The Mystery Man
In 1690, French traders found a settlement in southern appalachia that belonged to the melungeons, mysterious group of people with olive skin and usual facial features who live in log cabins. They were never seen again, until 1784 when Hancock County was visited by John sevier, who discovered a colony of people who appeared to have European features despite their darker skin. They eventually spread out to other parts of the country where they were largely mistreated but nobody knows where they came from
In 1690, French traders unexpectedly came across a mysterious settlement in southern Appalachia. They reported that the people there lived in log cabins and had unusual olive skin and facial features reminiscent of Europeans. Since they resembled the North African merchants that the French had done business with in Europe, they assumed they had stumbled on a colony of Moors.
Nothing more was heard of the strange settlers until 1784, when the frontiersman John Sevier visited what would later be known as Hancock County, Tennessee. Sevier discovered a colony of people he described as having European features and dark skin. Although the settlers themselves claimed to be Portuguese, Sevier apparently did not believe them, also concluding that they were Moors.
By the 1800s, the mysterious settlers had spread out from Tennessee into isolated areas of Virginia and Kentucky. Neighboring communities called them the Melungeons and took every opportunity to degrade and discriminate against them. Appalachian mothers would scare their children with tales of the dark people in the mountains.
The origins of the Melungeons remain unknown. The most common theory is that they are a mixture of white, black, and Native American ancestors. Others have suggested that they are the descendants of the Lost Colony of Roanoke, shipwrecked Portuguese sailors, ancient Phoenician settlers, or even one of the Lost Tribes of Israel. The official census records have varied wildly, labeling the Melungeons as white, Portuguese, Native American, or “mulatto” at different points in history.
In 1999, new evidence emerged that the Melungeons may have been among the earliest Old World settlers in North America. According to Dr. Brent Kennedy, of Virginia’s Wise College, the Melungeons may be the descendants of Ottoman Turks, brought to the new world as servants and abandoned in the area by Sir Francis Drake after he captured them from the Spanish. The term “Melungeon” may have come from “Melunn-Jinn,” Arabic for a cursed soul abandoned by God. Since this is still just a theory, the origins of the Melungeon people remain a mystery.
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