The Courier-Journal from Louisville, Kentucky • Page 89

mfat (fottrier-Jfonnml HJ 1 A I A a tl ie DECEMBER 1, 1940 BfleflnoniigeciDii? TOSiinnsinim TP (bud Tin tteiry A ratf -Jo ark L. nconle z. v.c.vw: ij v-. A. -MitM i.

'J MUM i whose 'jese, tliey ImvciL'Jc history "IGH on the ridges of Rhea and Hancock Counties in East Tennessee, thirty miles south of Middles- to hold the advantage, presently they ceased the marauding which was becoming increasingly costly to them in lives. The fighting on a large scale guttered: down in the decade preceding the War Between the States, with only occasional outbreaks. Then, unexpectedly, there came an era of peace between the settlers and the Melungeons and there was good reason. The dark hill tribesmen had struck gold. Evd of popularity "They didn't bring it out in ore or bullion," according to one observer.

"They smelted it, rigged up a crude press, and made their own coins. Everywhere in East Tennessee the storekeepers took Melungeon double-eagles and no questions asked. "What with charging triple prices, giving short weight, and the fact that there was $25 or $30 worth of gold in the coins, the storekeepers got fat and sassy cn Melungeon trade. When the United States Treasury sent officers to look into the rumors, the merchants got so hot after the politicians and pulled strings so well that pretty soon word came from Washington for the Treasury boys to come on home and forget it." As suddenly as the double-eagles had appeared, they disappeared. No white man ever discovered the source of the gold, and today the Melungeons say they do not know from whence it came.

It aso was immediately preceding the War Between the States that the Legislature re-enfranchised the Melungjons, but nothing was said or done about returning their bottom lands. They remained on the ridges, still scornful of the white man, still bitter. Only a few of the race entered the Army at the outbreak of the war, but during the period it raged and for 7 many years afterward they were accused of bushwhack- ing and raiding. Some students of the strange people say that only a few have left their native haunts and gone out into other States; others say that after the war many moved Northward and Westward to work in factories and live on an equal footing with established white men. Some say the Melungeons have kept their race strain pure and that but few have married outside their number; others declare they have cross-married with hill folk until in many instances there is little trace of the old Melungeon characteristics remaining.

It is generally agreed, however, that the Melungeons, though still distinctive with their dark skin, their aquiline noses, their high cheek bones, their black hair, have absorbed the dialect, folklore and manner of living of their neighbors. Mountain mothers in the Cumberlands still discipline their children with the admonition that "You better act purty or the Melungeons'll git you!" One of the most striking bits of folklore, according to Aswell, who has made a study of the Melungeons, is the story of Big Betsy Mullins, who from her cabin atop a razor-back ridge defied the' law of State and Nation for twenty years. "Betsy, so the story goes," Aswell relates, "was arrested for moonshining no fewer than two dozen times. Yet she never saw the inside of a courtroom because of her weight. At the beginning of her career, Betsy is said to have tipped the scales to a neat 600 pounds.

Some versions of the story state, in addition, that she towered seven and a half feet into the thin mountain air and that she could 'heft' a yearling bull over her head with all ease. ooro, lives a race of strange people whose origin, a matter of conjecture for decades, remains a mystery. often by the Tennessee mountaineers as "sons of perdition," the Melungeons once were ferocious fighters whose rampages into the lowlands infuriated early Scotch-Irish settlers of the Volunteer State and led to many a bloody battle. But that was back in the days when Tennessee was a struggling Western State. The years have changed these dark mountain folk, who insist they are of Portuguese origin, into a peaceful but aloof group.

From 1,000 to 2,000 still live in the Cumberlands, but many have drifted out in quest of more abundant livings. While historians and students of folklore differ widely in their theory of the Melungeons' origin, there are many who believe in the Portuguese theory. One member of the race summed up the Melungeons belief when, after feeling the glow of his Saturday portion of corn whisky, he told James Aswell of the Tennessee W.P.A. Writers' project: "We come from Portugal. It was a long time ago, but we come from Portugal and we're Portugee.

We come in a boat and it was bigger, heaps bigger, than airy ferryboat ever you saw. It was big and they run it with sails all the way across the water. "When the boat come to land some sort of hardness sprung up betwixt the sailormen and their bosses. Don't know what it was, but it was hard feelings betwixt them. Well, the hardness it run higher and higher till it was fighting on the boat.

The sailormen they was the most, so they killed the bossmen. Killed them and set afire to the boat and burned it plumb down. "Well, here they was in South Carolina and no- way to git back home. And so they hunted themselves up an Injun town and they run the. Injun men off into the woods and married up with the Injun women.

Then they wandered and Where they went I don't noways know. But some time or other they crossed over the high mountains into East Tennessee. Set down to stay hereabouts. That's how come it us hill Portugee is living where we are. I don't care what nobody says, that's the straight gospel true of it!" However, the early settlers took little stock in this story.

Instead, they believed the dark hill people to be a mixture of white renegades, runaway Negro slaves, and Indians. Don't call 9etn hy One writer, J. Patton Gibson of Sneedville, says, "Perhaps these people are the descendants of some ancient Phoenicians who moved from Carthage and settled in Morocco, later coming to South Carolina and from there to Hancock County, Tennessee." This theory was ascribed to also by the late Judge Lewis Shepherd of Chattanooga, who after years of research was convinced the Melungeons stemmed from a colony of Phoenicians. Still another theory has it that they descended from a colony of Welshmen established by the chieftain Madoc, "who sailed from the ken of men into the Western Sea" at a time when Rome was a hill village and England was inhabited by savages. Other students believe the hill folk are linked with the lost English colony of Roanoke.

The word Melungeon is believed to come from the French word melange, meaning "mixture." The Melungeons dislike intensely to be called Melungeons. One significant fact is that for as long as anyone can remember they have been speaking a queer sort of broken English. Another is that they, for the most part and despite their marauding of old, maintained a deep religious sense of the shout, jerk and roll sort. "That part was' all right with the Scotch-Irish settlers," one student of the race once told an interviewer. "But the Melungeons' owning farms was a horse of another color.

If they had been plain Indians, it wouldn't have been any trouble to oust them. But they spoke English. They were Christians. Some of them had fought in the Revolutionary War. They were fine woodsmen, well armed, and mighty quick of temper." In an effort to circumvent this "injustice" of the situation, as the pioneers thought it, they devised a "legal" plan.

When the Tennessee Constitutional Convention met at Knoxville in 1834, the Eastern delegates managed to have the Melungeons classed as "free persons of color." Placed in this category, they were not allowed to vote or hold public office. But the core of the ruling was a passage prohibiting persons of color, free or otherwise, from testifying in court in any suit involving any white man. Thus the Mclwngfons, not by armed force, but by legal "persuasion," were driven from their lush mead-owland farms and found it necessary to take refuge on the Cumberland Mountain ridge land of Hancock, Rhea and other East Tennessee counties, where by hunting and meager farming they managed to eke out an existence. But the proud Melungeons were not to be so reckoned with indefinitely. Legend tells how the dark hill folk, apparently after a council of war, suddenly began sweeping down on the valley and looting at night.

Posses, so the story goes, would search the hills after each raid, but the toll in life became too exorbitant. Invariably. the vigilantes were riddled by hidden riflemen and. though the Melungeons continued for years tlrrcst-proof ISctsy "When she sat to a light meal, she commonly downed a whole pig, hide, hoofs and all. She could tear a firm-rooted pine from the earth with one hand and could splinter a two-inch oaken plank with her bare fist.

Around her arm she could bend a forged iron crowbar as an ordinary woman might wrap a length of silk ribbon. In a word, Betsy Mullins would have been a fitting match for that legendary figure of the American lumber camps, Paul Bunyan. "Unhampered by the law, Betsy's crew of cowed cousins ran her still at full blast, turning out hundreds of gallons of whisky monthly. However, Betsy's local reputation put no fright into Federal officers who finally were sent after her. "Bristling with rifles and determination, they toiled up the steep ridge' trail.

By the ti they reached the top, the still crew long since had scuuled down the other side of the ridge to safety. But in the cabin Betsy Mullins was waiting for the officers. "The officers crowded into the cabin. Quite legally and conclusively they arrested Betsy Mullins. So far there had been no hitch.

Nonetheless, Betsy Mullins was not taken from her cabin. The posse was unable to force her out, not because of strength but on account of her size. The fact of the matter is that Hctsy's bulk had grown too vast to go through the door of the cabin. "And the officers discovered, belatedly, had they been able to squeeze her through, they could not have taken her to court. She was too heavy to walk and the trail to her cabin was far too steep for mules and horse to climb.

Thus it was a physical and topographical impossibility to carry her to trial. "When Betsy Mullins died, it is said she weigher 900-odd pounds. A side of the cabin had to be knocked out in order to remove her body. The problem of getting her to the graveyard for burial was almost beyond the ingenuity of her Melungeon kin. At length they managed it by wrapping her in great thicknesses of quilts, and rolling her, inch at a time, down the ridge." mw nnn.i gram DRAWING BY ROBERT YORK To a mutinous crew of Portuguese explorers who burned their ship off the South Carolina coast to fighting sailormen who looked homeward but couldn't return to heroes of a fiery, bloody legend the hill Melungeons trace their blood.

"So they hunted themselves up an Injun town, an' they run the Injun men off into the woods and married the Injun women. Then they roamed," says a descendant..