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A note from Tennessee about the Lumbee Tribe.....

This week an ethnic group known as the Mullengeons are gathering here to discuss their heritage. There is a lot written about them in recent times, including the fact that they fled literally to the Tennessee hills and mountains to escape persecution in North Carolina.

Their precise origin is a mystery, but many have AmerIndian blood and some of it is thought to be Lumbee blood. there is some thought that the Mullengeons are remnents of very early European visitors, including Portugeese and English survivors of failed colonies...... including the "Lost Colony"

If the foundation of a nation is successful in Wilson County and a casino is opened...... expect homecoming migrants from East Tennessee and Southwest Virginia.

I've done some research on the Melungeons when one kiddo had to do a report about William Goyens. The Daughters of the Texas Revolution had an essay a few years ago to celebrate Goyens as the most famous black man of Texas. Of course I never heard of him before so knew something was fishy. Funny thing when we got to checking he isn't black at all, hahahaha! His father was listed as a Free Negro and his mother was white but I suspect the census takers didn't know what race papa was since his skin was dark. Senator Dan Kubiak (Democrat, of course) wrote a book on Goyens back in the 70's, "Monument to a Black Man", to garner the black vote and it's nothing but plagerism on top of plagiarism on top of untruths on top of hogwash. He put the same old ever used (count one of plagerism) drawing of Goyens in the book depicting him as the typical nappy headed fat lipped poorly clothed slave stereotype despite the fact Goyens' had European features much the same as Elvis and Tom Hanks who are also Melungeons! Nacogdoches won't even change their historical markers to set the record straight because they too "need" to keep Goyens a runaway black slave who made good as one of the richest men in Texas. His marker there states, "His skin was black, his heart true blue" (along with his wrong birth place and other errors) so they've got their free pass to appeasement. And so goes historical fact trampled by revisionism.

Seems back in the 1800's Goyens wanted to marry a widowed white woman and her brothers came from Georgia to make sure he wasn't black and they saw he wasn't so approved the marriage. There had been some hoopla earlier when a Louisiana slave owner tried to claim Goyens was his runaway slave (in reality he just wanted his $$$) but Goyens, a wealthy landowner and lawyer, took him to court and proved he was never a slave. In earlier life, Goyens was an Indian interpreter for Sam Houston but he wasn't Native American either.

The Melungeons were in old Virginia and the tidewater way back in the 1600's and later traveled to TN and points south and west. Theirs is a fascinating story. Seems the Melungeons may be Middle Easterners or Mediterranean. Besides Black or Native American, they've also been labelled Black Irish but aren't. They have an organization and are doing DNA testing to see where they actually come from.