The mountaineer, however poor,is clean, – cleanliness itself.
He is honest (I speak of him as a class) he is generous, trustful, until once
betrayed; truthful, brave, and possessing many of the noblest and keenest
sensibilities. The Malungeons are filthy, their home is filthy. The are rogues,
natural, “born rogues,” close, suspicious, inhospitable, untruthful, cowardly,
and to use their own word, “sneaky.” They are exceedingly inquisitive too, and
will traila visitor to the Ridge for miles, through seemingly impenetrable
jungles, to discover, if may be, the object of his visit. They expect
remuneration for the slightest service. The mountaineer’s door stands open, or
at most the string of the latch dangles upon the “outside.” He takes you for
what you seem until you shall prove yourself otherwise.
In
many things they resemble the negro. They are exceedingly immoral, yet are
great shouters and advocates of religion. They call themselves Baptists,
although their mode of baptism is that of the Dunkard.
There
are no churches on the Ridge, but the one I visited in Black Water Swamp was
beyond question and inauguration of the colored element. At this church I saw
white women with negro babies at their breasts – Malungeon women with white or
with black husbands, and some, indeed, having the three separate races
represented in their children; showing thereby the gross immorality that is
practised among them. I saw an old negro whose wife was a white woman, and who
had been several times arrested, and released on his plea of “Portygee” blood,
which he declared had colored his skin, not African.
The
dialect of the Malungeons is a cross between that of the mountaineer and the
negro – a corruption, perhaps, of both. The letter R occupies but a smallplace
in their speech, and they have a peculiar habit of omitting the last letter,
sometimes the last syllable of their words. For instance “good night” – is
“goo’ night.” “Give” is “gi’,” etc. They do not drawl like the mountaineers
but, on the contrary, speak rapidly and talk a great deal. The laugh of the
Malungeon women is the most exquisitely musicle jingle, a perfect ripple of
sweet sound. Their dialect is exceedingly difficult to write, owing to their
habit of curtailing their words.
The
pure Malungeons, that is the old men and women, have no toleration for the
negro, and nothing insults them so much as the suggestion of negro blood. Many
pathetic stories are told of their battle against the black race, which they
regard as the cause of their downfall, the annihilation, indeed, of the
Malungeons, for when the races began to mix and to intermarry, and the
expression, “A Malungeon nigger” came into use, the last barrier vanished, and
all were regarded as somewhat upon a social level.
They
are very like the Indians in many respect, _ their fleetness of foot,cupidity,
cruelty (as practised during the days of their illicit distilling), their love
for the forest, their custom of living without doors, one might almost say, –
for truly the little hovels could not be called homes, – and their taste for
liquor and tobacco.
They
believe in witchcraft, “yarbs,” and more than one “charmer” may be found among
them. They will “rub away” a wart or mole for ten cents, and one old squaw
assured me she had some “blood beads” the “wair bounter heal all manner o’
blood ailimints.”
They
are limited somewhat as to names: their principal families being the Mullins,
Gorvens, Collins, and Gibbins.
They
resort to a very peculiar method of distinguishing themselves. Jack Collins’
wife for instance will be Mary Jack. His son will be Ben Jack. His daughters’
names will be similar: Nancy Jack or Jane Jack, as the case may be, but always
having the father’s Christian name attached.
Their
homes are miserable hovels, set here and there in the very heart of the
wilderness. Very few of their cabins have windows, and some have only an
opening cut through the wall for a door. In winter an old quild tis hung before
it to shut out the cold. They do not welcome strangers among them, so that I
went to the Ridge somewhat doubtful as to my reception. I went, however,
determined to be one of them, so I wore a suit as nearly like their own as I
could get it. I had some trouble securing boards, but did succeed at last in
doing so by paying the enormous sum of fifteen cents. I was put to sleep in a
little closet opening off the family room. My room had no windows, and but the
one door. The latch was carefully removed before I went in, so that I had no
means of egress, except through the family room, and no means by which to shut
myself in. My bed was of straw, not the sweet-smelling straw we read of. The
Malungeons go a long way for their straw, and they evidently make it go a long
way when they do get it. I was called to breakfast the next morning while the
gray mists still held the mountain in its arms. I asked for water to bathe my
face and was sent to “their branch,” a beautiful little mountain stream
crossing the trail some few hundred yards from the cabin.
Breakfast
consisted of corn bread, wild honey, and bitter coffee. It was prepared and
eaten in the garret, or roof room, above the family room. A few chickens, the
only fowl I saw on the Ridge, also occupied the roof room. Coffee is quite
common among the Malungeons; they drink it without sweetening, and drink it
cold at all hours of the day or nights. They have no windows and no candles,
consequently, they retire with the going of the daylight. Many of their cabins
have no floors other than that which Nature gave, but one that I remember had a
floor made of trees slit in half, the bark still on, placed with the flat side
to the ground. The people of the house slept on leaves with an old gray blanket
for covering. Yet the master of the house, who claims to be an Indian, and who,
without doubt, possesses Indian blood, draws a pension of twenty-nine dollars
per month. He can neither read nor write, is a lazy fellow, fond of apple
brandy and bitter coffee, has a rollicking good time with an old fiddle which
he plays with his thumb, and boasts largely of his Cherokee grandfather and his
government pension. In one part of his cabin (there are two rooms and a
connecting shed) the very stumps of the trees still remain. I had my artist
sketch him sitting upon the stump of a monster oak which stood in the very
center of the shed or hallway.
This
family did their cooking at a rude fireplace built near the spring, as a matter
of convenience.
Another
family occupied one room, or apartment, of a stable. The stock fed in another
(the stock belonged, let me say, to someone else) and the “cracks” between the
logs of the separating partition were of such depth a small child could have
rolled from the bed in one apartment into the trough in the other. How they
exist among such squalor is a mystery.
Their
dress consists, among the women, of a short loose calico skirt and a blouse
that boasts of neither hook nor button. Some of these blouses were fastened
with brass pins conspicuously bright. Others were tied together by means of
strings tacked on either side. They wear neither shoes nor stockings in the
summer, and many of them go barefoot all winter. The men wear jeans, and may be
seen almost any day tramping barefoot across the mountain.
They
are exceedingly illiterate, none of them being able to read. I found one school
among them, taught by an old Malungeon, whose literary accomplishments amounted
to a meagre knowledge of the alphabet and the spelling of words. Yet, he was
very earnest,, and called lustily to the “chillering” to “spry up,” and to
“learn the book.”
This
school was located in the loveliest spot my eyes ever rested upon. An eminence
overlooking the beautiful valley of the Clinch and the purple peaks
beyond/illows and billows of mountains, so blue, so exquisitely wrapped in
their delicate mist-veil, one almost doubts if they be hills or heaven. While
through the slumbrous vale the silvery Clinch, the fairest of Tennessee’s fair
streams, creeps slowly, like a drowsy dream river, among the purple distances.
The
eminence itself is entirely barren save for one tall old cedar, and the
schoolmaster’s little log building. It presents a very weird, wild, yet
majestic scene, to the traveller as he climbs up from the valley.
Near
the schoolhouse is a Malungeon grave-yard. The Malungeons are very careful for
their dead. They build a kind of floorless house above each separate grave,
many of the homes of the dead being far better than the dwellings of the
living. The grave-yard presents the appearance of a diminutive town, or
settlement, and is kept with great nicety and care. They mourn their dead for
years, and every friend and acquaintance is expected to join in the funeral
arrangements. They follow the body to the grave, sometimes familes, afoot, in
single file. Their burial ceremonies are exceedingly interesting and peculiar.
They
are an unforgiving people, although, unlike the sensitive mountaineer, they are
slow to detect an insult, and expect to be spit upon. But injury to life or
property they never forgive. Several odd and pathetic instances of Malungeon
hate came under my observation while among them, but they would cover too much
space in telling.
Within
the last two years the railroad has struck within some thirty miles of them,
and its effects are becoming very apparent. Now and then a band of surveyors,
or a lone mineralogist will cross Powell’s mountain, and pass through Mulbery
Gap just beyond Newman’s Ridge. So near, yet never nearer. The hills around are
all said to be crammed with coal or iron, but Newman’s Ridge can offer nothing
to the capitalist. It would seem that the Malungeons had chosen the one spot,
of all that magnificent creation, not to be desired.
Yet,
they have heard of the railroad, the great bearer of commerce, and expect it,
in a half-regretful, half-pathetic way.
They
have four questions, always, for the stranger: –
“Whatcher
name?”
“Wher’d
yer come fum?”
“How
old er yer?”
“Did
yer hear en’thin’ er ther railwa’ comin’ up ther Ridge?”
As
if it might step into their midst any day.
The
Malungeons believe themselves to be of Cherokee and Portuguese extraction. They
cannot account for the Portuguese blood, but are very bold in declaring
themselves a remnant of those tribes, or that tribe, still inhabiting the
mountains of North Carolina, which refused to follow the tribes to the
Reservation set aside for them.
There
is a theory that the Portuguese pirates, known to have visited these waters,
came ashore and located in the mountains of North Carolina. The Portuguese
“streak,” however, is scouted by those who claim for the Malungeons a drop of
African blood, as, quite early in the settlement of Tennessee, runaway negroes
settled among the Cherokees, or else were captured and adopted by them.
However,
with all the light possible to be thrown upon them, the Malungeons are, and
will remain, a mystery. A more pathetic case than theirs cannot be imagined.
They are going, the little space of hills ‘twixt earth and heaven alloted them,
will soon be free of the dusky tribe, whose very name is a puzzle. The most
that can be said of one of them is, “He is a Malungeon,” a synonym for all that
is doubtful and mysterious – and unclean.
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