The mixed racial heritage in the American South East originated in the 17th labor system of the Virginia colony. The initial labor system in Virginia involved the use of indentured servants. The original Virginia economy was based on Tobacco farming, and tobacco is a labor intensive crop. The system of Indentured service existed in England, and became the basis for the first labor system in the United States. An indentured servant is a person who is contracted to work for a given period of time. There are obligations on both sides of the contract. The way the Virginia system worked was for a young man in England to sign a contract for servitude. The young man was then transported to Virginia, and the contract for his service was sold, usually to a farmer. Fairly early on, people who were not English got involved in the system. We have records of Black Africans being sold in Virginia in 1619. Now the first Africans in Virginia would have been regarded as indentured servants, rather than chattel slaves. Native Americans were also brought into the system early on, in considerable numbers. Finally, a number of Asians appear to have been indentured servants in Virginia or Maryland. Thus we have in the bonded servant class of Virginia individuals of extremely diverse backgrounds. The question thus concerns to what extent did these individuals contribute to the gene pool, and whose gene pool did they contribute too?
We know that indentured servants were more likely to be men than women. Thus the servant as servant of as freed man, would be concerned to find a wife. Women were scarce in colonial Virginia. Native women however were available, both among the bonded servants and among native Americans who continued to live in proximity and within predominately European communities of Virginia. In addition, some black and anglo women were also present in the bonded servant class. Thus we have a condition in which a newly freed bondsman who wished to find a wife, would have few English Women to chose from. Native America women who either lived as bonds women, or lived in proximity to white Virginias were also spousal candidates. In addition, the more adventuresome of the newly freed bondsmen might have another option by which a native wife might be acquired. Travel among more distant Native American communities, either in trade or as hunters could have brought the adventuresome former bondsman into contact with available native women.
The warlike habits of some native tribes like the Cherokees, meant that men often died in war. Thus nubile Cherokee women were in surplus. The Cherokee tribal leadership were extremely sophisticated people who had a demographic policy. Southeastern tribes had been decimated by disease, war and slavery during the the 17th and 18th century. Many tribes had broken up under the pressure. The Cherokees had suffered a population decline due to disease, but realized that they could augment tribal numbers by integrating people who came their way into the tribe. They did this by assimilating the broken remains of Southeastern tribes into the Cherokee nation. People of African ancestry were added to that number, first as frees bondsmen and escaped slaves, but later as slaves. In addition to the tribalization of many husbands of Cherokee Women, some Cherokee women left the tribe to join their husbands in white communities.
Thus from the very start, a society of freed formerly bonded servants in Virginia and later in other parts of the southeast, emerged in which race was not a factor in finding a spouse, or in determination of kind folks. Skin color played a lesser role in the determiniation of social identity than is usually assumed to be the case. Europeans, Native peoples and people of African ancestry did intermarry, and kinship by marriage was recognized. Racial lines were not fixed as later became the case. Thus people of mixed ancestry could form communities with people of purely European ancestry. In addition, thousands and perhaps tens of thousands of European and Afrucan-Americans were related to the Cherokee and other tribes by recognizable lines of kinship including ancestry. By intermarrying with people of both European and African ancestry, the Cherokees had defined themselves as a people who were native by language and tradition, but not entirely by ancestry. And even as the adopted people into the tribe, the Cherokees increasingly adopted customs, ideas and economic patterns. What set the Cherokees and the other "civilized tribes" of the Southeast apart from other native communities, was their dynamic response to their changing circumstances, as European "civilization" increasingly encroached on the land. The Cherokees were able to adapt because they recognized the limits of the otherness of others.
The mixed racial heritage of East Tennessee was never entirely lost for several reasons. The East Tennessee economy was relatively underdeveloped at the time of the Civil War. Because it was different, East Tennessee did not adopt the Southern Labor system. Labor in East Tennessee was free labor, and thus East Tennessee was more open to the Party of free labor after the Civil War, that is East Tennessee became after 1865 forever Republican. Kinship played a more important role in East Tennessee than status. Thus the ancestry of kinfolk was secondary to the kinship. Thirdly, people lived together in community without sorting each other out by race.
It is my contention then that racial mixing in the South East, and by South East I would include, Virginia, Kentucky, Noerth Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Georgia was common from the 17th century onward, and that by the middle of the 19th century large numbers of people who were identified by their communities as "white" actually had mixed ancestry. This was common knowledge in some but by no means all South Eastern communities.
Among the people of mixed ancestry in East Tennessee, only the Melugeons appeared to have acquired a seperate identity. Yet it is clearly questionable if Melugeons were ever thought of as distinctly "other" by their neighbors. I knew individuals who carried distinctive Melugeon names in the Cumberland Mountain areas of Anderson and Campbell Counties in Tennessee some 40 years ago. In a period of less awareness, I was simply never aware of identity issues. But at sometime starting in the early 19th century and extending into the early 20th century, such issues arose from time to time. Indeed by the Mid 20th century, the Melugeons were not were not physical "others" at all. Generations of intermarriage with "White" neighbors had removed all but the slightest hint of non-European ancestry.
I suspect that the very notion of a separate Melugeon identity was a part of a dodge. People became Melugeons so that they would not be labeled something else. The Melugeons clearly did not want to be identified as either Native Americans or as people of African ancestry. The Melugeons were not the only group who engaged in such dodges. The "Lumbee Tribe" of North Carolina, was a group that employed the dodge that they were really Native Americans, rather than people of mixed African Ancestry. Research suggests that the Lumbees, like most Americans with African ancestors have mixed ancestry. The Lumbee ancestors are said to be slightly more African than European, with some native ancestors thrown in, their European heritage comes through their maternal linage. It is not without interest that Johnny M. Hunt, a member of the Limbee tribe was elected this June to be President of a religious body that is closely tied to Southern White identity, the Southern Baptist Convention.
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