Melungeons

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Grant.

Yeah, this is Grant. Who’s this?

This is Josh Moore. I’m calling from Big Sky, Montana.

Hi, Josh. Welcome to the show.

Hello, Josh.

Hi, Martha. Thanks for having me.

Sure thing. What’s on your mind?

Well, I called with a word that I’ve heard since I was a young guy. I grew up in Hendersonville, North Carolina, in the Appalachian Mountains, and my grandmother is a historian. She’s over in Kingsport, Tennessee. She used to tell me about a word called melungeon.

And I believe it’s spelled M-A-L or M-E-L-U-N-G-E-O-N is how I would guess. And she said that it was like, I don’t know if it was a racial type of people or just people with like physical characteristics. She described it as olive skin and like high cheekbones. And she would always describe it with these physical characteristics. She said that it was debated whether or not Melungeons were real or not.

I don’t know how heavy the debate has been over the years.

But she referred to Melungeons as high cheekbones, shovel-shaped teeth.

And they had a little knot on the back of their head.

And I don’t know if there’s any validity to that term.

And what kind of teeth?

She said, I remember her describing it as shovel-shaped teeth.

And how I always interpreted that was kind of thick at the top

And curved in and skinny at the bottom.

And I don’t know if there’s validity to that at all, but I’m curious.

Yeah, it’s been a term that’s been used to refer to certain families in southeastern Appalachia

With some of those physical characteristics that you’re talking about,

The swarthy skin and dark eyes.

And we should also note that for more than 100 years,

This was a term that was not used by those people themselves to describe themselves.

It was a term that was placed on that community by other people, and a lot of people who were referred to as Mlungens took deep offense to this term.

It wasn’t until the 1960s that there was some reclaiming of that word going on.

There’s a great website run by the Mlungen Heritage Association, which talks all about this.

But, yeah, there was a lot of mystery.

I remember hearing about the malungeons when I was growing up in Kentucky, and it was this mysterious group of people whose origin was difficult to explain.

And a lot of them claimed to be of Portuguese descent or Turkish descent or descended from pirates off the Atlantic coast or even the lost colonists of Roanoke Island.

You’ve heard those stories, Grant.

Yeah, absolutely.

And, of course, other people saying they have African-American origins and Native American Indian origins and that sort of thing.

And still disputes to this day about who they are and exactly who is a Mlungin, who isn’t, and where they come from.

Yeah, it’s interesting.

There was some DNA testing done a couple of years ago that traced their origins back to sub-Saharan African men and women of northern and central European origins.

Perhaps indentured servants even before slavery in this country.

Interesting.

But there’s a lot of mystery behind it.

The word itself, any ideas on that?

Yeah, it’s a strange word, melungin.

But I suspect that the most likely origin of that word is that it’s from the French melange, meaning a mixture.

There have been other theories or other hypotheses proposed that maybe it comes from an old word meaning companion on a ship, I think, from Portuguese, something like that.

Highly unlikely.

Yeah, yeah, I think so.

Particularly because of the late arrival of the term versus the arrival of the people themselves.

Yeah, yeah.

I think the most likely explanation is melange, meaning a mixture.

Well, that’s incredibly interesting.

I appreciate you shedding some light onto that for me.

It’s been a word that’s always been in my mind because of my grandmother.

Thank you very much, Grand Martha.

It was a real pleasure to be on.

I listen to you all the time, and this is just real exciting for me.

Oh, great.

Fantastic.

Great to talk with you.

Bye-bye, Josh.

Bye-bye.

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