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52-517: The Carmel Indians (pronounced Car'-mul ) are a group of Melungeons who lived in Magoffin County, Kentucky and moved to Highland County, Ohio . Dr. Edward Price observed that the most common surnames among the families were Gibson, Nichols and Perkins. His research found that the ancestors of the group were listed as free people of color on census records. Paternal line descendants of Bryson Gibson and Valentine Collins who participated in

104-653: A " culture of fear " and of "ethical failure." Devaney has also said, "Simply stated, short of a crime, anything goes at the highest levels of the Department of Interior." Launched in June of 2021, the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative intended to investigate federal Indian boarding school policies and multi-generational impacts of trauma on American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian children. Released in two volumes,

156-558: A Native American paternal haplotype . Estes, Goins, Ferguson, and Crain wrote in their 2011 summary "Melungeons, A Multi-Ethnic Population" that the Riddle family is the only Melungeon participant with historical records identifying them as having Native American origins, but their DNA is European. Among the participants, only the Sizemore family is documented as having Native American DNA. "Estes and her fellow researchers "theorize that

208-470: A label applied to Appalachians who were by appearance or reputation of mixed-race ancestry. Although initially pejorative in character, this word has been reclaimed by members of the community. The spelling of the term varied widely, as was common for words and names at the time. According to the 1894 Department of Interior Report of Indians Taxed and not Taxed within the "Tennessee" report, "The civilized (self-supporting) Indians of Tennessee, counted in

260-544: A large number of ahistorical and dubious myths regarding their origins. Some myths involve physical characteristics and genetic diseases that are claimed to indicate Melungeon descent, such as shovel-shaped incisors , an Anatolian bump , Familial Mediterranean fever , polydactyly , dark skin with bright colored eyes , and high cheekbones . Other myths claim that the Melungeons are descendants of lost Spanish colonists, marooned Portuguese sailors, descendants of

312-519: A letter warning against "colored" families trying to pass as "white" or "Indian" in violation of the Racial Integrity Act of 1924. He identified these as being "chiefly Tennessee Melungeons". He directed the offices to reclassify members of certain families as black, causing the loss for numerous families of documentation in records that showed their continued self-identification as being of Native American descent on official forms. In

364-519: A member of Congress for New Mexico, took the oath of office as secretary, becoming the first American Indian to lead an executive department, and the third woman to lead the department. DOI Convocation Honor Award is the most prestigious recognition that can be granted by the department. The following awards are presented at the Honor Awards Convocation: In 2018, DOI established 12 organizational regions to be used across

416-567: A speech in which he said about his staff: "I have a black, a woman, two Jews and a cripple. And we have talent." Under the Administration of President George W. Bush , the Interior Department's maintenance backlog climbed from $ 5 billion to $ 8.7 billion, despite Bush's campaign pledges to eliminate it completely. Of the agency under Bush's leadership, Interior Department Inspector General Earl Devaney has cited

468-559: Is Bryan Newland, an enrolled member of the Bay Mills Indian Community . The department has been the subject of disputes over proper accounting for American Indian Trusts set up to track the income and distribution of monies that are generated by the trust and specific American Indian lands, which the government leases for fees to companies that extract oil, timber, minerals, and other resources. Several cases have sought an accounting of such funds from departments within

520-450: Is Melungeon differ. Historians and genealogists have tried to identify surnames of different Melungeon families. In 1943, Virginia State Registrar of Vital Statistics, Walter Ashby Plecker, identified surnames by county: "Lee, Smyth and Wise: Collins, Gibson, (Gipson), Moore, Goins, Ramsey, Delph, Bunch, Freeman, Mise, Barlow, Bolden (Bolin), Mullins, Hawkins (chiefly Tennessee Melungeons)". In 1992, Virginia DeMarce explored and reported

572-434: Is drawn from colonial tax lists and local court from across Virginia , Maryland , North Carolina , Delaware , and South Carolina . Anthropologist E. Raymond Evans wrote in 1979 regarding Melungeons: "In Graysville, the Melungeons strongly deny their Black heritage and explain their genetic differences by claiming to have had Cherokee grandmothers. Many of the local whites also claim Cherokee ancestry and appear to accept

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624-623: Is the titular protagonist and narrator of Barbara Kingsolver 's Demon Copperhead , which was a co-recipient of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction . The novel takes place primarily in Lee County, Virginia and environs. United States Department of the Interior The United States Department of the Interior ( DOI ) is an executive department of the U.S. federal government responsible for

676-655: The Cherokee , making the Melungeons a branch of the tribe, though no documentation of this event exists. The last male in Micajah's bloodline, Michael Joseph Bullard, died in a swimming accident at the age of 15 in 1991. Many free people of color , white-passing or otherwise, served in the American Civil War on both sides of the conflict. Some served in the Confederate military , though others resisted

728-596: The Goins genealogy as a Melungeon surname. Beginning in the early 19th century, or possibly before, the term Melungeon was applied as a slur to a group of about 40 families along the Tennessee-Virginia border, but it has since become a catch-all phrase for a number of groups of mysterious mixed-race ancestry. Through time the term has changed meanings but often referred to any mixed-race person and, at different times, has referred to 200 different communities across

780-585: The Inquisition , were one of the pre-cursor populations to these groups. Many creoles, once in British America , were able to obtain their freedom and many married into local white families . In the general US census , Melungeon people were enumerated as of the races to which they most resembled. The term Melungeon likely comes from the French word mélange ultimately derived from

832-769: The Melungeon DNA Project belong to Haplogroup E-M2 . The group were listed as free Black and Mulatto in Kentucky prior to the American Civil War . As researcher Paul Heinegg (1997) has documented the ancestry of the majority of the Free Negro population can be traced to African Americans free in Virginia before the American Revolution . He has found that most of these free African Americans were mixed-race children of early unions during

884-679: The Patent Office , part of the Department of State . Walker argued that these and other bureaus should be brought together in a new Department of the Interior. A bill authorizing its creation of the department passed the House of Representatives on February 15, 1849, and spent just over two weeks in the Senate . The department was established on March 3, 1849 (9  Stat.   395 ), the eve of President Zachary Taylor 's inauguration, when

936-535: The US Department of the Interior , in its "Report of Indians Taxed and Not Taxed," under the section "Tennessee" noted: In a number of states small groups of people, preferring the freedom of the woods or the seashore to the confinement of regular labor in civilization, have become in some degree distinct from their neighbors, perpetuating their qualities and absorbing into their number those of like disposition, without preserving very clear racial lines. Such are

988-513: The ancient Israelites or Phoenicians , Romani slaves, or Turkish settlers. From 2005 to 2011, researchers Roberta J. Estes, Jack H. Goins, Penny Ferguson, and Janet Lewis Crain began the Melungeon Core Y-DNA Group online. They interpreted these results in their (2011) paper titled "Melungeons, A Multi-Ethnic Population", which shows that ancestry of the sample is primarily European and African, with one person having

1040-460: The 18th and the early 19th centuries, census enumerators classified them as "mulatto," "other free," or as "free persons of color." Sometimes they were listed as "white" or sometimes as "black" or "negro," or even "Indian." One family described as "Indian" was the Ridley (Riddle) family, as was noted on a 1767 Pittsylvania County, Virginia , tax list. Another tri-racial family described as “Indian”

1092-520: The 20th century, during the Jim Crow era, some Melungeons attended boarding schools in Asheville, North Carolina , Warren Wilson College , and Dorland Institution which integrated earlier than other schools in the southern United States. During the American Revolution , there was purportedly a Melungeon "king" or "chief" named Micajah Bunch (1723–1804). Local folklore claims he intermarried with

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1144-630: The Confederate government, such as Henry Berry Lowry . There is no uniquely Melungeon culture, though specific groups have formed into their own tribal entities on the basis of ancestral connections to historical Native American communities. Due to the lasting impact of colonialism , the decimation of initial contact tribes , and the legacy of American chattel slavery , culturally these mixed-race groups resemble their white settler neighbors in culture, with few exceptions. Melungeon cuisine includes chocolate gravy . Definitions of who

1196-604: The Department of the Interior has a different role from that of the interior ministries of other nations, which are usually responsible for police matters and internal security. In the United States, national security and immigration functions are performed by the Department of Homeland Security primarily and the Department of Justice secondarily. The Department of the Interior has often been humorously called "the Department of Everything Else" because of its broad range of responsibilities. A department for domestic concern

1248-685: The Eastern United States. These have included Van Guilders and Clappers of New York and Lumbees in North Carolina to Creoles in Louisiana. Award-winning genealogist and engineer Paul Heinegg created a website listing some 1,000 family histories of free people of color, categorized by surname and county . Many families regularly denoted as Melungeon are listed throughout his research, as well as other families listed as being Native American, mulatto, and East Indian. Data

1300-586: The Interior James G. Watt faced criticism for his alleged hostility to environmentalism, for his support of the development and use of federal lands by foresting, ranching, and other commercial interests, and for banning the Beach Boys from playing a 1983 Independence Day concert on the National Mall out of concerns of attracting "an undesirable element". His 1983 resignation was prompted by

1352-769: The Interior and Treasury (such as the Minerals Management Service), in what has been a 15-year-old lawsuit. Some American Indian nations have also sued the government over water-rights issues and their treaties with the US. In 2010 Congress passed the Claims Settlement Act of 2010 (Public Law 111-291), which provided $ 3.4 billion for the settlement of the Cobell v. Salazar class-action trust case and four American Indian water rights cases. On March 16, 2021, Deb Haaland , serving at that time as

1404-584: The Interior. Secretary of the Interior Albert B. Fall was implicated in the Teapot Dome scandal of 1921. He was convicted of bribery in 1929, and served one year in prison, for his part in the controversy. A major factor in the scandal was a transfer of certain oil leases from the jurisdiction of the Department of the Navy to that of the Department of the Interior, at Fall's behest. Secretary of

1456-542: The Jacob F. Perkins vs. John R. White, Carter County, July 1855 Abstract of depositions to support her conclusions made about identity and citizenship in 19th-century United States. In 1924, Virginia passed the Racial Integrity Act that codified hypodescent or the " one-drop rule , suggesting that anyone with any trace of African ancestry was legally Black and would fall under Jim Crow laws designed to limit

1508-526: The Latin verb miscēre ("to mix, mingle, intermingle"). It was once a derogatory term, but is used by the Melungeon people today as a primary identifier. The Tennessee Encyclopedia states that in the 19th century, "the word 'Melungeon' appears to have been used as an offensive term for nonwhite and/or low socioeconomic class persons by outsiders." The term Melungeon was historically considered an insult,

1560-461: The Melungeon claim. ..." In 1999, historian C. S. Everett hypothesized that John Collins (recorded as a Sapony Indian who was expelled from Orange County, Virginia about January 1743), might be the same man as the Melungeon ancestor John Collins, who was classified as a "mulatto" in 1755 North Carolina records. However, Everett revised that theory after he discovered evidence that these were two different men named John Collins. Only descendants of

1612-675: The Melungeons of Newman's Ridge , the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina , the Chestnut Ridge people , and the Carmel Indians . Free people of color in colonial Virginia were predominately of African and European descent; however, many families also had varying amounts of Native American and East Indian ancestry. Some modern researchers believe that early Atlantic Creole slaves, descended from or acculturated by Iberian lançados and Sephardi Jews fleeing

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1664-531: The Senate voted 31 to 25 to create the department. Its passage was delayed by Democrats in Congress who were reluctant to create more patronage posts for the incoming Whig administration to fill. The first secretary of the interior was Thomas Ewing . Several of the domestic concerns the department originally dealt with were gradually transferred to other departments. For example, the Department of Interior

1716-609: The anecdotal claim that Melungeons are more prone to certain diseases, such as sarcoidosis or familial Mediterranean fever . Academic medical centers have noted that neither of those diseases is confined to a single population. Author Jesse Stuart 's 1965 novel Daughter of the Legend , set in Tennessee, depicts a love story between a Melungeon girl and a timber cutter from Virginia, and explores socioeconomic and racial tensions among mountain-dwelling families. A Melungeon character

1768-435: The colonial period between white women, indentured servant or free, and African men, indentured servant, free, or enslaved. This was before the racial caste had hardened and, on small farms, white and black workers lived near each other and associated. According to the law, children were born into the social status of their mothers, by the principle of partus sequitur ventrem , adopted in the 17th-century Virginia colony. Since

1820-533: The early 20th centuries, have been collected by the Melungeon Heritage Association. Since the mid-1990s, popular interest in the Melungeons has grown tremendously, although many descendants have left the region of historical concentration. The writer Bill Bryson devoted the better part of a chapter to them in his The Lost Continent (1989). People are increasingly self-identifying as having Melungeon ancestry. Internet sites promote

1872-413: The freedoms and rights of Black people. Anti-miscegenation laws in the United States were not declared unconstitutional until the 1967 Loving v. Virginia case. By the mid-to-late 19th century, the term Melungeon appeared to have been used most frequently to refer to the biracial families of Hancock County and neighboring areas. Several other uses of the term in the print media, from the mid-19th to

1924-562: The general census numbered 146 (71 males and 75 females) and are distributed as follows: Hawkins county , 31; Monroe county , 12; Polk county , 10; other counties (8 or less in each), 93. Quoting from the report: The Melungeans or Malungeans, in Hawkins county, claim to be Cherokees of mixed blood (white, Indian, and negro), their white blood being derived, as they assert, from English and Portuguese stock. They trace their descent primarily to 2 Indians (Cherokees) known, one of them as Collins,

1976-603: The land in the United States. It manages 476 dams and 348 reservoirs through the Bureau of Reclamation , 431 national parks , monuments, historical sites, etc. through the National Park Service , and 544 national wildlife refuges through the Fish and Wildlife Service . The largest land management agency is the Bureau of Land Management , managing about one-eighth of the land in the United States. Despite its name,

2028-434: The latter man, who was identified as mulatto in the 1755 record in North Carolina, have any proven connection to the Melungeon families of eastern Tennessee. Jack D. Forbes speculated that the Melungeons may have been Saponi / Powhatan descendants, although he acknowledges an account from circa 1890 described them as being "free colored" and mulatto people. Dispute regarding the origin of Melungeons families has led to

2080-465: The management and conservation of most federal lands and natural resources . It also administers programs relating to Native Americans , Alaska Natives , Native Hawaiians , territorial affairs, and insular areas of the United States, as well as programs related to historic preservation. About 75% of federal public land is managed by the department, with most of the remainder managed by the Department of Agriculture 's Forest Service . The department

2132-637: The mothers were white and free, their children were free born. Melungeon Most of the modern population have an estimated 1-2% non-European DNA, though jumping up to 20% or more in some groups, such as the Lumbee. Despite non-European DNA being in the minority for these groups, the impact of the one-drop rule either did, or had the potential to, label them as non-white . This redesignation resulted in some individuals being sterilized by state governments , most notably in Virginia . Many groups have historically been referred to as Melungeon, including

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2184-645: The other as Gibson, who settled in the mountains of Tennessee, where their descendants are now to be found, about the time of the admission of that state into the Union (1796). The earliest historical record of the term Melungeon dates to 1813. In the minutes of the Stoney Creek Baptist Church in Scott County, Virginia , a woman stated another parishioner made the accusation that "she harbored them Melungins." The second oldest written use of

2236-557: The remnants called Indians in some states where a pure-blooded Indian can hardly longer be found. In Tennessee is such a group, popularly known as Melungeans, in addition to those still known as Cherokees. The name seems to have been given them by early French settlers, who recognized their mixed origin and applied to them the name Melangeans or Melungeans, a corruption of the French word "melange" which means mixed. (See letter of Hamilton McMillan, under North Carolina.) In December 1943, Walter Ashby Plecker of Virginia sent county officials

2288-519: The schools and calls for accountability and measures to address the ongoing impact on Native American families and communities to include working closely with tribal nations on the identification and repatriation of the remains. Within the Interior Department, the Bureau of Indian Affairs handles some federal relations with American Indians, while others are handled by the Office of Special Trustee. The current acting assistant secretary for Indian affairs

2340-408: The term was in 1840, when a Tennessee politician described "an impudent Melungeon" from what became Washington, D.C., as being "a scoundrel who is half Negro and half Indian." In the 1890s, during the age of yellow journalism , the term "Melungeon" started to circulate and be reproduced in U.S. newspapers, when the journalist Will Allen Dromgoole wrote several articles on the Melungeons. In 1894,

2392-456: The three year investigation produced the first report in May 2022 and the second and final volume in June 2024. The final report details the severe trauma and cultural disruption inflicted on Native American communities through these schools, which operated from the late 19th century to the mid-20th century. It highlights the systemic abuse and neglect endured by students, finding 973 children died at

2444-612: The treasury , Robert J. Walker , became a vocal champion of creating the new department. In 1849, Walker stated in his annual report that several federal offices were placed in departments with which they had little to do. He noted that the United States General Land Office had little to do with the Treasury and also highlighted the Indian Affairs office , part of the Department of War , and

2496-616: The various Melungeon lines may have sprung from the unions of black and white indentured servants living in Virginia in the mid-1600s, before slavery. They conclude that as laws were put in place to penalize the mixing of races, the various family groups could only intermarry with each other, even migrating together from Virginia through the Carolinas before settling primarily in the mountains of East Tennessee ." Melungeon ancestors were considered by appearance to be mixed race. During

2548-600: Was created on March 3, 1849. It is headquartered at the Main Interior Building , located at 1849 C Street NW in Washington, D.C. The department is headed by the secretary of the interior , who reports directly to the president of the United States and is a member of the president's Cabinet . The current secretary is Deb Haaland . As of mid-2004, the department managed 507 million acres (2,050,000 km ) of surface land, or about one-fifth of

2600-419: Was first considered by the 1st United States Congress in 1789, but those duties were placed in the Department of State . The idea of a separate domestic department continued to percolate for a half-century and was supported by presidents from James Madison to James Polk . The 1846–48 Mexican–American War gave the proposal new steam as the responsibilities of the federal government grew. Polk's secretary of

2652-495: Was responsible for water pollution control prior to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency . Other agencies became separate departments, such as the Bureau of Agriculture , which later became the Department of Agriculture . However, land and natural resource management, American Indian affairs, wildlife conservation, and territorial affairs remain the responsibilities of the Department of

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2704-474: Was the Butler family, as was noted in the 1860 census for Whitley County, Kentucky , with the family patriarch (named Simon Butler) being born in Tennessee around 1776. Ariela Gross referenced the 1846 State v. Solomon, Ezekial, Levi, Andrew, Wiatt, Vardy Collins, Zachariah, Lewis Minor , Hawkins County Circuit Court Minute Book, 1842–1848, Hawkins County Circuit Court, Hawkins County Courthouse box 31, 32 and

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