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The Tri-Racial Isolates.
Only a few terms refer to bi-ethnic Indian-white and
black-Indian mixes. The only terms for Indian and
white mixes are half-breed [ 1775], quarter-breed [
1862], and cross-breed, all of which have been
shortened to breed. Griffe was occasionally used for a
black and Indian mix. Most racially mixed descendents
of these original groups long ago passed into one of
these three racial categories. But communities of
TriRacial Isolates have been denominated with as many
as 68 terms, and there are undoubtedly others. These
refer to racially mixed groups who live in scattered
settlements of persons of various Native American
Indian, black, and white ancestry.
For various
historical reasons some descendents of these mixed
unions, many of them tri-racial mixes, settled into
more than 200 small, rural, and isolated communities
in the eastern United States. Many of these local
settlements soon acquired local names. Some of these
names derive from surnames prevalent in the
communities and from the names of places where the
groups live. Other names for Tri-Racial Isolates
reflect the same themes of outgroup derogation as
terms for other groups. Dunlap and Weslager ( 1947),
Berry ( 1963), and others studied the origins of names
for these groups and noted 68 terms and their
etymologies. Some of the names apply to several
different settlements, which accounts for some of the
discrepancy between the number of communities and the
number of terms (there are more than 200 communities
and only 68 terms). Melungeon [or malungeon] is
probably the best known of these names, and it
designates several related communities.
Though these
groups, taken together, have no single, widely
accepted proper name, scholars have used terms such as
mixed-blood. Genteel regional writers have referred to
them with names such as mystery-people, referring to
their obscure origins, raceless-people, and
racial-orphans. They also have been referred to as
local-mixed-groups, mixed-blood-racial-islands, and,
unkindly, as half-castes, half-breeds, or just breeds.
Estabrook and McDougle ( 1926) coined the acronym WIN,
apparently for White, Indian, and Negro, as a
pseudonym for one such community. Berry ( 1963)
suggests borrowing the Spanish mestizo. But the
jargonish term Tri-RacialIsolates has favor among most
academics who write about these communities.
Most of the local,
informal terms leveled at these communities are
derogatory. (Certain names, such as our-people and
others, are applied by the groups to themselves
without pejoration.) While nicknames for these people
are a product of intergroup contact and conflict, they
are an exception to the principle that the coinage of
outgroup nicknames flourishes where many different
groups are in forced, close contact, such as at the
center of an industrial city. Each community,
sometimes including a few nearby communities, has been
given a separate nickname. The proliferation of
nicknaming occurs, not because the outgroup is large
and compact, but because its communities are small and
geographically so widely dispersed as to be seen as
separate communities and thus as separate peoples. The
isolation of these communities and their particular
origins and histories also produce distinctive
subcultures or variegated ethnicity. The explanation
for the large variety of terms nonetheless lies with
the demographic and ecological situations of the
groups rather than just with the prejudice of the
name-callers.
The allusions of
these terms are similar to those of nicknames for
other groups. Allusion to dark color is a frequent but
not a dominant theme. Certain other themes are
noteworthy.
About a dozen
nicknames derive from, sometimes as alterations of,
patronymic names of clans thought to predominate in
these communities: bones [probably from Boone, but
possibly short for red-bones]; chavises; clappers; coe-clan;
collinses; creels [possibly a variant of creoles];
goins; goulds [also gould-towners]; laster-tribe;
males [possibly from Mayle, Mail, or Mahle]; pools
[from Vanderpool]; slowters [from Slaughter]; and
vanguilders (see Berry 1963).
A score of
nicknames for other groups derive from place names:
adamstown-indians; black-waterites [or black-waters];
cane-river-mulattoes; carmel-indians; cecil-indians
[or cecilville-indians]; croatans [or croatan-indians.
Very offensive when shortened to cros, i. e.,
"crows"]; g. -and-b. -indians[from the initials of the
Grafton and Belington Railroad]; haliwa-indians;
keating-mountain-group; marlboro-blues;
pea-ridge-group; person-countyindians; ramapo-people;
ridgemanites; sabines; sand-hill-indians;
summerville-indians; west-hill-indians.
Yet other groups
are named after actual nationalities, whose names are
symbols widely applied to notably foreign, especially
dark people: arabs; cajuns; creoles; cubans; greeks;
guineas; moors; Portuguese; and turks. Several of
these terms--arab, greek, guinea, and turk--were
associated with groups as various as blacks, Italians,
Irish, and Jews.
A few groups have
nicknames, which are used generally for mixed persons:
breed; creole; half-caste; and half-nigger. Half a
dozen terms make direct allusion to color: blue-eyed-negroes;
brownpeople; red-bones [possibly from a folk belief
that Native American Indians have bones with a reddish
hue]; red-legs; red-nigger; yellow-people; and
yellow-hammers [Hammer is an old term of general
derogation, possibly reinforced in this usage by
"yellow." Also yellow-hammer is a term for the
yellow-shafted flicker. Cf. peckerwood].
A few nicknames
echo-historical events, such as issues, which is short
for "free-issue"--a free-born black before the Civil
War. This is probably also the origin of free-jacks, a
term used in the late nineteenth century for any black
( Cohen 1972). Jackson-whites may be a rendering by
folk etymology from jacks-and-whites, where jacks is
short for free-jacks. Other names may derive from
putative dietary practices, such as ramps, possibly
from eating ramps, a pungent cousin to the onion, and
clay-eaters, from alleged geophagy [the same term was
applied to certain poor whites in the middle South].
At least one term is said to derive from a phrase:
wesorts, traditionally from "We sort of people is
different." Bushwacker is also a term for any rustic.
Etymologies are
less certain for other terms. Folk, folkloric,
legendary, and traditional etymologies abound. Gilbert
( 1946) and Dunlap and Weslager ( 1947) repeat and
cite sources for certain speculative etymologies. But
Berry ( 1963) is cautious and concludes that the
origin of several, after all, are unknown: bonackers;
brass-ankles [also a name for any "mulatto"];
buckheads; dominickers; hi-los; honies; and
pond-shiners. It seems probable that melungeon derives
from French méglanger, to mix; the first-person
plural,present indicative is mélangeons ( Dunlap and
Weslager 1947). Or possibly it is related to
Afro-Portuguese, melungo, shipmate.
ETHNONYMS:
Aframerindians, Creoles, Half-Breeds, Marginal Peoples,
Mestizos, Metis, Micro-Races, Middle Peoples,
Quasi-Indians, Racial Islands, Racial Isolates, Southern
Mestizos, Submerged Races, Tri-Racials, Tri-Racial
Isolates
This generic label covers some two hundred different
groups of relatively isolated, rural peoples who live in
at least eighteen states mainly in the eastern and
southern United States. In general, the label and the
various alternatives refer to distinct peoples thought to
have a multiracial background
(White-Indian-African-American, African-American-White or
Indian-White, Indian-Spanish) who historically have been
unaffiliated with the general White and African-American
population or with specific American Indian groups.
Estimates place the number of people in these groups at
about seventy-five thousand, although some groups have
disappeared in recent years through a combination of
migration to cities and intermarriage with Whites and
African-Americans. The best known of these groups is the
Lumbee Indians, numbering over thirty thousand mainly in
North and South Carolina.
Classification of a group as an American Isolate rests on
(1) real or ascribed mixed racial ancestry of group
members; (2) a social status different from that of
neighboring White, African-American, or American Indian
populations; and (3) identification as a distinct local
group with the assignment of a distinct group name.
American Isolates existed prior to the American
Revolution, perhaps as long ago as the early eighteenth
century, and they increased in number throughout the
nineteenth century as they came to public attention in the
areas where they lived. Among factors leading to group
formation were the presence of offspring of
African-American male slaves and White women and the
offspring of Indians and free or enslaved
African-Americans. Once a small community of multiracial
members began, it grew primarily through a high fertility
rate and became more and more isolated both socially and
physically as its members were rejected by Whites and
chose, themselves, to shun African-Americans. The movement
of Indian groups west also contributed to their isolation.
More recently, isolation was maintained in part through
government action, most significantly through the banning
of Isolate children from public schools. Most Isolate
groups were and continue to be described by outsiders in
such stereotypical terms as lazy, shiftless, criminals,
violent, illiterate, poor, or incestuous.
Groups known to have still existed
in the 1950s and 1960s include the following, listed by
state:
Alabama: Cajans, Creoles, Melungeons (Ramps)
Delaware: Moors, Nanticoke
Florida: Dominickers
Georgia: Lumbee Indians (Croatans)
Kentucky: Melungeons, Pea Ridge Group (Coe Clan,
Black Coes)
Louisiana: Natchitoches Mulattoes, Rapides Indians,
Redbones, Sabines, St. Landry Mulattoes, Zwolle-Ebard
People
Maryland: Guineas, Lumbee Indians, Melungeons,
Wesorts (Brandywine)
Mississippi: Creoles
New Jersey: Gouldtowners, Ramapo Mountain People
(Jackson Whites), Sand Hill Indians
New York: Bushwhackers, Jackson Whites
North Carolina: Haliwa Indians, Lumbee Indians,
Person County Indians, Portuguese, Rockingham Surry Group
Ohio: Carmel Indians, Cutler Indians, Darke County
Group, Guineas, Vinton County Group
Pennsylvania: Karthus Half-Breeds, Keating Mountain
Group, Nigger-Hill People, Pooles
South Carolina: Brass Ankles, Lumbee Indians, Turks
Tennessee: Melungeons
Texas: Redbones
Virginia: Adamstown Indians, Brown People,
Chickahominy Indians, Issues, Melungeons, Potomac Indians,
Rappahannock Indians, Rockingham Surry Group
West Virginia: Guineas.
While it is difficult to generalize across all Isolate
groups or individuals, most live in rural areas and derive
their income from farming and unskilled or semiskilled
labor. Social status within a group is based on wealth,
access to the White Community, primarily through
intermarriage, and residence in a settled, named Isolate
community
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