Raleigh's Colony

I was just reading about this the other night...it's one of those stories that always intrigue people. I think if any of the adults had survived why would they not come forward later? If they all died who buried them and where are the graves? There should be some markers at least? If they were slaughtered what did they do with the bodies? I hope they assimilated but perhaps they were slaughtered by Native Americans or the Spanish? Although the Lost Colony DNA Project looks interesting. Who knows?



http://www.lost-colony.com/DNAproject.html

 

In northeast Tennessee and southeast Kentucky there lives a race of people known as Melungeons. Their skin color ranges from olive to nearly black and their features are mostly Caucasian. No one knows their origin and no one remembers when they weren't there. I submit that the people of Raleigh's lost colony left and went far inland, perhaps 300 or 400 miles, settled on the west edge of the Appalachians, mingled with the native Cherokee, and today are known as the Melugeons.

 

Well no one can prove you wrong Zenas. DNA testing of Melungeon famalies so far has only shown that they are of mixed race descent and that their ancestors include Native American, European, Mediterranean, and Aftrican individuals. But who is a Melungeon and who do you test is a big question. Because we have famalies that are known relations to the missing Roanoke settlers it would seem that DNA testing would at some point provide proof of your theory.

The Melungeons and other tribes of “White Indians” raise many interesting questions. While some have white or Mediterranean features others have more traditional Native American or African features. While they may comprise a distinct ethnic group or sub group their racial ancestry is undoubtedly mixed. What we refer to as Melungeons is just one of many groups of mixed racial heritage in America today. There are other groups throughout America. The harsh terrain of the Appalachian Mountains has contributed to this particular groups isolation over the years and allowed them to develop a more pronounced sub culture but there are many other groups. When I lived in South Carolina there was a sub group called ”Brass Ankles” or “Turks” that fit the same description. There were also “Redbone” Indians in South Carolina that had a mixture of white and native American features. Many of these titles are considered derogatory and care should be used when using these terms.

Survivors of the Roanoke colony could be one source of the mixed ancestry of these groups, but there are many other sources as well. The fact is that there were interactions between what we call Native Americans and white sailors for a century or more before the Jamestown settlement. While Raleigh’s settlements might have been the first authorized by the Queen there were individual explorers and adventurers who moved throughout the American continent much earlier. Many of these came to the American continent alone and married Native American women. That some white or mixed race children appeared in the generations afterwards should be expected. That these mixed race people may have been drawn to one another and therefore increase the isolation of the gene pool should also be expected. Run away and freed slaves, slaves from central and south America, shipwrecked sailors or sailors who deserted their ships for whatever reason, run away convicts and indentured servants, all of these may have contributed to the gene pool of these groups. Different families of Melungeons claim Native American, African, Portuguese, Spanish, Turkish, or Jewish origin.

There are many romantic tales of persecuted peoples from the across the Atlantic who found refuge and a new land in America. From dispersed tribes of Israel and Phoenician sailors lost at see to the Welch Prince Madoc these stories fire our imagination. And who is to say that some of those stories could not be true.

We are all of mixed race, and modern DNA science offers the possibility that some of the mystery in each of our personal histories can be solved.

 

Great thread and great comments! I love it!

 

Not to change the subject, just an aside: I have often thought about all those Christian graves through the ages where we don't even know where they are and what a sight that will be on Resurrection Day when all the saints are raised from the dead out of graves that are unmarked. Maybe from under houses or office buildings or who knows? It should be something! Anyway, back to the OP.

 

I found something interesting in N.Brent Kennedy's book
The Melungeons The Resurrection of a Proud People.

"Williams also described an exploratory journey made in
April 1673 by James Needham, an Englishman and Gabriel
Arthur,possibly an indentured servant, along with eight
Indians, to the Tennessee Valley. A portion of Needham's
account of this trek is fascinating and relevant enough to be included here."

""Eight days journey down this river, lives a white people
which have long beards and whiskers and weares clothing,
and on some of ye other rivers lives a hairy people. Not
many yeares since ye Tomahittans sent twenty men laden
with beavor to ye white people: they killed tenn of them and
put ye other tenn in irons, two of which tenn escaped and
one of them came with one of my men to my plantation. As
ye will understand after a small time of rest one of my men
returns with his horse, ye Appomatock Indian and twelve
Tomahittans, eight men and foure women. One of these
eight is hee which hath been a prisoner of ye white
people......ye prisoner relates that ye white people have a
bell which is six foot over which they ring in morning and
evening and att that time a great number of people
congregate togather and talkes he knowes not what.""