MELUNGEONS: THE TIES THAT BIND, PART 2

By Katherine Vande Brake

A recent article on the Southern Ledger site reported that woman in Eastern Kentucky had died after being snakebit in a church service. Never mind that snake handling is against the law in Kentucky.

Faithful believers in the Holiness tradition feel that the true and living Word particularized in Mark’s gospel will protect them. “And these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well” (Mark 16: 17-18 NIV).

Was this woman a Melungeon? The article didn’t say. However, Holiness worship that includes taking up serpents, drinking poison, and handling fire is often associated with Melungeons in both fiction and memoir. Powerful passages in Lisa Alther’s Kinflicks, Jesse Stuart’s Daughter of the Legend, and Mattie Ruth Johnson’s My Melungeon Heritage describe what a snake-handling service is like from an insider’s point of view.

A TIE THAT BINDS
Holiness worship is one of the markers I call a tie that binds Melungeon descendants together. Many members of the Melungeon community on Newman’s Ridge in Hancock County, Tennessee, participated in a Holiness congregation, and Pentecostal practices were common when the Presbyterian missionaries arrived a century ago to build a church, clinic, and school.

BRENT KENNEDY’S DEFINITION OF “MELUNGEON”

Proving Melungeon heritage is a tricky business. If a person can trace her ancestors back to the “first families” on Newman’s Ridge, being Melungeon is an easy call. However, for others who have born the stigma of the “Melungeon” label in Appalachia but do not have any documents to prove their connections, the path is not as well-defined.

Brent Kennedy in an online (http://www.melungeons.com/articles/statemenkennedydec02.htm) essay writes a definition of Melungeons that outlines several ways people may be connected to a Melungeon heritage.

Kennedy’s four categories are

1)“those documented by the pre-1900 written record,”
2) “descendants and relatives of historical Melungeons—those who are descended from or documentably related to the Blackwater/Vardy/Newman’s Ridge group and/or the southwest Virginia group wherever they may have migrated”
3) “Melungeon related…those populations scattered around the southeast (as far south as Graysville, Tennessee and north into Indiana and Ohio) which likely share the same general genetics, at least some family lines, and have cultural overlap”
4) “Mestee groups, which are also mixed race and share many of the same historical and cultural experiences, but are not necessarily Melungeon or Melungeon-related.”

BEING “MELUNGEON” BY SHARED EXPERIENCE

In 2002 Melungeon descendants were involved in a DNA study. The results were inconclusive in that they did not silence the origins debates. The scholar-scientist who led the study team was Dr. Kevin Jones from University of Virginia at Wise.

In a speech at one of the Melungeon gatherings, Fourth Union, Jones said, “You know what it means to be Melungeon, or feel Melungeon. Or to have been discriminated against for being Melungeon. It’s a cultural identity that is real and important” (“DNA Study Results,” 20 June 2002).

People in the audience at the Union and many others identify—they feel Melungeon, they share a distinct cultural identity, they know what Melungeon means. The shared experiences and the particular mindset are a literacy that insiders know first-hand and outsiders can learn by reading and listening to the stories.

My earlier essay in Southern Writers (http://www.southernledger.com/SouthernLife/SouthernWriters/?slid=9) , “Appalachia’s Melungons,” details two of these markers—the distinctive Melungeon look and the pervasive persecution Melungeon people endured in their mountain communities.

DISCRIMINATION UNDER WALTER PLECKER

A particularly heinous saga of discrimination took place under the administration of Dr. Walter Plecker, the Registrar of Vital Statistics in Virginia. Plecker believed that all people were either “colored” or white. Virginia’s Racial Integrity Law enforced discriminatory practices in education, marriage laws, and health care past the middle of the 20th century.

HEALTH CONCERNS

Another part of the Melungeon shared experience is a number of grave health concerns that occupy hours of discussion at the Unions. While scholars and physicians re-iterate the mantra “There are no Melungeon diseases,” familial Mediterranean fever, thalessemia, sarcoidosis, and Bechet’s Syndrome seem to be more prevalent among self-identified Melungeons.

There is a website called “Melungeon Health” (http://www.melungeonhealth.org/) that gives more detail about these maladies and presents some information about physical traits such as the central Asian cranial bump/ridge, which the Turks call an "Anatolian bump", shovel teeth, and epicanthal eye folds. Acknowledging this discussion, whether or not “Melungeon diseases” exist, is one of the ties that bind Melungeon descendants together.

EUPHEMISMS FOR “MELUNGEON”

Avoiding being called “Melungeon” is another tie. The U.S. government censuses of 1830 and 1840 designated the dark people as F.P.C., free persons of color. Other terms like “Black Dutch” and “Portuguese” were self-selected descriptors. Some scholars claim that these terms were used to hide African blood. Others believe that, particularly in the case of the reference to Portugal, there is truth to the claim, passed down in families through the generations.

MELUNGEON FOLKLORE

Scholars insist that Melungeon folklore doesn’t exist, but there are stories told and re-told. Mahala Mullins, the moonshiner that weighed 600 pounds, was too fat to get through the door of her cabin. This led the deputy sheriff who went to arrest her for breaking the law to report back in town, “She’s ketchable, but she ain’t fetchable.”

Mahala was a real person who suffered from elephantaiasis; she did make and sell high quality corn liquor. There are several photographs to prove both her existence and her vocation. Several other Mullinses are reputed to have made counterfeit coins. And., hikers are still searching for the location of the Swift silver mines, long thought to belong to backwoods Melungeons.

The stories about Vardy Collins and Shep Gibson who historically founded the Newman’s Ridge settlement first surface in one of the 1891 Will Allen Dromgoole articles (http://www.melungeon.org/index.cgi?BISKIT=2404458932&CONTEXT=cat&cat=10017) . One of the two men makes his dark skin even darker with walnut juice; then the lighter one sells the darker man as a slave. This second dark man escapes his owner, and both of them head for the mountains with the cash.

Another recurring story is the one about the Melungeons being settled in houses on farms in the back country when the English settlers arrived. One version tells of a village with a bell that rings to regulate community life. Whether these stories constitute a genuine folklore or not, they are told and retold in both fiction and articles that have appeared in newspapers and magazines over the years.

ATTITUDES AND VALUES

The one-down status that Melungeons have endured has had a lasting legacy. The power elite has never supported these people. Melungeons feel little allegiance to the system many people in America take for granted. The stories both real and fictional reveal their delight at outwitting the law. Moonshining and bootlegging join the ranks of honorable professions. Arson was and may still be seen as an acceptable way to settle a grievance.

Soldiering has come easy to them. As Kentucky writer Harry Caudill points out in Night Comes to the Cumberlands, mountain men were used to privations and bloodletting. They were not strangers to physical discomfort. The hard part of military service was submitting to discipline. Caudill was talking about the Civil War, but the categories hold true even today. Chris Offutt’s story “Melungeons” from the collection titled Out of the Woods (Simon & Schuster, 1999) ties these themes together in an unforgettable narrative.

FORGING MELUGEON IDENTITY

Attitudes in Appalachia have historically denigrated Melungeons. Their move to the forefront in the last 35 years is gradually changing perceptions. The Internet has proved to be the primary place where Melungeons are exploring and building their ethnic identity.

Initial delight at finding one another 10 years ago has evaporated as differences have emerged about basic concerns. On the Melungeon websites and ongoing discussion on several email lists, the debates rage over these two questions:

Who’s included in the group labeled “Melungeon”?

What counts as evidence?

SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING:

Winkler, Wayne. Walking Toward the Sunset: The Melungeons of Appalachia. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2004. A comprehensive look at the Melungeons by a descendant who has been active in the Melungeon Heritage Association.

Stuart, Jesse. Daughter of the Legend. Jesse Stuart Foundation, 1994. Written in the 1940s, originally published in 1965, and now available from the Jesse Stuart Foundation, this novel foregrounds the Newman’s Ridge Melungeon community and reveals many of the stereotypes and attitudes outlined in the above essay.

Several websites with varying perspectives are listed below:

Campbell, Helen. “melungeons.com.” http://www.melungeons.com/

Goins, Jack. “Jack Goins Research: Study of Melungeon and Appalachian Families,” http://www.jgoins.com/

Pezzulo, Joanne. “Documenting the Melungeons One Page at a Time.” http://www.geocities.com/ourmelungeons/

Katherine Vande Brake is Dean of the School of Arts & Science and teaches technical communication at King College in Bristol, TN. She published How They Shine: Melungeon Characters in the Fiction of Appalachia in 2001. Her study of how Melungeon descendants are using literacy practices on the Internet to understand and negotiate their cultural identity is forthcoming.