The Indians of North Florida

by Edward T. Price, Los Angeles State College

The following is from the Association of American Geographers Annals Vol. 43 (June 1953) pp 138-55. Reprint permission granted with acknowledgment.

For notes to this article, click here.

A strange product of the mingling of races which followed the British entry into North America survives in the presence of a number of localized strains of peoples of mixed ancestry. Presumed to be part white with varying proportions of Indian and Negro blood, ** they are recognized as of intermediate social status, sharing lot with neither white nor colored, and enjoying neither the governmental protection nor the tribal tie of the typical Indian descendants. A high degree of endogamy results from this special status, and their recognition is crystallized in the unusual group names applied to them by the country people.

The chief populations of this type are located and identified in Figure 1, which expresses their recurrence as a pattern of distribution. (1) Yet each is essentially a local phenomenon, a unique demographic body, defined only in its own terms and only by its own neighbors. A name applied to one group in one area would have no meaning relative to similar people elsewhere. This association of mixed-blood and particular place piques the geographic curiosity about a subject which, were it ubiquitous, might well be abandoned to the sociologist and social historian. What accounts for these cases of social endemism in the racially mixed population?

The total number of these mixed-bloods is probably between 50,000 and 100,000 persons. Individually recognized groups may run from fewer than 100 to as many as 18,000 persons in the case of the Croatans of North Carolina. The available records, the most useful being old census schedules,(2) indicate that the present numbers of mixed-bloods have sprung from the great reproductive increase of small intial populations. The prevalence in each group of a small number of oft-repeated surnames is in accord with such a conclusion. The ancestors of the mixed-bloods have been free people (usually "free colored" in earlier censuses) for as long as their history can be traced; it is extremly unusual to find any evidence of slavery in their main ancestral lines.

The mixed-bloods are heterogeneous in physical appearance. Some of the population in some of the groups are unmistakably negroid in some characteristics. Proof of Indian ancestry rests more on tradition than on present appearance. The dark-skinned strain, however, does not seem to be due entirely to Negro blood; other negroid traits seem less clearly prevalent than darkness of skin. Skin colors among the mixed-bloods vary from white to brown, but few are as dark as an unmixed Indian.

Probable ancestors of the Croatan Indians were reported along the Lumber River at the time of the area's first settlement by Scotch people in the early 1730's,(3) and they may be identical with a lawless band of swamp-dwellers reported in 1754. (4) At least sixty-five family heads can be identified in the census of 1790, but the groups seem to have remained relatively obscure until after the Civil War when one member of the group acquired notoriety for his exploits as an outlaw.(5) The Croatans' demand for status found a champion in the person of Hamilton McMillan, a member of the legislature which conferred on them the title of "Croatan Indians," later changed to "Cherokee Indians of Robeson County" (6) over the protests of the Cherokees of eastern North Carolina. The Croatans have had their own Indian school system, separate from both white and Negro, culminating in the State Teachers' College at Pembroke. The census has tabulated them as Indians since 1890,and has shown their amazing rate of growth. (7) The Croatans are mostly small farmers engaged in growing cotton, tobacco, and corn in the western part of Robeson County, where they dominate the rural settlement. Even in their center of Pembroke, however, the business is mostly in the hands of whites, and the Croatans are resentful of their own lack of influence and status. (8) The latter is closely related to apparent or suspected presence of Negro blood, a matter which has internally compartmented the Croatan society itself. The Croatans appear in numbers in several nearby counties, and "Croatan" as a designation of race appears occasionally in the marriage records of even more distant localities.

A popularly held theory that Raleigh's Lost Colony survives in one of the mixed-blood groups usually centers on the Croatans. It is difficult to tell whether this idea has been a tradition among the Croatans, or was only popular for a time in the late nineteenth century as a device for gaining status. The case built by McMillan(9) for historical continuity of the Lost Colony and the Croatans seems to have been successfully refuted by Swanton. (10) McMillan also lists the names of the members of the Lost Colony, alleging a similarity to Robeson County names. (11) Such a similarity was not evidenced by names in the census of 1790, nor are the most frequent Croatan surnames on the Lost Colony list at all. Indeed Locklear and Oxendine, the two most common names, covering nearly a third of the Croatans,(12) seem to be virtually unique to the Croatans. They were not reported among whites in the 1790 census, and so few free colored families of those names appeared outside of Robeson County in either 1790 or 1830 that an origin among the Croatans is indicated (Fig. 2).

The density of free Negroes in 1830 was greater in Robeson County (where they were mostly Croatans) than in any other county in the southern half of North Carolina. Whatever aberration from the usual bi-racial pattern resulted in the Croatans evidently had a quantitative as well as a qualitative aspect. Whether this process was immigration, a conservative lack of emigration, high fertility, or simply an early start is an unanswered question.

The Melungeons(13) centering in Hancock County, Tennessee, are sometimes said to derive from the Croatans, but the comparison of names suggests only a tenuous connection. The Melungeons reached Newman's Ridge and Blackwater Valley (in Hancock County) among the first settlers, apparently In the 1790's. The number and ages of family heads bearing the names of Collins, Gibson, and Goins in 1830 suggest that several households with these names were involved in the original migrations from North Carolina and Virginia. By 1830 the Melungeon colony included 330 persons in 55 families in Hawkins County (from which Hancock was formed) and 130 persons in 24 families in adjoining Grainger County. Because of them Hawkins County showed more free colored persons in the 1830 census than any other county in Tennessee except Davidson (Nashville) and more free colored families named Collins than any other county in the United States. A few Melungeons persisted until 1830 in Ashe County in northwestern North Carolina; the records of that area contain the earliest references to Vardy Collins, (14) said to be the first of the Melungeon settlers.

A few of the Melungeons of today resemble Indians, but more are impossible to distinguish from white mountaineers. A caste distinction persists to a considerable degree, though the Melungeons are not segregated in schools. Melungeons are found in some numbers in Lee, Scott, and Wise County, Virginia, Letcher County, Kentucky, and in Graysville, Tennessee, and occasionally on and west of the Cumberland Plateau. In these more distant localities they are not always identified as Melungeons, but bear the characteristic surnames. Historical records do not supply proof for their likely relationship to the Hancock County group, and some of these other settlements are also very old. The name of Goins is particularly associated with Melungeons living south and west of Hancock County.

Five parishes of southwest Louisiana-- Calcasieu, Rapides, Beauregard, Vernon, and Allen--include in their population a strain of mixed-bloods identified as Redbones. Louisiana, with its French background, is probably the state where mixture of white and Negro blood has been most typical; a number of concentrations of such peoples are recognized. The markedly English names of the Redbones and their Protestant religious affiliations (usually Baptist) demarcate the Redbones from all these other Louisiana mixed-bloods, with whom this study is not concerned.
The Redbones appear clearly in the earliest census records of the area as free colored persons, usually the only free colored persons with English names in the present areas. Later records identify the same persons as mulattoes; when the listed birthplace is outside of Louisiana, South Carolina is usually the state. Olmsted in 1857 (15) mentions a wealthy mulatto family of Ashworths near the border in east Texas, which is quite likely connected with the Redbones of the same name. Evidently the Redbones were mixed in blood when they came as cattle-grazers to this last-settled corner of Louisiana. Further support for believing their origin to be South Carolina stems from the facts that Redbone is an old Carolina term for mixed-bloods, (16) that several Redbone names occurred among free Negroes of South Carolina, and that several names of South Carolina mixed-bloods occurred with the Redbones in earlier censuses.

The Redbones probably number 3000 or more. They are not segregated in schools, though several rural areas and two or three villages are predominantly Redbone in population. Many of the Redbones have drifted into the towns to take various jobs in recent: years. In spite of the absence of any official recognition or rigid segregation, the Redbones form what is essentially a caste; and they are homogeneous in economic class, the small subsistence farm or labor in forest or mill providing the livelihood.
The term Redbone suggests Indian blood, which is reported to have been evident among some of the older Redbones. The status the Redbones hold and the appearance of many of the Redbones today suggest an admixture of Negro blood. No one is called a Redbone to his face, but the term is universally understood in southwest Louisiana, and the members of a Redbone family will be so tagged as long as they continue to live in the area.

The nucleus of American settlement in Alabama was a small enclave on the west bank of the lower Tombigbee and Mobile Rivers which, in the early nineteenth century, was surrounded by Spanish Mobile to the south and Indian tribes on the other sides--Creek, Choctaw and Cherokee. (17)

Into this frontier came a free colored man named Reed, said to have been a mulatto from Jamaica; he married a slave woman, also a mulatto, whose freedom he later purchased, (18) and the two operated a cattle-penning center in conjunction with an inn along the road into Mississippi. The Reeds had eight children, 56 grandchildren, and at least 202 great grandchildren; (19) by today the eighth and ninth generation has appeared, and the descent of the Reeds is innumerable. A free colored couple named Byrd, who probably came into the area a little later, are known to have produced 119 great grandchildren, and a Weaver family traced back to two family heads has been equally prolific.

About half of the population of over 2000 Cajans in Mobile and Washington Counties in Alabama bear the names of Weaver, Reid, and Byrd. The descendants of these families were not numerous until after the Civil War, but their previous status of freedom and their mixed race may account for their subsequent separation from the other Negroes. Certainly their rapid growth in numbers and their intermarriage of one family with another help to explain the recognition by the white population which ultimately resulted in borrowing (with a slight rnodification in spelling) the term Cajan from Louisiana to identify them.
Today the Cajans live in a clearly circumscribed rural area of the pine forests containing about 175 square miles. Their children attend special schools provided by the counties. Perhaps another 2000 Cajans have managed to slip into towns or cities where they are not actively thrown with the core of the group.

The Cajans have not only survived, but have steadily grown in this area of change and instability. After the cattlegrazers came the lumber and railroad camps. Geronimo's Indians were detained at nearby Mt. Vernon in 1890. (20) Each of these transient groups and many others may have contributed blood to the Cajans.

The exhaustion of the forests has left the slim leavings to the Cajans. Many of them are squatters on large landholdings; most of them work in the forest industries, lumbering, turpentining, hauling logs, operating sawmills. Increasing population in an area of depleted resources cannot continue indefinitely. Some of the Cajans leave the region and pass as white in distant localities; these are usually the lighter-skinned. A conservatism tends to hold most of them near home. The emigration has not kept up with the growth by reproduction, but it probably balances occasional intermarriage with whites to keep most of the residual Cajan population moderately dark-skinned.

A concentration of several hundred Issues (a term applied to Negroes freed before the Civil War) has long been recognized at the eastern foot of the Blue Ridge near Amherst, Virginia. They are mostly a laboring group, working on the tobacco farms of the Piedmont and the apple orchards of the slopes above and as domestic servants. The mulatto ancestors of the Issues were in the area by 1785, but little is known of their history; one of the group was mentioned as a free mulatto in 1848. (21) The idea that the group has some Indian blood persists, however. (22)
Emigration, especially to New Jersey during the War, has reduced the number of Issues materially. This movement seems to be the result of the assiduousness of the Virginia Department of Vital Statistics in its campaign to label as Negroes in all official records those with any fraction of Negro ancestry. This threat to their previous intermediate status was distasteful. A possibly related group have been mountain farmers on Irish Creek on the western side of the Blue Ridge; they have not been excluded from white schools in Rockbridge County.

Most of the Guineas (23) live in Barbour and Taylor Counties in north central West Virginia, but they are known in several other counties also. This is an area of very few other colored people; though the Guineas attend the colored schools, they have resisted this segregation and would probably resist more forcibly if the schools had more Negro children and Negro teachers. The 1600 or more Guineas in Barbour and Taylor Counties are mostly peasant farmers, coal miners, day laborers, and domestic servants. A very few are wealthy. They live in several rural concentrations where their ownership of land dates from early in the nineteenth century, (24) in others where they have more recently replaced whites, and in some numbers in the towns.

Several surnames belong almost exclusively to Guineas in this area, but nearly half the group are named Mayle (formerly spelled Mail, Male, etc.). (25) There are several traditions of Indian blood among the Guineas, but the records confirm only the "colored" and mulatto mixtures. The records of the Guineas' ancestors all trace back to Virginia (then including West Virginia); they were in the western part of the state well before 1800. The mixed-bloods seem to have reached this area from several different directions before their increase to the present population. The Mayles, and perhaps other Guinea families came from Hampshire County, where they may have been people of some means. Just when the Mayle family became mixed-blooded is not clear, but it evidently occurred before 1810, when they had already started moving westward into the Plateau. The census evidence indicates that all of the Mayles of the Guinea group, numbering over 700 in Barbour and Taylor Counties, are either actual or legal descendants of one man. Most of the Guinea settlement in Taylor County has developed from Barbour County in the last two generations, and more recently the Guineas have settled in some numbers in several Ohio cities and in Detroit.

A vaguely defined mixed-blood group known as Wesorts (26) form part of the population of the southeastern peninsula of Maryland west of Chesapeake Bay, within an hour's drive of Washington. Their number is estimated at between 750 and 3000. Their children attend both white and colored schools. Twenty-six Wesort surnames have been identified, most of which were among the 54 family names of free colored persons in the area in 1790; most of the names were also, common among whites of the area at the same time.

Two mixed groups, probably related to one another, live chiefly in Delaware. (27) The Moors numbering about 500, are in a suburb of Dover, and the Nanticokes. numbering about 700, live in the southeast part of the state near the estuary of the Indian River. The former support themselves from various wage jobs, while the latter have retained their modest farms in the Indian River Hundred. Most of their children attend an assortment of special schools, both public and private, which has resulted from internal differences and misunderstandings with officials.

The Nanticoke leaders have recently tried to revive their Indian birthright through the formation of the Nanticoke Indian Association. In spite of the fact that their economy has made use of a surprising number of Indian culture traits, (28) there is little evidence at hand to connect them directly with the aborigines of Delaware. Their claim to Indian status seems neither stronger nor weaker than that of several other mixed-blood groups.

The Jackson Whites, the only large mixed group of the North, is the only one whose members have been willing to throw in their lot with the Negroes, though they do not class themselves with the colored population at large. Though within easy commuting distance of New York City (Bergen County, New Jersey, and Rockland County, New York), their existence has apparently depended historically on a refuge in the fault-bounded Ramapo Hills. Their names of Mann, DeGroat, DeFreese, and Van Dunk suggest a relation to the Dutch settlers of New York; all of these names but the last are old (29) in the area, while a de Vries appeared in a seventeenth century reference (30) as a free Negro.

The early history of the Jackson Whites is obscure, and no hypotheses or theories (31) seem to find much confirmation in records. The people seem to have supported themselves on the mountain during the nineteenth century by farming and producing forest products such as charcoal, baskets, barrel staves, brooms, and wooden tools. (32) Missionary work on the mountain and increased job opportunities in the lowlands have made the Jackson Whites a part of modern society. Most of them have moved into the lowland towns and taken jobs in the shops and mills. Segregation in a colored grade school in one of the New York communities was ended in 1947. Traditions among the Jackson Whites themselves indicate either a very diverse ethnic background or a complete confusion over the actual truth.

Nineteen separate groups of mixed-blood peoples have been identified on the Coastal Plain of South Carolina. (33) Typically they live somewhat apart from other groups in rural settings with their own clusters of shacks. Their employment is mostly in agricultural labor. In most cases special schools are provided.

The groups may have formed around the small lowland Indian tribes as nuclei, picking up both white and Negro blood. (34) Characteristic names are recognized in each locality, but certain names tend to be common in several counties, sometimes linking the South Carolina groups with Croatans and other larger groups. The South Carolina mixed-bloods, on the whole, are said to be making gains toward white status. A number of group names--e.g., Brass Ankles, Redbones; Redlegs, Buckheads, Turks--are applied locally to these peoples. Their social differentiation seems to be a pattern of long standing in South Carolina.

North Carolina is also prominent on the map of mixed-bloods. Its school directory lists 27 Indian schools. (35) Goins is the chief surname among a scattering of alleged mixed-bloods in Surry, Stokes, and Rockingham Counties, North Carolina, and adjoining Patrick County, Virginia. Though one Indian school is maintained for these people, they have, in at least one case, won suit for admission to white schools. Usually they attend white schools and are distinguished only socially by their neighbors. Their total number is at least several hundred. The compact land ownership around Gointown in Rockingham County suggests it as being of longest standing as a center for this strain; land records carry them back in that part of the county to its formation in 1786. A similar situation occurs in Moore County in southern North Carolina with the difference that the Goinses and their associates are classed as Negro, but mix little with other Negroes.

Magoffin County in the Kentucky Mountains has a small mixed-blood population considered to be of Indian mixture. (36) They are noted in the county as mountain farmers with large families whom they are able to maintain without apparent means of support. The people have been in the county as long as records have been maintained. Their surnames have all been associated with Melungeons in the records, though some of the early Magoffin County mixed-bloods were themselves born in Virginia and North Carolina. A colony of the Magoffin County group planted itself near Carmel, Ohio, about the time of the Civil War. At the very edge of the Appalachians, they built their shacks in the hills where they obtained shelter, wood, game, and ginseng, providing farm labor at times on the more fertile plains. Some of the group are now rooted in Carmel, but close contact is yet maintained with relatives in Magoffin County.

Ohio has a second small group living in the rich Corn Belt land of Darks County. Admittedly part Negro, members of this group are descended from ancestors who began settlement there by 1822. A number of families, all of whom came from the southeast, apparently found here an escape from the anomalous position of the free Negro in the slave states. The colony is fairly prosperous although the farms are somewhat smaller than the average about them; subdivision through inheritance probably accounts for this condition.

Other small mixed-blood groups are indicated on the map in Figure 1.

The mixed-blood groups generally appear to have arisen from diverse sources. Where records are available, they indicate that the ancestors of the present mixed- bloods, coming into their present areas at the time of American settlement, were themselves mixed. The mixing must have had a beginning, of course; the old records are lacking for the easternmost groups where settlement was earlier. The surnames of the mixed-blood people are usually distinctive in their areas; if their names are taken from white people, such event seems to pre-date settlement in the present areas.

The mixed-blood groups are not closely associated with particular physical refuge areas in most cases; more broadly, however, Figure1 shows that most of them live in the Coastal Plain and Appalachian Provinces--areas generally marginal in soil fertility and irregular in utility, accessibility and settlement. Though typically, but not entirely, a Southern phenomenon, mixed-blood groups are not typical of the old Cotton Belt, but rather outline its edges. Borders of some nature seem to be favorite locations. The Redbones near the old Texas border, the Jackson Whites, Issues, and Carmel groups near borders between hills and plains, the Cajans on the old Spanish frontier, and many groups near state boundaries may be locationally related to the meeting of two worlds.
The conservative nature of these groups is evidenced by the fact that the boys who saw service during the second World War, usually in white units, have regularly returned to their homes. One stream of mixed-bloods does leave the focal areas to pass as white in cities and elsewhere, ultimately losing touch completely with the original group. The home areas often present limited opportunity in the economic niches open to the mixed-bloods. Some expand in a real extent, some in replacing white groups, but generally their populations are restricted, and their increase as identifiable mixed-bloods does not approach their actual reproductive growth.

Many of the mixed-blood groups seem unrelated or unimportantly related one to the other. Perhaps they represent similar responses to similar social conditions, each in a different area. The records of the surnames and birthplaces, however, tie a number of the groups together: the Croatans and many small groups of the Carolinas and Virginia; the Melungeons; the Redbones; the mixed-bloods of Magoffin County; and the two small groups mentioned in Ohio.

Though certain facts concerning the origin of these peoples have been traced, the questions of who they were and why they displayed this unusual clannishness have hardly been touched. The relationships mentioned suggest the hypothesis of a colonial mixed-blood society having origin in Virginia and the Carolinas, consisting of a number of localized concentrations as well as floaters who served to maintain or effect both blood and social ties between the sedentary groups. Though the early groups certainly grew by accretion, chance colonization of a few members of this society in a new location may have been the necessary condition for a new localization of the same type. They seem to have moved westward into and across the Appalachians with the general stream of population. It is difficult to trace specific parenthood of one group by another, but numerous interrelationships are indicated by the records.

The records needed to probe the origin and nature of this society are, if ex- istent, not available through the common indices and card catalogues. Perhaps they may be accidentally turned up. Some suggestive fragments are herewith presented.

The name Goins seems to be a peculiar marker of these mixed-bloods. It has already been mentioned in connection with the Melungeons and certain strains in North Carolina. It is prominent among the mixed-bloods of Darke County, Ohio, and was associated with the Redbones in what is now Calcasieu Parish. It is a minor name among the Croatans and is the chief name among a mixed-blood group with a special school in Williamsburg County, South Carolina. Further, Goins is an unusual name; though many whites are named Goins, it occurred with a much greater frequency among free colored persons in 1830 (2.8 per thousand) than among the population at large in 1790 (0.1 per thousand in six populous Southern and Middle states.

Over a hundred free colored families named Goins were well scattered in 1830 through the South and southern parts of the Northern border states (Fig. 3). The two greatest concentrations occurred in the Melungeon area and the North Carolina-Virginia Piedmont where so many are found today. The former was almost certainly derived from the latter. (37) The concentration in central Virginia may be older than these, but is not known to have persisted. The Goins name arrived in Virginia early, (38) one "Tho. Gowen" having been listed as a passenger on the Globe in 1635. (39) One account of the better known branch of the family (40) has them spreading southward from a center in Stafford County, Virginia. A colored servant, Mihill Gowen, was released after four years of service in 1657; (41) It may be noted that Gowen had not been the name of his mistress. The same unusual name (Mihil Goen) crops up again in 1718 in James City County as former owner of escheat land being patented by another man. (42) A muster roll of a Granville County, North Carolina, regiment in 1754 singled out five men in one company as mulattoes; three of them were named Gowen. (43) A roster of North Carolina Revolutionary soldiers of 1778 lists a Gowan as a mulatto. (44) A 1792 entry in a deed book of Fairfeld County, South Carolina, (45) records the fact that Levi Goyen made his friend John Goyen his attorney for handling a parcel of land in "Daverson Co. N.C. aforesaid land being first in the hands of David Goyen decd. free Mallatto went to Cumberland River in the year 1770 and were killed by the Indians in the year 1780 and left the said Mallatto Levi Goyen his proper heir...." The records available leave open the possibility that a branch of the Gowen family emerged as free mixed-bloods in the seventeenth century. Russell uses Milhill Gowen (46) to illustrate his contention that the early Negro servitude was usually an indenture rather than a permanent slavery. Can the mixed-bloods have had such an origin as free men, maintaining ever since the social barrier against the freed slaves? Certainly such a phenomenon as the Goins family must have a definite story behind it, but has it made its way into the records?

No real center of the Goins mixed-bloods can be identified antedating their concentration in the upper Piedmont. It is understood that the settlement of these counties was mostly from Virginia; this is in keeping with the above observation on southward spread of the Gowen family. The oldest Goinses recorded in the North Carolina portion of this district in the 1850 census were born in Virginia.

by Calvin L. Beale
originally published in Eugenics Quarterly 4/4 (December 1957): 187-196.
Used with permission of author

In the 1950 Census of Population, 50,000 American Indians are listed as living in states east of the Mississippi River. These people do not constitute the sole biological legacy of the aboriginal population once found in the East, of course. The remnants of many tribes were removed west of the Mississippi where they retain their tribal identity today. Nor is it uncommon to meet Easterners, thoroughly Caucasian in appearance and racial status, who boast of an Indian ancestor in the dim past. Other intfusio9ns of Indian blood were absorbed into the Negro population, and in this context may also be referred to with pride even if they afford no differential social status.

It is another class of people, however, that engages the attention of this article - a class more numerous than the Indians remaining in the East, more obscure than those in the West, less assured than the white man or the Negro who regards his link of Indian descent as a touch of the heroic or romantic. The reference is to population groups of presumed triracial descent. Such isolates, bequeathed of intermingled Indian, white, and Negro ancestry, are as old as the nation itself and include not less than 77,000 persons. They live today in more than 100 counties of at least 17 Eastern States with settlements ranging in size from less than 50 persons to more than 20,000. Their existence has furnished material for the writings of local historians, folklorists, journalists, and novelists. Occasionally, they have come to the attention of cultural anthropologists, sociologists, and - here and there - a geographer or educator. Attention to the triracial isolates by geneticists is largely confined to the last three years, however. It is the object of this discussion to describe the nature, location, and status of such Indian-white-Negro groups in Eastern States and to indicate the potential interest they hold for the field of human genetics.1

Although the precise origin of these groups is unknown in most instances, they seem to have formed through miscegenation between Indians, whites, and Negroes - slave or free - in the Colonial and early Federal periods. In places the offspring of such unions - many of which were illegitimate under the law - tended to marry among themselves. Within a generation or so this practice created a distinctly new racial element in society, living apart from other faces. The forces differed from place to place. Some groups subsequently dispersed or were assimilated during the 19th century. Some waxed in numbers, others waned. Most have persisted to the present day.

A majority of the triracial isolates originated in the Atlantic Coastal Plain. Their members were among the early pioneers in the Appalachian Plateaus and the Tennessee River Valley. Many left the South and moved to Northern States such as Ohio and Indiana, especially when restrictive measures were passed against free nonwhite people in Southern States during the 1830's. Thus it happens that the majority of the groups in the Trans-Appalachian States are related to others remaining in the South Atlantic States, although contact between them has lapsed.2 None of the Northern groups seem to have colonized to the west, however.

The habitat of the mixed-blood people has been typically rural and geographically isolated. It is difficult to find such a settlement that is not associated with a swamp, a hollow, an inaccessible ridge, or the back country of a sandy flatwoods.3 Many modern developments have helped reduce their isolation, but this isolation factor appears to have been of major importance in fostering and perpetuating the existence of the groups. Legal disputes over their racial status for purposes of school attendance, vital statistics registration, and other public matters have been numerous in Southern and Border states. In many groups educational attainment is low, income is inadequate, and reliance on public welfare programs is high. The incidence of illegitimacy, common-law marriage, petty larceny, and other socially disapproved practices has been frequent enough in certain locations to type the racial hybrids unfavorably in the public mind.

The racial status of the triracial people varies greatly, both as conceived in the minds of the people themselves and in the eyes of their white or Negro neighbors. Occasionally they occupy no more than a peculiar status among the Negro population. Some are regarded as a separate race, known either as Indian or by a local colloquial name. Where such is the case in Southern States, they often have their own segregated schools. In North Carolina, where they are most numerous, this practice extends to a separate State college. Other groups have achieved a measure of acceptance as white. It seems impossible to reconstruct for each community the circumstances that have determined the present status. Physical appearance and local traditions of origin may well be the most important.

It is well to make clear that the designation of these groups as triracial is often the conclusion of the investigator rather than a reflection of public opinion in the area concerned. In general all local informants will agree that the mixed population is partly white. (Blue eyes are commonly in evidence to validate this.) The white informant will insist that the mixed-blood people are partly Negro. Perhaps he will agree that they are partly Indian, perhaps not. The mixed-blood individual will usually insist - with vehemence, if necessary - that there is no Negro ancestry in his family (although he may not make this claim for all other families in the settlement) but that he is partly Indian. In a minority of communities unmistakable elements of Indian culture have between found. Presence of Negro ancestry may or may not be evident in some families from the occurrence of Negro hair forms or facial features. If evident, it tends to jeopardize claims of the group to non-Negro status. In sum, the groups described are with few exceptions considered only of white and Indian descent by their members but are regarded to be partly Negro by neighboring whites or Negroes.4 Investigators frequently report the opinion of elderly persons that the average skin color of younger members of triracial isolates is lighter than that of earlier generations. This is not surprising in view of the fact that in most groups social relations with Negroes are discouraged and marriage to a Negro may result in ostracism. Relationships with white persons entail no such group displeasure.

Characterization of the triracial groups has its limitations, for thy have emerged over a large geographic area under varying cultural conditions. With the usual footnote that there are exceptions, it can be said that they are a highly inbred class of people. It is this feature that most warrants the interest of students of human heredity.

The conditions of social and physical isolation - both imposed and voluntary - that fostered the emergence of mixed racial communities typically limited the choice of marriage partners within a relatively small number of surnames. Scattered data on marriage records attest to this. In Halifax County, North Carolina, between 1819 and 1860, 14 out of 29 male members of the leading family in a triracial group for whom marriage bonds were filed married females of the same name.5 Of 35 marriages recorded for persons having the key surnames of a mixed-racial community in Cumberland County, New Jersey, 9 were to spouses of the same surname and 17 to spouses of just one other surname.6 In two families of the so -called "Guinea" community of Barbour and Taylor Counties, West Virginia, 102 of 112 marriages from 1856-1931 were to other persons in the racial isolate (about 11 surnames).7

Presumably as a result of such close marrying practices, genetically determined diseases and defects of unusual frequency have been reported among a number of the triracial isolates. The Jackson Whites of New Jersey have long been noted for albinism and polydactylism.8 Some of the Moors of Delaware suffer from microphthalmia9, and hereditary deformities of the joints are reported among the West Virginia mixed bloods.10

The most notable evidences of inbreeding and hereditary difficulties have been reported for an isolate in Southern Maryland termed colloquially, "Wesorts." These people number about 4,000, including those in Washington, D.C., of whom at least one-fourth bear one surname, with a dozen names accounting for most of the rest of the population. An excellent measure of consanguinity in the group is provided by the fact that at least 90 percent are Roman Catholic and ecclesiastical dispensation is required by that faith for marriages of known first or second cousins. In one major parish over a 104-year period, one sixth of the marriages involving at least one Wesort required such a dispensation.11

The Indian tribes of Southern Maryland left the area before the end of the 17th century, but some Indians of mixed descent, or married to non-Indians, apparently remained. A triracial group evolved. Some knowledge of the original tribal clan structure was handed down, but the triracial people became part of the larger society as a poor farming and laboring element regarded as colored.

Maintenance of racial separateness by the Maryland group is notable for it has been achieved without the assistance of institutionalized aids such as separate schools and churches. By law the children had to attend the "regular" colored schools. The people have attended the same churches as the general population but for a long period sat by custom in a particular section of the church.

The Wesorts are variable in appearance, including substantial variation within sibships. In general, they are somewhat darker than most of the other triracial peoples, and Negroid hair forms and facial features are not uncommon. However, some can pass as white and as a group they are distinctly lighter and more Caucasian than the neighboring Negro population, which itself has a substantial infusion of white ancestry. Some are pointed out as showing Indian characteristics.

In 1945 Gilbert, a cultural anthropologist, reported on the group and mentioned hereditary difficulties ascribed to it.12 About three years ago, the existence of the group as a distinct breeding population and the widespread incidence of hereditary disease within it were first recognized by medical researchers through admissions to Washington hospitals. An intensive survey of the population was subsequently undertaken under the sponsorship of the National Institutes of health and is still in progress. Results reported from this work indicate exceptionally high incidence of dentinogenisis imperfecta and albinism.13 The former is a dental defect, transmitted as a simple dominant gene, which has various manifestations. It is an unsightly affliction and commonly results in the necessity for full artificial dentures in early adulthood. Many other hereditary conditions such as lop ears, polycystic kidneys, deaf mutism, glaucoma, syndactylism, polydactylism, congenital cataracts, convergent and divergent strabismus (nonparalytic eye squint), and hyperstatic bone disease have been found in the group and are being assessed. Two or more of the conditions often occur in the same person. "Due to several centuries of in-marriage, many genetically recessive traits have become manifest and many genetically dominant traits have become concentrated in certain lines of the clan."14 Fertility is high notwithstanding the heavy load of inheritable handicaps. Cohorts of women of recently completed childbearing averaged better than five and one-half children per female beginning life in the cohort.

It may be that the intensity of inbreeding and notable constellation of hereditary effects evident among the Wesort group will be found to represent the extreme example of such conditions in the Indian-white-Negro isolates.15 In any event, it illustrates persuasively the attention which American triracial isolates merit from geneticists, and which, strangely, they have not previously received.

The statistics in Table 1 show the location, size, and racial status in the 1950 Population Census records of nearly all rural and small town triracial groups know to be still in existence. Folk-names for the groups are also given where known. These data were compiled by the writer while employed by the Bureau of the Census, in order to appraise the results of the Bureau's efforts to introduce consistency into the classification of triracial isolates. In past censuses, variation in the listing of such groups had produced obvious inconsistencies in race statistics from one census to another. In 1950, the Bureau instructed enumerators to "Report persons of mixed white, Negro, and Indian ancestry living in certain communities in the Eastern United States in terms of the name by which they are locally known."16 Such persons were then to be classified for publication purposes among "other nonwhite races," that is, other than Negro, American Indian, Chinese, Japanese, or Filipino.

In 116 counties checked, the population of triracial character was estimated at 77,000 persons, on the basis of race entries, enumerators' notes, and through the use of extensive surname data on th4e groups assembled from a variety of sources. Of this number, 33,000 were enumerated as Indian, 29,000 as white, 14,000 as Negro, and 1,000 under colloquial race names or with the race entry blank. More than 40 percent of the total live in North Carolina. It was not feasible to make the investigation in cities of more than 20,000 inhabitants. Undoubtedly all of the groups have made some contribution to urban migration, but it is the native rural environment that status as a separate race or endogamous group is most common.

Relatively few instances were noted in the 1950 Census records where enumerators employed colloquial race terms, although there was an increase from previous censuses in the use of "Indian" as the race name for triracial people. On reflection, it is not surprising that colloquial terms were not employed more freely by the enumerators. They exist for the great majority of the groups but are usually offensive to the people so-termed. Examples include: Croatan, Brass Ankle, Red Bone, Red leg, Free Jack, Bushwhacker, Dominicker, Guinea, and Issue. Common politeness or self-interest may have led many enumerators to list groups as Indian or white. Field investigations by the writer and others substantiate that certain of the communities have acquired a public status as white or Indian even though they continue to be regarded informally as having some Negro ancestry. In the numerous instances where the racial status of an isolate has not been static - at least as reflected in census records - the direction of change over the years seems invariably to have gone toward a lighter classification. For example, the so-called "Melungeon" people were commonly listed as mulatto prior to the Civil War. In various censuses after the war Melungeons in many counties were classified as Indian. By 1950, all but a very few of them were listed as white and are known to be accepted officially as part of the white population in their local areas.

Fertility rates in the triracial isolates appear to be exceptionally high. Reliable inferences can be drawn on this subject for those Southern groups who were tabulated in the published reports of the 1950 Census as "other nonwhite races." This population of 33,000 includes the majority of mixed bloods who were listed as Indian or by a colloquial term in the original schedules but few who were listed as white or Negro. The ratio of children under 5 years old per 1,000 rural women 15 to 49 years old among these people was 825 (standardized for age to distribution of total United States women).17 This is nearly double the ratio of 417 for total women in the nation. It also exceeds the high fertility ratios of the rural Spanish-speaking population of the Southwest (755) and the Negro rural-farm population of the South (771). In fact it is the highest fertility ration for 1950 known to the writer for any racial or ethnic group in the United States.

When translated into its potential for yields an estimated generation replacement index of 259 percent per 100 women. In other words, under continuation of fertility and morality conditions current in 1945-1950, the triracial population would increase by over two and one-half times in the course of each generation. Such a rapid increase is no longer containable in the rural homelands of the groups. It portends a wider distribution for them in the future and growing contacts in urban settings with people unacquainted with their curious history. In several large cities to which migration has tended to cluster and form a visible social group, as many immigrant peoples have done before them. However, the clannish aspect of their lives seems ultimately to weaken, and marriage outside the group begins. Meanwhile, as definable population groups of large family size, developed from relatively few family lines, and still practicing close marriage, the triracial groups offer unusual opportunities for the study of genetic diseases and factors affecting the persistence of population isolates.

Although the precise origin of these groups is unknown in most instances, they seem to have formed through miscegenation between Indians, whites, and Negroes - slave or free - in the Colonial and early Federal periods. In places the offspring of such unions - many of which were illegitimate under the law - tended to marry among themselves. Within a generation or so this practice created a distinctly new racial element in society, living apart from other faces. The forces differed from place to place. Some groups subsequently dispersed or were assimilated during the 19th century. Some waxed in numbers, others waned. Most have persisted to the present day.

A majority of the triracial isolates originated in the Atlantic Coastal Plain. Their members were among the early pioneers in the Appalachian Plateaus and the Tennessee River Valley. Many left the South and moved to Northern States such as Ohio and Indiana, especially when restrictive measures were passed against free nonwhite people in Southern States during the 1830's. Thus it happens that the majority of the groups in the Trans-Appalachian States are related to others remaining in the South Atlantic States, although contact between them has lapsed.2 None of the Northern groups seem to have colonized to the west, however.

The habitat of the mixed-blood people has been typically rural and geographically isolated. It is difficult to find such a settlement that is not associated with a swamp, a hollow, an inaccessible ridge, or the back country of a sandy flatwoods.3 Many modern developments have helped reduce their isolation, but this isolation factor appears to have been of major importance in fostering and perpetuating the existence of the groups. Legal disputes over their racial status for purposes of school attendance, vital statistics registration, and other public matters have been numerous in Southern and Border states. In many groups educational attainment is low, income is inadequate, and reliance on public welfare programs is high. The incidence of illegitimacy, common-law marriage, petty larceny, and other socially disapproved practices has been frequent enough in certain locations to type the racial hybrids unfavorably in the public mind.

The racial status of the triracial people varies greatly, both as conceived in the minds of the people themselves and in the eyes of their white or Negro neighbors. Occasionally they occupy no more than a peculiar status among the Negro population. Some are regarded as a separate race, known either as Indian or by a local colloquial name. Where such is the case in Southern States, they often have their own segregated schools. In North Carolina, where they are most numerous, this practice extends to a separate State college. Other groups have achieved a measure of acceptance as white. It seems impossible to reconstruct for each community the circumstances that have determined the present status. Physical appearance and local traditions of origin may well be the most important.

It is well to make clear that the designation of these groups as triracial is often the conclusion of the investigator rather than a reflection of public opinion in the area concerned. In general all local informants will agree that the mixed population is partly white. (Blue eyes are commonly in evidence to validate this.) The white informant will insist that the mixed-blood people are partly Negro. Perhaps he will agree that they are partly Indian, perhaps not. The mixed-blood individual will usually insist - with vehemence, if necessary - that there is no Negro ancestry in his family (although he may not make this claim for all other families in the settlement) but that he is partly Indian. In a minority of communities unmistakable elements of Indian culture have between found. Presence of Negro ancestry may or may not be evident in some families from the occurrence of Negro hair forms or facial features. If evident, it tends to jeopardize claims of the group to non-Negro status. In sum, the groups described are with few exceptions considered only of white and Indian descent by their members but are regarded to be partly Negro by neighboring whites or Negroes.4 Investigators frequently report the opinion of elderly persons that the average skin color of younger members of triracial isolates is lighter than that of earlier generations. This is not surprising in view of the fact that in most groups social relations with Negroes are discouraged and marriage to a Negro may result in ostracism. Relationships with white persons entail no such group displeasure.

Characterization of the triracial groups has its limitations, for thy have emerged over a large geographic area under varying cultural conditions. With the usual footnote that there are exceptions, it can be said that they are a highly inbred class of people. It is this feature that most warrants the interest of students of human heredity.

The conditions of social and physical isolation - both imposed and voluntary - that fostered the emergence of mixed racial communities typically limited the choice of marriage partners within a relatively small number of surnames. Scattered data on marriage records attest to this. In Halifax County, North Carolina, between 1819 and 1860, 14 out of 29 male members of the leading family in a triracial group for whom marriage bonds were filed married females of the same name.5 Of 35 marriages recorded for persons having the key surnames of a mixed-racial community in Cumberland County, New Jersey, 9 were to spouses of the same surname and 17 to spouses of just one other surname.6 In two families of the so -called "Guinea" community of Barbour and Taylor Counties, West Virginia, 102 of 112 marriages from 1856-1931 were to other persons in the racial isolate (about 11 surnames).7

Presumably as a result of such close marrying practices, genetically determined diseases and defects of unusual frequency have been reported among a number of the triracial isolates. The Jackson Whites of New Jersey have long been noted for albinism and polydactylism.8 Some of the Moors of Delaware suffer from microphthalmia9, and hereditary deformities of the joints are reported among the West Virginia mixed bloods.10

The most notable evidences of inbreeding and hereditary difficulties have been reported for an isolate in Southern Maryland termed colloquially, "Wesorts." These people number about 4,000, including those in Washington, D.C., of whom at least one-fourth bear one surname, with a dozen names accounting for most of the rest of the population. An excellent measure of consanguinity in the group is provided by the fact that at least 90 percent are Roman Catholic and ecclesiastical dispensation is required by that faith for marriages of known first or second cousins. In one major parish over a 104-year period, one sixth of the marriages involving at least one Wesort required such a dispensation.11

The Indian tribes of Southern Maryland left the area before the end of the 17th century, but some Indians of mixed descent, or married to non-Indians, apparently remained. A triracial group evolved. Some knowledge of the original tribal clan structure was handed down, but the triracial people became part of the larger society as a poor farming and laboring element regarded as colored.

Maintenance of racial separateness by the Maryland group is notable for it has been achieved without the assistance of institutionalized aids such as separate schools and churches. By law the children had to attend the "regular" colored schools. The people have attended the same churches as the general population but for a long period sat by custom in a particular section of the church.

The Wesorts are variable in appearance, including substantial variation within sibships. In general, they are somewhat darker than most of the other triracial peoples, and Negroid hair forms and facial features are not uncommon. However, some can pass as white and as a group they are distinctly lighter and more Caucasian than the neighboring Negro population, which itself has a substantial infusion of white ancestry. Some are pointed out as showing Indian characteristics.

In 1945 Gilbert, a cultural anthropologist, reported on the group and mentioned hereditary difficulties ascribed to it.12 About three years ago, the existence of the group as a distinct breeding population and the widespread incidence of hereditary disease within it were first recognized by medical researchers through admissions to Washington hospitals. An intensive survey of the population was subsequently undertaken under the sponsorship of the National Institutes of health and is still in progress. Results reported from this work indicate exceptionally high incidence of dentinogenisis imperfecta and albinism.13 The former is a dental defect, transmitted as a simple dominant gene, which has various manifestations. It is an unsightly affliction and commonly results in the necessity for full artificial dentures in early adulthood. Many other hereditary conditions such as lop ears, polycystic kidneys, deaf mutism, glaucoma, syndactylism, polydactylism, congenital cataracts, convergent and divergent strabismus (nonparalytic eye squint), and hyperstatic bone disease have been found in the group and are being assessed. Two or more of the conditions often occur in the same person. "Due to several centuries of in-marriage, many genetically recessive traits have become manifest and many genetically dominant traits have become concentrated in certain lines of the clan."14 Fertility is high notwithstanding the heavy load of inheritable handicaps. Cohorts of women of recently completed childbearing averaged better than five and one-half children per female beginning life in the cohort.

It may be that the intensity of inbreeding and notable constellation of hereditary effects evident among the Wesort group will be found to represent the extreme example of such conditions in the Indian-white-Negro isolates.15 In any event, it illustrates persuasively the attention which American triracial isolates merit from geneticists, and which, strangely, they have not previously received.

The statistics in Table 1 show the location, size, and racial status in the 1950 Population Census records of nearly all rural and small town triracial groups know to be still in existence. Folk-names for the groups are also given where known. These data were compiled by the writer while employed by the Bureau of the Census, in order to appraise the results of the Bureau's efforts to introduce consistency into the classification of triracial isolates. In past censuses, variation in the listing of such groups had produced obvious inconsistencies in race statistics from one census to another. In 1950, the Bureau instructed enumerators to "Report persons of mixed white, Negro, and Indian ancestry living in certain communities in the Eastern United States in terms of the name by which they are locally known."16 Such persons were then to be classified for publication purposes among "other nonwhite races," that is, other than Negro, American Indian, Chinese, Japanese, or Filipino.

In 116 counties checked, the population of triracial character was estimated at 77,000 persons, on the basis of race entries, enumerators' notes, and through the use of extensive surname data on th4e groups assembled from a variety of sources. Of this number, 33,000 were enumerated as Indian, 29,000 as white, 14,000 as Negro, and 1,000 under colloquial race names or with the race entry blank. More than 40 percent of the total live in North Carolina. It was not feasible to make the investigation in cities of more than 20,000 inhabitants. Undoubtedly all of the groups have made some contribution to urban migration, but it is the native rural environment that status as a separate race or endogamous group is most common.

Relatively few instances were noted in the 1950 Census records where enumerators employed colloquial race terms, although there was an increase from previous censuses in the use of "Indian" as the race name for triracial people. On reflection, it is not surprising that colloquial terms were not employed more freely by the enumerators. They exist for the great majority of the groups but are usually offensive to the people so-termed. Examples include: Croatan, Brass Ankle, Red Bone, Red leg, Free Jack, Bushwhacker, Dominicker, Guinea, and Issue. Common politeness or self-interest may have led many enumerators to list groups as Indian or white. Field investigations by the writer and others substantiate that certain of the communities have acquired a public status as white or Indian even though they continue to be regarded informally as having some Negro ancestry. In the numerous instances where the racial status of an isolate has not been static - at least as reflected in census records - the direction of change over the years seems invariably to have gone toward a lighter classification. For example, the so-called "Melungeon" people were commonly listed as mulatto prior to the Civil War. In various censuses after the war Melungeons in many counties were classified as Indian. By 1950, all but a very few of them were listed as white and are known to be accepted officially as part of the white population in their local areas.

Fertility rates in the triracial isolates appear to be exceptionally high. Reliable inferences can be drawn on this subject for those Southern groups who were tabulated in the published reports of the 1950 Census as "other nonwhite races." This population of 33,000 includes the majority of mixed bloods who were listed as Indian or by a colloquial term in the original schedules but few who were listed as white or Negro. The ratio of children under 5 years old per 1,000 rural women 15 to 49 years old among these people was 825 (standardized for age to distribution of total United States women).17 This is nearly double the ratio of 417 for total women in the nation. It also exceeds the high fertility ratios of the rural Spanish-speaking population of the Southwest (755) and the Negro rural-farm population of the South (771). In fact it is the highest fertility ration for 1950 known to the writer for any racial or ethnic group in the United States.

When translated into its potential for yields an estimated generation replacement index of 259 percent per 100 women. In other words, under continuation of fertility and morality conditions current in 1945-1950, the triracial population would increase by over two and one-half times in the course of each generation. Such a rapid increase is no longer containable in the rural homelands of the groups. It portends a wider distribution for them in the future and growing contacts in urban settings with people unacquainted with their curious history. In several large cities to which migration has tended to cluster and form a visible social group, as many immigrant peoples have done before them. However, the clannish aspect of their lives seems ultimately to weaken, and marriage outside the group begins. Meanwhile, as definable population groups of large family size, developed from relatively few family lines, and still practicing close marriage, the triracial groups offer unusual opportunities for the study of genetic diseases and factors affecting the persistence of population isolates.

1. Bureau of the Census, 1950, Enumerator's Reference Manual, 1950 Census of Population, Washington, D. C.: Government Printing Office.

2. Bureau of the Census, 1953. Nonwhite Population by Race, 1950. United States Census of Population - Special Reports. Washington, D. C.: Government Printing Office.

3. Craig, H. S. 1934. Cumberland County (New Jersey) Marriages. Privately published.

4. Gilbert, W. H., Jr. 1945. The Wesorts of Southern Maryland: An Outcasted Group. J. Wash. Acad. Sc. 35: 237-246.

5. _____. 1946. Mixed Bloods of the Upper Monongahela Valley, West Virginia. J. Wash. Acad. Sc. 36: 1-13.

6. _____. 1949. Surviving Indian Groups of the Eastern United States. The Smithsonian Report for 1948. Washington, D. C.: Government Printing Office.

7. Hursey, R. J., Jr., Witkop, C. J., Jr., Miklashek, Doris, and Sackett, L. M. 1956. Dentinogenisis Imperfecta in a Racial Isolate with Multiple Hereditary Defects. Oral Surg., Oral Med., and Oral Path. 9: 641-658.

8. Snedecor, S. T. and Harryman, W. K. Surgical Problems in Hereditary Polydactylism and Syndactylism. 1940. J. Med Soc. New Jersey, XXXVII, 443-449.

9. Weller, George. 1938. The Jackson Whites. New Yorker. 14: No. 31: 29-39.

10. Weslager, C. A. 1945. Delaware's Forgotten Folk. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

1 Excluded from the category described are Indian tribes such as the Narragansett, Shinnecock, or Pamunkey, who absorbed both white and Negro blood, but retained their tribal identity and historical continuity.

2 The most widespread surname among triracial groups has been documented by the writer and others in at least 36 counties of seven states. This is the name Goins and variations thereof.

3 Settlements in Cumberland and Salem Counties, New Jersey, and Darke County, Ohio, are definite exceptions to this generalization.

4 Some groups account for brunette skin coloration by tradition of descent from shipwrecked sailors of Portuguese, Spanish, or Moorish origin. Open acknowledgement of partial Negro descent has been made in a few groups through such means as affiliation with Negro church denominations.

5 Data abstracted for family from State archives.

6 Cumberland County (New Jersey) Marriages, compiled by H. Stanley Craig, 1934.

7 "Mixed Bloods of the Upper Monongahela Valley, West Virginia, " by William Harlan Gilbert, Jr., Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences, Vol. 36, No. 1, January 15, 1946, pp. 1-13.

8 "Surgical Problems in Hereditary Polydactylism and Syndactylism," by Spencer T. Snedecor and William B. Harryman, Journal of the Medical Society of New Jersey, Vol. XXXVII, No. 9, September 1940, pp. 443-449; "The Jackson Whites, " by George Weller, New Yorker, Vol. 14, No 31, September 17, 1938, pp. 29-39.

9 Delaware's Forgotten Folk, by C. A. Weslager, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1943, pp. 15-16.

10 "Surviving Indian Groups of the Eastern United States," by William Harlan Gilbert, Jr. The Smithsonian Report for 1948, Government Printing Office, 1949, pp. 431.

11 Unpublished data furnished to this writer

12 "The Wesorts of Southern Maryland: An Outcasted Group," by William Harlan Gilbert, Jr., Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences, Vol. 33, No. 8, August 15, 1945, pp. 237-247.

13 "Dentinogenisis Imperfecta in a Racial Isolate with Multiple Hereditary Defects," by Rudolph J. Hursey, Jr., Carl J. Witkop, Jr., Doris Miklashek, and Lee M. Sackett, Oral Surgery, Oral Medicine, and Oral Pathology, Vol. 9, No. 6, pp. 641-658.

14 Ibid, p. 642.

15 Reconnaissance work in other localities, planned by Dr. Witkop and the writer, may determine whether this is true.

16 Enumerator's Reference Manual, 1950 Census of the United States, United States Department of Commerce, Washington, D. C., N. D. Page 34.

17 All fertility ratios cited are computed from reports of the 1950 Census of Population. Statistics by age and sex for "other nonwhite races" are found in the Special Report, Nonwhite Population by Race, Government Printing Office, 1953, table 7. In the rural South, persons of triracial description comprise about 97 percent of the "other nonwhite races" population.

Estimated Population of Reputed Indian-White-Negro Racial Isolates of the Eastern United States, by State and County, 1950.

A subsequent field survey by Witkop and associates shows this number to be low by at least 1,000.

by Calvin L. Beale
American Anthropologist 74 (1972): 704-710 1

Mention is made of the decreasing proportion of endogamous marriages in recent times. The essentially rural nature of these racial isolates is pointed out, and the general societal trend of rural depopulation is stated to be affecting their size and continued existence. A suggested list of research needs is offered.

In about 1890, a young Tennessee woman asked a state legislator, “Please tell me what is a Melungeon?” “A Melungeon,” 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 Republican ticket” (Dromgoole 18901: 473).

The young woman, Will Allen Dromgoole, soon sought out the Melungeons in remote Hancock County and lived with them for awhile to determine for herself what they were. 2 Afterward, in the space of a ten page article, she described them as “shiftless,” “idle,” “illiterate,” “thieving,” “defiant,” “distillers of brandy,” “lawless,” “close,” “rogues,” “suspicious,” “inhospitable,” “untruthful,” “cowardly,” “sneaky,” “exceedingly immoral,” and “unforgiving.” She also spoke of their “cupidity and cruelty,” and ended her work by concluding, “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.” (Dromgoole1891:479). Miss Dromgoole was essentially a sympathetic observer.

The existence of mixed racial populations that constitute a distinctive segment of society is not unique to the United States --- needless to say. But this nation must rank near the top in the number of such communities and in their general public obscurity. I refer in particular to groups of real or alleged White-Indian-Negro mixtures (such as the Melungeons) who are not tribally affiliated or traceable with historical continuity to a particular tribe. It is also logical to include a few groups of White-Negro origin that lack the Indian component. The South in particular is rich in such population strains, with all states except Arkansas and Oklahoma having such groups at present or within the twentieth century. (And I would not be surprised to be contradicted on my exception of those two states.)

They are found in the Tidewater areas, the interior Coastal Plain, the Piedmont, the Appalachians, and in the Allegheny-Cumberland Plateaus. They may be Protestant or catholic, of Anglo provenance or French-Spanish. Their mixture may have originated in the area of residence, or they may have come in as racially mixed people. Some are landless, some landed. But they are all marginal men – wary until recently of being Black, aspiring where possible to be White, and subject to rejection and scorn on either hand.

Many themes classically connected with racial marginality occur repeatedly in the history of the groups, such as (to repeat Dromgoole only in part): illegitimate origin; the use of stigmatic group names by the general society; proscription from social intercourse with others on terms of equality; and in particular barriers to upward out-marriage or attendance at White schools; a reputation for violence, drunkenness, and crimes of passion within the group, and for petty thievery against outsiders; the ascription of beauty and sexual attractiveness to the women of the group when young; a reputation for laziness, illiteracy, poverty, and inbreeding; a relegation of settlement to the least desirable land (hilly, sandy, swampy, backwoods); and a preference to withdraw from public attention. These are stereotypes, of course, and exceptions to their validity as public images occur, especially with respect to the mulatto or colored Creole groups of the Gulf Coast.

At least a few of the groups clearly originated in the period well before the Revolution – even in the seventeenth century in Maryland and Virginia. They do not seem to be viewed in public records as communities or elements in society until after the Revolution. Gradually during the nineteenth century, and continuing to the present day, they came to local public notice in one way or another as individual groups, but usually with no recognition of the fact that such communities have been a common phenomenon throughout the East and South. Questions relating to legal racial status, jury duty, voting, taxation, schools, inheritance, census enumeration, civil disorder, crime, and health have been prominent among issues that have brought public attention. Some examples from different times and places follow.

In 1791, the Turks of South Carolina petitioned the legislature to be recognized as White and not as free Negroes. Somewhat later their right to sit on juries was challenged and their patron, General Thomas Sumter, vouched for them (Kaye 1953: 153).

In 1823, another South Carolina group with such classic triracial surnames as Locklear, Oxendine, Chavis, and Sweat was reported as delinquent in taxes but difficult to find because “of the peculiar situation of their place of residence.” (Price 1953:153).

In Mobile, a Creole Fire Company was organized in 1819 and remained independent well into the present century. 3

In 1840-41, North Carolina legislative papers describe how, “The County of Robeson is cursed with a free colored population that migrated originally from the districts around the Roanoke and Neuse Rivers…Having no regard for character they are under no restraint but what the law imposes. They are great topers, and so long as they can procure the exhilarating draught seem to forget entirely the comfort of their families.” 4

In 1842, a member of a group in present day Vinton County, Ohio, that I have heard referred to only as “the half breeds,” sued the township trustees for refusing him the right to vote because he was partly of Negro ancestry. He lost his suit at the county court level but won a reversal in the state supreme court (Thacker vs. Hawk).

In 1856, voting by the free colored people (present day Red Bones) of Ten Mile Creek Precinct in what is now Allen Parish, Louisiana, became a source of public concern. Several were tried for illegal voting – for free Negroes did not have the franchise – but they were acquitted when their colored ancestry could not be proven and the judge would not permit the jury to evaluate them by their appearance (Shugg 1936).

In 1857, Frederic Law Olmstead noted and publicized in his book Journey Through Texas the skirmishes and murders that took place in the Sabine country of east Texas between the “Moderators” and “Regulators” based on friction with the local mixed bloods of Louisiana Red Bone origin (Olmstead 1959: 164-166).

In 1860, the census taker in Calhoun County, Florida, noted, “The Free Negroes in this county are mixed blooded, almost white, and have intermarried with a low class of whites. Have no trade, occupation or town of their own. Their personal property consists of cattle and hogs. They make no produce except corn, peas, and potatoes and very little of that. They are a lazy, indolent, and worthless race” (Free Inhabitants Census 1860). This was the Dead Lake or Scott’s Ferry group, of South Carolina tri-racial origin.

During the Civil War and Reconstruction era, Henry Berry Lowry, a folk-hero of the group now known as the Lumbee Indians, led a band of fugitives and outlaws in Robeson County, North Carolina. Disorder requiring Federal troops continued for some years until Lowry and others were killed (Rights 1947).

In the mid-1880s, this group was provided with separate schools and Indian status by the state – beginning a procedure that spread to several other groups (Ibid).

In 1930-31, the Virginia Registrar of Vital Statistics endeavored to prevent mixed bloods from being accepted as Indians in the U. S. Census. The Bureau declined to change the original returns, but footnoted the published results of the Virginia census in four counties to note that the count of Indians, “includes a number of persons whose classification as Indians has been questioned.” This included the Amherst County “Issues” and several of the groups that the anthropologist Frank Speck had concluded were the mixed survivors of the Powhatan Confederacy.

During the 1950s, the Wesorts of Southern Maryland came to the attention of physicians and dentists in the Washington area because of one of the most serious ands varied complexes of genetic diseases and anomalies ever recorded. 6

In September 1969, a number of Indian (Brass Ankle) parents in Dorchester County, South Carolina, were arrested for attempting to enroll their children in a public school other than the small segregated one that had traditionally been provided them. 7

The establishment of separate schools for the racial isolates was a major factor in maintaining group identity. Typically, the mixed bloods were denied enrollment in white schools and declined to attend Negro schools. In some states, separate public schools were provided for them. This was particularly true in North Carolina where the ultimate in triracial school systems was created – one that included a separate college. In other areas, only the operation of mission schools by churches provided any educational facilities at all. Disputes over the racial background of children attempting to enter either local white schools or the separate schools were common.

So long as segregated public schools were permitted, and so long as small rural elementary schools were common and high school education was not often sought, the separate school pattern was feasible. But in recent decades, the school situation of the mixed-blood communities has changed rapidly, sometimes through law suits, sometimes without. Most of the mission schools have been closed or made part of the public system. Most of the rural one and two room schools have been consolidated into larger integrated schools. Conditions have changed so steadily that without an up-to-the-minute survey it is impossible to speak definitively about the extent of separate schooling that still exists. Essentially it is no longer a characteristic of mixed racial communities.

Where separate schools have been closed, the church is usually the only formal social arrangement that continues to reflect the existence of a mixed racial community, and that reinforces the endogamous marriage patterns of the past. Church separatism has never been complete and is probably declining, but there are still many examples of congregations comprised entirely or largely of mixed racial populations.

Interest in the racial isolates by anthropologists began in the late nineteenth century, stimulated, I should say, by the emergence of the Robeson County, North Carolina, people as Croatan Indians and the suggestion of their descent from the Lost Colony. At the Smithsonian, James Mooney conducted a mail inquiry through postmasters in 1889 in Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina seeking information on people of reputed Indian descent. He received responses that related not only to the Powhatan tribes that seem to have been his principal interest, but that also identified the Wesorts, the Guineas of western Maryland, the Amherst County Issues, and the group that later emerged as the North Carolina Haliwa. It is unfortunate that someone could not have followed up all of Mooney’s leads at the time, for it was more than a half-century later before Gilbert produced the first scientific inquiries into the Wesorts and Guineas, and another ten years before I and others visited the Haliwa. Mooney’s replies, incidentally, are still on file at the Smithsonian.

Frank Speck followed in the 1920s and later with extensive inquiry into the eastern Virginia groups – usually regarded as Negroes locally – who appeared to show authentic evidence of Indian origin though cultural survivals. But perhaps because of the tribalized Indian focus of American anthropology, very little later anthropological work dealt with the mixed racial isolates. Sociologists, educators, journalists, geographers, and local historians gave some attention to the groups, and more lately genetic research and accounts by the members of the isolates themselves have appeared.

In terms of today’s research needs, it is already a generation too late to pursue some of the questions that would have been relevant earlier. Some of the smaller groups have for all practical purposes disappeared. The practice or knowledge of handicrafts or of distinctive food habits, hunting practices, or folkways is gone or rapidly disappearing. Increasing outmarriage makes meaningful genetic studies less feasible. And the abolition of legal segregation reduces the likelihood of the groups continuing as separate and readily identifiable elements of local society.

But there is still worthwhile research to be undertaken, whether one is satisfied with knowledge for its own sake or insists on socially significant inquiries. I would suggest the following topics relating to Southern groups as relatively untouched by research or in need of a modern appraisal:

(1) The Goins family. Beyond a doubt, the surname Goins (with its many variations in spelling) is the most widespread and one of the oldest and most reliably indicative surnames of tri-racial origin in the United States. I have documented its existence among mixed bloods in more than thirty-five counties of seven states. The Goinses were mixed in Colonial days in Virginia, and both of the Carolinas. The name is found today among the Lumbee, the Melungeons, the Smilings, the Red Bones, the Ohio Guineas, and in various other parts of Ohio, Tennessee and North Carolina where none of these terms are used. Some are White, some Indian, and some Negro, in current status. An investigation of the Goinses, their origins and traditions, their dispersal through the South and the old Northwest territory and their status today would touch almost the whole fabric of the tri-racial phenomenon.

(2) Socio-psychological studies of the mixed blood people. The precarious social acceptance of the mixed bloods by the White, Negro, or Indian elements of society has created problems of psychological insecurity for many of them that the average person never experiences. Berry touches on this issue in his work, but a study focusing on it is needed (Berry 1963: 212).

(3) Gulf Coast Creoles. Other than Horace Mann Bond’s valuable article of nearly forty years ago (Bond 1931), I have not seen work on the Creole populations of the Gulf Coast (Mississippi, Mobile Bay, Pensacola). These people of French-Spanish and Negro origin have an interesting history, a comparatively high degree of social stability, and respectability in the eyes of the Whites; and considerable documentation is available on their origins and social history. A general research treatment on any one of these groups would be both interesting and useful.

(4) The Tennessee groups outside Hancock County. Most all work relating to Tennessee has focused on the Hancock County Melungeons. But there are a number of other areas in Tennessee where unstudied tri-racial groups are found – sometimes related in the past to the Hancock County people and usually derived from mixed blood origins in the Carolinas or Virginia. In addition, an unrelated Tennessee group of White and Indian descent known as the Upper Cumberland River Cherokee has surfaced in the last several years in Scott County and adjoining McCreary County, Kentucky, asserting its Indianess in a rather vigorous way to officials in Washington.

(5) The Red Bones of Louisiana and Texas deserve research attention. Given the number of people and counties involved, it is surprising that they have not received more. Or perhaps it is not surprising, in view of the sensitivity of the population to the subject of origins.

(6) The Smilings of Robeson County, North Carolina are of particular interest for their interplay is not only with the White and Negro populations but also with the surrounding Lumbee people from whom they appear not to have received full acceptance. The groups has an antebellum origin in Sumter County, South Carolina, but migrated to Robeson. What were the circumstances that impelled this long established population to leave, but that did not affect the Sumter County Turks similarly?

I have not mentioned specific studies of a more conventional anthropological nature, such as Indian cultural survivals or linguistic studies, but here, too, there are still positive results to be obtained, if I may judge from the recent fieldwork in several groups by Claude Medford (personal communication), or Everett’s study of language among the Clifton red Bone community in Louisiana (Everett 1958).

In 1950, I estimated the tri-racial isolates in their rural and small town settings to number 75,000 people I do not think the number is less today, primarily because of the growth of the Lumbee. But many of the isolates – particularly those of non-Indian status – can be said to be in a process of decline or even dissolution. They have with a few exceptions been rural communities, and in the last half century have experienced the same heavy outmigration to a variety of urban destinations as have rural people in general. Thus despite typically high fertility, many of the isolates have dwindled in size. The special racial status is not generally transferred in a group context to urban environments. Secondly, the frequency of outmarriage and assimilation into either the White or Negro populations has greatly increased. I have found this in every group whose marriage records I have examined. 3 Harte has rather thoroughly documented it for the Maryland Wesorts (Harte 1959: 218).

Given this trend, I think the odds are against the survival of groups that do not have a concentrated core of at least several hundred members and that are no longer distinctly different in appearance or status from the local White or Negro populations. Both severe lack of local economic opportunity or rapid local population growth seem to militate against group survival. In the first instance, the population disperses to seek opportunity elsewhere, and in the latter case the intrusion of other people or changes in employment and residential patterns facilitate a breakdown in cohesion.

It will be interesting to observe the fate of the Lumbee in the future, for in this case the local numbers of people involved are large (26,000 in Robeson County in 1970, and 7,000 in nine nearby counties). The local tobacco economy is under some strain, but with an acceptable official social status as Indian, a large pool of potential marriage partners, a fair amount of non-agricultural job opportunities, and a fund of history and legend in which to have some pride, this group – along with several others – may well continue indefinitely in its local setting, although surely not without change.

In terms of today’s research needs, it is already a generation too late to pursue some of the questions that would have been relevant earlier. Some of the smaller groups have for all practical purposes disappeared. The practice or knowledge of handicrafts or of distinctive food habits, hunting practices, or folkways is gone or rapidly disappearing. Increasing outmarriage makes meaningful genetic studies less feasible. And the abolition of legal segregation reduces the likelihood of the groups continuing as separate and readily identifiable elements of local society.

But there is still worthwhile research to be undertaken, whether one is satisfied with knowledge for its own sake or insists on socially significant inquiries. I would suggest the following topics relating to Southern groups as relatively untouched by research or in need of a modern appraisal:

(1) The Goins family. Beyond a doubt, the surname Goins (with its many variations in spelling) is the most widespread and one of the oldest and most reliably indicative surnames of tri-racial origin in the United States. I have documented its existence among mixed bloods in more than thirty-five counties of seven states. The Goinses were mixed in Colonial days in Virginia, and both of the Carolinas. The name is found today among the Lumbee, the Melungeons, the Smilings, the Red Bones, the Ohio Guineas, and in various other parts of Ohio, Tennessee and North Carolina where none of these terms are used. Some are White, some Indian, and some Negro, in current status. An investigation of the Goinses, their origins and traditions, their dispersal through the South and the old Northwest territory and their status today would touch almost the whole fabric of the tri-racial phenomenon.

(2) Socio-psychological studies of the mixed blood people. The precarious social acceptance of the mixed bloods by the White, Negro, or Indian elements of society has created problems of psychological insecurity for many of them that the average person never experiences. Berry touches on this issue in his work, but a study focusing on it is needed (Berry 1963: 212).

(3) Gulf Coast Creoles. Other than Horace Mann Bond’s valuable article of nearly forty years ago (Bond 1931), I have not seen work on the Creole populations of the Gulf Coast (Mississippi, Mobile Bay, Pensacola). These people of French-Spanish and Negro origin have an interesting history, a comparatively high degree of social stability, and respectability in the eyes of the Whites; and considerable documentation is available on their origins and social history. A general research treatment on any one of these groups would be both interesting and useful.

(4) The Tennessee groups outside Hancock County. Most all work relating to Tennessee has focused on the Hancock County Melungeons. But there are a number of other areas in Tennessee where unstudied tri-racial groups are found – sometimes related in the past to the Hancock County people and usually derived from mixed blood origins in the Carolinas or Virginia. In addition, an unrelated Tennessee group of White and Indian descent known as the Upper Cumberland River Cherokee has surfaced in the last several years in Scott County and adjoining McCreary County, Kentucky, asserting its Indianess in a rather vigorous way to officials in Washington.

(5) The Red Bones of Louisiana and Texas deserve research attention. Given the number of people and counties involved, it is surprising that they have not received more. Or perhaps it is not surprising, in view of the sensitivity of the population to the subject of origins.

(6) The Smilings of Robeson County, North Carolina are of particular interest for their interplay is not only with the White and Negro populations but also with the surrounding Lumbee people from whom they appear not to have received full acceptance. The groups has an antebellum origin in Sumter County, South Carolina, but migrated to Robeson. What were the circumstances that impelled this long established population to leave, but that did not affect the Sumter County Turks similarly?

I have not mentioned specific studies of a more conventional anthropological nature, such as Indian cultural survivals or linguistic studies, but here, too, there are still positive results to be obtained, if I may judge from the recent fieldwork in several groups by Claude Medford (personal communication), or Everett’s study of language among the Clifton Red Bone community in Louisiana (Everett 1958).

In 1950, I estimated the tri-racial isolates in their rural and small town settings to number 75,000 people I do not think the number is less today, primarily because of the growth of the Lumbee. But many of the isolates – particularly those of non-Indian status – can be said to be in a process of decline or even dissolution. They have with a few exceptions been rural communities, and in the last half century have experienced the same heavy outmigration to a variety of urban destinations as have rural people in general. Thus despite typically high fertility, many of the isolates have dwindled in size. The special racial status is not generally transferred in a group context to urban environments. Secondly, the frequency of outmarriage and assimilation into either the White or Negro populations has greatly increased. I have found this in every group whose marriage records I have examined. 3 Harte has rather thoroughly documented it for the Maryland Wesorts (Harte 1959: 218).

Given this trend, I think the odds are against the survival of groups that do not have a concentrated core of at least several hundred members and that are no longer distinctly different in appearance or status from the local White or Negro populations. Both severe lack of local economic opportunity or rapid local population growth seem to militate against group survival. In the first instance, the population disperses to seek opportunity elsewhere, and in the latter case the intrusion of other people or changes in employment and residential patterns facilitate a breakdown in cohesion.

It will be interesting to observe the fate of the Lumbee in the future, for in this case the local numbers of people involved are large (26,000 in Robeson County in 1970, and 7,000 in nine nearby counties). The local tobacco economy is under some strain, but with an acceptable official social status as Indian, a large pool of potential marriage partners, a fair amount of non-agricultural job opportunities, and a fund of history and legend in which to have some pride, this group – along with several others – may well continue indefinitely in its local setting, although surely not without change.

1 Prepared for presentation at the annual meeting of the Southern Anthropological Society, Athens, Georgia, April 9, 1970.

2 I have used the modern spelling, Melungeon, except where quoting Dromgoole.

3 Information from present day Creoles.

4 Manuscript, North Carolina Legislative Reports (Robeson County).

5 Correspondence files of the Bureau of the Census; see also The Indian Populations of the United States 1937:20

6Various published studies of the research work led by Cark J. Witkop, Jr., of the National Institute of Health.

7 See Charleston Evening Post, various issues beginning September 19, 1969.

8 I refer to groups such as the Pools of Pennsylvania, the Amherst and Rockbridge County Issues, the Shifletts, the Poquoson and Skeetertown groups of Virginia, the Dead Lake Group in Florida, the Cane River Mulattoes and Natchitoches Red Bones of Louisiana, and the Mobile area Creoles.

Berry, Brewton, 1963, Almost White. New York: Macmillan,

Bond, Horace Mann, 1931, “Two Racial Islands of Alabama.” American Journal of Sociology 36:552-567.

Dromgoole, Will Allen, 1891, “The Malungeons.” The Arena 3:470-479

Everett, Russell, 1958, “The Speech of the Tri-Racial Group Comprising the Community of Clifton, Louisiana.” Master’s thesis, Louisiana State University.

Free inhabitants, 1860 Census, Florida 1860. National Archives 1:129.

Harte, Thomas J., 1959, “Trends in Mate Selection in a Tri-Racial Isolate.’ Social Forces 37 (3):215-221.

Indian Population of the United States and Alaska 1930, 1937 Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Kaye, Ira, 1963, “The Turks.” New South; June.

Olmstead, Frederic Law, 1959, The Slave States New York: Putnam’s Sons.

Price, Edward T., 1953, “A Geographical Analysis of White-Negro-Indian Racial Mixtures in the Eastern Unites States.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 43(2): 138-155.

Rights, Douglas L., 1947, The American Indian in North Carolina. Durham: Duke University Press.

Thacker vs. Hawk, 1887, Ohio Reports 11:337

Shugg, Roger W., 1936, “Negro Voting in the Antebellum South.” Journal of Negro History 21 (4): 357-384.