Within the last few days an article has appeared regarding the origins of the so called "Melungeons". The man pictured in these articles and being discussed is Jack Goins. This article has made the news media rounds from:

http://www.timesunion.com/news/article/DNA-study-seeks-origin-of-Appalachia-s-Melungeons-3583475.php



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/24/melungeon-dna-study-origin_n_1544489.html



http://news.yahoo.com/dna-study-seeks-origin-appalachias-melungeons-201144041.html



This article spotlights Jack Goins and his "Melungeon DNA Project". It postulates that the "Melungeons" are African Americans. This is a total bunk job and shear genocidal activity against the Saponi, Lumbee, Occaneechi, Tutelo, Cherokee, Tuscarora, Haliwa and Powhatan and other Indian peoples of Appalachia. This same tactic was used back in the days of Walter A. Plecker, first registrar of vital statistics of Virginia. Plecker was bent on a campaign to cover Indian ancestry by calling anyone that claimed Indian ancestry to be African American (he used the term Negro at that time). Plecker was a White Supremacist and a member of the Anglo Saxon Club. He wrote and helped push for the Racial Integrity Act in Virginia.



One month ago there was an article that came out by Jack Goins, Roberta Estes, Penny Ferguson and Janet Crain, entitled, "Melungeons, A Multi-Ethnic Population".



http://www.jogg.info/72/files/Estes.pdf



In this article, it attempts to state that the "Melungeons" of Newman's Ridge in Hancock County, Tennessee, are African American and White minimizing the Indian ancestry. Estes’ DNA claims are based on faulty DNA collections from cherry picked participants, people whose ancestors never lived on Newman's Ridge or who were passing through the area for two or three years. Even though there are R and X haplo-groups within the listings these articles ignore them as aberrant and focus the reader’s attention singularly on the African E haplo-group via Jack Goins' lines and Don Collins' lines. The majority of the E's come from cousins of either Jack or Don.



Repeated attempt have been made over the years to inform both Jack Goins (MHS and Roberta Estes) that haplo-group results under these DNA tests marketed for mass consumption cannot identify ethnicity or race. The reason for this is because the DNA tests account for only one line within a family. Each family is made up of hundreds of lines of families that came together. The DNA testing results are only showing a fraction of the information while the rest of the families remain in a cloud of uncertain haplo-grouping. Also, haplo-groups change in definition and geographic location almost annually. One year, a set of markers that indicated E, now indicate another haplo-group altogether, or a sub-haplo-group. Because of early admixing with Indians that began in the 1540's, and perhaps even as early as 1100 AD with Leaf Ericson's colony in Canada, there is no sure way of determining when or where R or E haplo-groups arose in America.



There is literally a ton of historical data and records that refute the idea or notion that all these various Indian tribes and communities were at their core African or European. Every government report issued since the late 1800's to present have insisted that these "Melungeon" communities had an Indian core. This is to say, they were and are Indian with admixtures of other ethnicities. The cover up of Indian heritage began back in the 1700's with the establishment of legal terms to determine taxation codes. It is obvious, to anyone of a clear mind and sound logic, that these tax codes were needed by the Colonies, and later states, in order to raise taxes to pay for war and to deny treaty rights with the tribes. This race re-labeling continued until the early part of the 1900's when the Eugenics Movement picked up and began segregation and passing Jim Crow laws in order to exclude Indian people from making their claims. When “The Indian Re-Organization Act of 1934” was passed, the Eugenics Movement was at its height. By labeling Indians as Colored, Free Persons of Color, Black, Negro, Mulatto or White, they committed genocide by paper work erasing the Indian population in the East and throughout the United States. When the 1940 Census came around the census takers in many places where instructed that there were only two categories of race; White and Black. They would base their decisions on skin color and tone.



Throughout the 1950's, 60's, 70's and into the early 80's various degrees of race re-labeling continued to take place. The Eugenics programs came into ill repute during the 1960's and 70's and thus tapered off gradually throughout the country. During this time of the 1970's and 80's writers began to pop up yet again asking questions about the so called "Melungeons" and their mysterious ancestry. In 1989 Virginia DeMarce became prominent in the genealogy arena. She was selected without true credentials to be a consultant in the Office of Acknowledgment of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). DeMarce began writing articles about the "Melungeons" between 1989 to 1992. Her field of expertise was Prussian History. This was what her disertation was based on in college. She had no practical field work in ethnology or anthropology nor of Native American Studies. Still, she was given a position that would decide the fate of Indian tribal recognition on a federal level. Books began to pour off the presses on the “Melungeons". Brent Kennedy published a book entitled, "Melungeons: The Resurrection of A Proud People", in 1994. His assertion was that "Melungeons" were Turks, but at least he focused on some of the Indian data concerning these communities. Thereafter books came out about every year or two postulating that they had solved the "mystery of the Melungeons". Some of these books said the “Melungeons” were Arabs, Gypsies, Jews, Phoenicians, Berbers, Spaniards, Portuguese, and some even said they were aliens from outer space. In some earlier writings in the 50's and 60's they were called "Children of Perdition" and "Children of the Devil". Then in the 1995 to 1997 time frame Paul Heinegg came onto the scene with his publication, “Free African Americans Of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Maryland And Delaware". In this travesty of a book he contends that all the Indian communities in these states were originally African American and that Mulatto always means African and White. Basically, the same thing that Walter Plecker and the Eugenics Boards had pushed for in the 1930's and 40's.





Jack Goins, in his first book, "Melungeons: And Other Pioneer Families", agreed that the "Melungeons" were indeed Indians that had mixed just as the historical reports accounted and witnessed. By 2006/8 this began to change. Jack Goins had his DNA tested and to his shock it came back E haplo-group. It has been said the E haplo-group is a Sub-Saharan haplo-group. Once this news sank in he then began claiming that all the "Melungeons" were Africans. He hijacked "The Melungeon DNA Project" from Donald Yates and Elizabeth Hirschman who were attempting to link the Indians to the "Lost Tribes of Israel", i.e. Jews. Jack Goins with the help of Roberta Estes then began to seek out unwitting and unsuspecting descendants of "Melungeons" to add to their test group. If the results were not E haplo-group then they would toss them to the side. The main test subjects with E haplo-group were relatives of Jack Goins or Don Collins. By padding the results with E haplo-group from Jack or Don's lines they would assure an African result in order to hide Indian ancestry.





Genocide: ...any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

A. Killing members of the group

B. causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group

C. deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part

D. imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group

E. forcibly transferring children of the group to another group

Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Article II



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide

"...the ECHR also noted that a minority took a broader view and did not consider biological-physical destruction was necessary as the intent to destroy a national, racial, religious or ethnical group was enough to qualify as genocide."



"The judges continue in paragraph 12, "The determination of when the targeted part is substantial enough to meet this requirement may involve a number of considerations. The numeric size of the targeted part of the group is the necessary and important starting point, though not in all cases the ending point of the inquiry. The number of individuals targeted should be evaluated not only in absolute terms, but also in relation to the overall size of the entire group. In addition to the numeric size of the targeted portion, its prominence within the group can be a useful consideration. If a specific part of the group is emblematic of the overall group, or is essential to its survival, that may support a finding that the part qualifies as substantial within the meaning of Article 4 [of the Tribunal's Statute]."



http://www.preventgenocide.org/genocide/officialtext.htm



Article III: The following acts shall be punishable:



A. Genocide

B. Conspiracy to commit genocide

C. Direct and public incitement to commit genocide

D. Attempt to commit genocide

E. Complicity in genocide



An ethnic group is a set of individuals whose identity is defined by common cultural traditions, language or heritage.





Straining Credulity



Eugenics, when most people hear or read this word they think of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. They think of race purity and white supremacy. Its basic tenants found outward and grotesque expression within that degenerate and evil atmosphere of hate. Few people know or understand this pseudo science and its origins. “EUGENICS is the science which deals with all influences that improve the inborn qualities of a race; also with those that develop them to the utmost advantage.” (1) Sir Francis Galton has been dubbed the “Father of Eugenics”. In his 1865 article “Hereditary Talent and Character” and his 1869 book “Hereditary Genius”, Sir Francis Galton invented the ideas and practices of Eugenics based on his cousin Charles Darwin’s theories of evolution in Darwin’s book “Origin of Species.” Galton believed that certain mechanisms of natural selection were potentially threatened and spoiled by human activity. “He reasoned that, since many human societies sought to protect the underprivileged and weak, those societies were at odds with the natural selection responsible for extinction of the weakest; and only by changing these social policies could society be saved from a "reversion towards mediocrity", a phrase he first coined in statistics and which later changed to the now common "regression towards the mean.”(2) In Galton’s introductory opening to his book “Hereditary Genuis,” he wrote, “ I propose to show in this book that a man's natural abilities are derived by inheritance, under exactly the same limitations as are the form and physical features of the whole organic world. Consequently, as it is easy, not withstanding those limitations, to obtain by careful selection a permanent breed of dogs or horses gifted with peculiar powers of running, or of doing anything else, so it would be quite practicable to produce a highly-gifted race of men by judicious marriages during several consecutive generations.”(3) Galton first coined the term Eugenics in his 1883 book entitled “Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development.”(4) The goal of this discourse was to implement social policies that created people with desirable qualities and virtues as envisioned by the elite upper class. (In America, racist eugenics ideas were in use before Galton.)



The group of people that would grab a hold of these ideas included Charles B. Davenport, Albert E. Wiggam, Sir Julian S. Huxley, George B. Shaw, Bertrand Russell, Arthur H. Estabrook and Walter A. Plecker. Of these, for the purpose of this article, the first and last two men would become important in understanding the influence and direct actions taken by the Eugenics program in the United States and the subsequent present day actions by award winning researchers of Melungeon/Mixed Blood/Tri-Racial/ Native American heritage.



Charles B. Davenport was an American scientist. He was responsible for the implementation of the ideas of eugenics not only in America but around the world. He was involved in the sterilization programs of the United States and had a strong influence on Nazi Germany’s Holocaust.(5) Davenport received his funding from the Carnegie Institution of Washington to direct and found the Biological Experiment Station at Cold Spring Harbor in 1904 and the Eugenics Records Office in 1910. In 1925 Davenport became the founder and first president of the International Federation of Eugenics Organizations.(6) Other prominent figures in this circle of evil were Ernst Ruden, Alfred Ploetz, Harry Laughlin, Havelock Ellis, Irving Fischer, Eugen Fischer, Madison Grant, Lucien Howe and Margaret Sanger of Planned Parenthood.



Arthur H. Estabrook, “Dr. Arthur Howard Estabrook was born on May 9, 1885, to Arthur Francis and Susan Rebecca (Breck) in Leicester, Massachusetts. Estabrook earned the A.B. degree in 1905 and the A.M. in 1906 from Clark College in Worcester, Massachusetts. He was a fellow and assistant in zoology at Clark in 1906-1907. Estabrook received his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins in 1910 and was a student at the School of Philanthropy in New York in 1914. Estabrook married Jessie McCubbin on October 25, 1911, and married Anne Ruth Medcalf on July 8, 1931, after his first wife's death. He worked in the Eugenics Record Office of Carnegie Institution of Washington (1910-1929) and served as a special investigator for the Indiana State Commission on Mental Defectives (1916-1918). Estabrook traveled to Virginia on behalf of the Eugenics Record Office to study the issues and people involved in the Virginia sterilization case of Carrie Buck. Estabrook served in the U.S. Army in 1918-1920 as a Captain in the Sanitary Corps. He began working for the American Society for the Control of Cancer in 1929 and served as president of the Eugenics Research Association in 1925-1926.”(7) Estabrook began publishing his work in 1912. His article “The Jukes in 1915”, was published in Paper No. 25 Of The Station For Experimental Evolution At Cold Spring Harbor, Carnegie Institution, 1916, Washington, D.C. This article was a reanalyzing of the work that Richard Dugdale had written about in his 1877 study entitled “The Jukes: A Study in Crime, pauperism, Disease, and Heredity.” Estabrook argued that heredity created the undesirables as opposed to Dugdale’s argument that environment was the key factor. Estabrook conceived the plan of action that such undesirable families were to be thwarted and restricted from reproducing since, by his estimations, environmental changes would have no affect to change genetic propensity for criminality. “He was only one of many who used the Jukes family to prove the uselessness and wastefulness of social improvement and to advocate for heredity-controlling legislation, eugenic segregations, and sterilization.”(8) Estabrook and Davenport together published a study in 1912 entitled, “The Nam Family: A Study in Cacogenics.” This was only one of several studies and publications sponsored and paid for by John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie and E.H. Harriman. In 1926 Estabrook published “Mongrel Virginians: The Win Tribe”, along with Ivan Eugene McDougle,Carnegie Institution of Washington. Dept. of Genetics, The Williams & Wilkins Company, 1926. {Ivan E. McDougle was an investigator: "The Investigators," Ivan E. McDougle and assistants (Gwendolyn Watson, Martha Lobingier, Eleanor Harned), in Amherst County, Virginia}. Estabrook’s compiled studies, notes and publications can be accessed at http://library.albany.edu/speccoll/findaids/apap069.htm#history. His racist work is voluminous to say the least, and his involvement in the suppression of Native American and African American mixed bloods is evident.



Walter A. Plecker was a doctor and public health advocate. Plecker moved to Hampton,VA in 1892 and became the public health officer in 1902. He helped to found and served as the first registrar for Virginia’s Bureau of Vital Statistics beginning in 1912 and held that office until 1946. He was a white supremacist and an avid purveyor of eugenics belonging to his local chapter of the white supremacist group the Anglo-Saxon Clubs of America founded in 1922 by John Powell at the College of William and Mary. Plecker felt that the Native American population in Virginia had become “mongrelized” from intermarriage with African Americans. Plecker’s writings are legion, however in "The New Virginia Law To Preserve Racial Integrity", Virginia Health Bulletin, v. 16, extra no. 2, March 1924, he began a campaign to disenfranchise Native American Indians in Virginia. Continued ranting from Plecker can be seen in, "Virginia's Attempt to Adjust the Color Problem", The American Journal of Public Health, 15 (February 1925), pages 111–115. The following statement is obtained regarding the Pamunkey and Mattaponi, “Their example has been an incentive for the non-reservation Indian people, who, around the time of the Civil War, began to resurface as identified enclaves. In the early 1900s, these enclaves reorganized into tribes. The move by Indian descendants to form tribes was seen as a threat by some people who wanted to keep the white race "pure." Led by Dr. Walter A. Plecker, a group called the Anglo-Saxon Club of America prevailed upon the General Assembly to pass the Racial Integrity Law in 1924. According to this law, in matters of births, marriages, and deaths, the Virginia Bureau of Vital Statistics recognized only two races—white and black. U.S. Census figures in 1930 showed 779 Native Americans living in Virginia; by 1940, the figure dropped to 198. In effect, people of Indian descent did not exist. Since the Indians were not accepted into white churches and schools, they opened their own. However, Indian schools in Virginia did not go beyond seventh grade until the late 1950s.”(9) In order to understand more fully these campaigns against Indain mixed bloods in Virginia we must go back to 1843. Many of the purveyors of the idea that any African blood negated or ended treaties with Indian tribes began in earnest with the Thomas W.S. Gregory Petition of January 1843, “…it alleges that they allowed free Negroes to live on the reservation and marry their people “until their Indian character has vanished,” and therefore their two reservations should be sold and the people dispersed. No evidence is presented and no details are provided to prove these allegations. Instead, most of the petition is about the white signers’ belief about free non-whites in general: the supposedly bad character of all such people (the “badness” being described at length), the threat they presented to a slave-owning community, and the“necessity” of removing all of them from Virginia. The petition is expressly aimed at removing from the state the “anomalous institution” of a legally constituted free non-white community. Calling the Pamunkeys “Mulattoes” and asserting that they were no longer the kind of Indians for whom the colonial government had established the reservations was a way of doing it legally.”(10)





During this 1940 to 1943 time period Frank G. Speck was in the process of field study and aiding the Virginia tribes in their efforts to gain recognition. When the efforts began to cover-up Indain heritage Speck advised the Indians to gather affidavits from their white neighbors. Plecker countered by banning Specks books from Virginia’s libraries. Unfortunately this was an embarrassment to Speck as a professional and Speck left the field studies of Virginia and the Indians therein. Fortunately there were others that had stepped in previously to the 1940’s and subsequent to that decade. Supporters such as James Mooney, John Swanton, Steven Weeks, Swan Burnett, Hamilton McMillan and others would be the first line of defense for the beleaguered tribes of the East.





Supporting such actions and biased conclusions of the eugenics mongers, you will find the following researchers and writers that either supported, or cited as reference, these eugenicists; William H. Gilbert, Jr., Edward T. Price, Calvin Beale and Thomas J. Harte.





William Harlen Gilbert, Jr. in 1946 published, “Memorandum Concerning the Characteristics of the Larger Mixed-Blood Racial Islands of the Eastern United States” in a periodical called Social Forces. This article has been utilized on a regular basis from then till now.





Edward T. Price, in 1950, submitted his doctoral dissertation entitled “Mixed-Blood Populations of Eastern United States as to origins, Localizations, and Persistence” at the University of California. In April of 1951 he published an article called “The Melungeons: A Mixed-Blood Strain of the Southern Appalachians” in the Geographical Review published by American Geographical Society. In June of 1953 he published, “A Geographic Analysis of White-Negro-Indian Racial Mixtures in Eastern United States” in the Annals of the Association of American Geographers.





Calvin L. Beale, in December of 1957, published “American Tri-racial Isolets: Their Status and Pertinence to Genetic Research” in the Eugenics Quarterly. In June of 1972 he published “An Overview of the Phenomenon of Mixed Racial Isolates in the United States” in the American Anthropologists in co-operation with the American Anthropological Association.





Thomas J. Harte, in March of 1959, published “Trends in Mate Selection in a Tri-Racial Isolate” in Social Forces, a periodical produced by the University of North Carolina.

During the time between 1940 and 1975, these men and their faulty biased work would impact the Native American mixed blood community through erasure in the records both statistical and academic. Lies compounded upon lies which were based on biased blatant racism and white elitist supremacy.














Citations





(1)The American Journal of Sociology, Volume X; July, 1904; Number 1,”Eugenics: Its Definition, Scope, and Aims”, by Sir Francis Galton.





(2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics, accessed August 14^th, 2011





(3) Sir Francis Galton, “Hereditary Genius”, chapter 1





(4)Edward J. Larson, “Evolution”, 2004, pg. 179; and Sir Francis Galton,“Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development”, 1883, pg 17, {see footnote 1}.





(5)Edwin Black, “War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race”, pg. 293





(6)Edwin Black, War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race”, pg. 40, 47 and 240





(7)“Who's Who in America”, 1935-1936 edition, Marquis; and http://library.albany.edu/speccoll/findaids/apap069.htm#history, accessed August 14^th, 2011.





(8) http://mulibraries.missouri.edu/specialcollections/exhibits/eugenics/estabrook_jukes.htm, accessed August 14^th, 2011





(9) http://www.dhr.virginia.gov/arch_NET/timeline/modern_indian.htm, accessed August 14^th, 2011





(10) Helen C. Rountree, “Pocahontas’s People: The Powhatan Indians of Virginia Through Four Centuries”, pg. 194, see notes 61-64. {(61) Legislative Petitions, King William County, January 20, 1843. (62)Legislative Petitions, King William County, November 26, 1842, and January 12, 1843.(63)This assertion is refuted by firsthand observations of Gatschet, Mooney, and Pollard in the late nineteenth century (see below).(64)The “Pamunkeys” in the petition are actually the Pamunkeys and the “Mattaponis,” since both reservation tracts are mentioned. Apparently the counter petitions were written on behalf of the residents of both reservations tracts, whose administrative title was “Pamunkey.”}

Virginia

October 1705-CHAP. IV. An act declaring who shall not bear office in this country.

[The text of this act suggests that a free man of color did hold an office sometime before October of 1705. The statute contains the first definition of a mulatto in Virginia's laws.]

''Be it enacted and declared, and it is hereby enacted and declared, That the child of an Indian and the child, grandchild, or great grandchild, of a negro shall be deemed, accounted, held and taken to be a mulatto.''

Source: Hening, ed., The Statutes at Large, vol. 3, pp. 250-251, 252.

I think that *Henings Statutes at Large* predates Wikipedia. Note the Virtual Jamestown site says this 1705 law was the FIRST DEFINITION OF A MULATTO IN VIRGINIA LAWS and it states THE CHILD OF AN INDIAN shall be deemed, accounted, held and taken to be a MULATTO.

http://www.virtualjamestown.org/laws1.html

Information submitted by
Joanne Pezzullo

 

 

 

South Carolina

Mulatto and Free Person Of Color Not Negro

 

Wicazo SA Review

The Red Pencil Review

Fall 1995 Vol. XI No. 2

"The Use of Racial and Ethnic Terms in America: Management by Manipulation" by Jack D. Forbes

 

Pages 58 and 59

 

"In 1857, a William Chavers was charged "as a free person of color" with carrying a shotgun. Chavers was able to win his case eventually...because he is charged as "a free person of color" whereas...the act...makes it penal for any "free negro" to carry arms...Free persons of color maybe...persons colored by Indian blood. The indictment cannot be sustained."

 

Page 55

 

"In 1719, South Carolina decided who should be an "Indian" for tax purposes since American slaves were taxed at a lesser rate than African slaves. The act stated:

 

And for preventing all doubts and scruples that may arise what ought to be rated on mustees, mulattoes, etc. all such slaves as are not entirely Indian shall be accounted as negro.

 

This is an extremely significant passage because it clearly asserts that "mustees" and "mulattoes" were persons of part American ancestry. My judgment (to be discussed later) is that a mustee was primarily part-African and American and that a mulatto was usually part-European and American. The act is also significant because it asserts that part-Americans with or without African ancestry could be counted as Negroes, thus having an implication for all later slave census."

http://www.usgwarchives.net/va/lunenburg.htm


http://files.usgwarchives.net/va/lunenburg/census/sun001.txt

In the 22nd year of George II, October, 1748,[66] an act was passed
covering the subject of tithables, and repealing the above noticed act of
4th Queen Anne, and 12th George II, to be in force "from and immediately
after the tenth day of June, which shall be in the year of our Lord, one
thousand seven hundred and fifty-one."

  This law defined tithables as "all male persons of the age of sixteen
years and upwards, and all negroe, mulatto, and Indian women of the same
age, except Indians tributary to this government and all wives of free
negroes, mulattoes, and Indians, except as before excepted," and "excepting
such only as the county court, for charitable reasons appearing to them,
shall think fit to excuse."

How Native Americans Became "W, C, B, M or FPC"
NATIVE INTELLIGENCE, a column by Jack D. Forbes, Native American Studies, University of California, Davis

"The Federal government began to use "degree of blood" in the latter part of the nineteenth-century, especially in relation to the enrollment of persons before the Dawes allotment commission. The use of "full," "one-half" etc. at that time was both an extension of the previous racist system and also a step in terminating Native Americans. Persons with greater amounts of white ancestry were assumed to be more competent than persons with lesser amounts. In other words, the degree of white blood was much more important than the degree of American ancestry. The white blood entitled an Indian citizen to greater privileges, including being able to have "wardship" restrictions removed, being able to sell property, acquire the right to vote in state and federal elections, and so on.

"Thus it may be that many persons chose to exaggerate their amount of white ancestry when enrolling. Persons without white ancestry were restricted persons, with the Bureau controlling their financial lives. It was also expected that when a person became "competent" (white enough) he would no longer be an Indian and that process would eventually terminate a tribe's existence.

"Thus the recording of blood quantum is both a product of white racism and of white social science theories of a racist nature, and also a product of a plan wherein Native nations are expected to vanish when the white blood quantum reaches a certain level (above three-fourths, for example). For this latter reason alone, the use of blood quantum is exceedingly dangerous for Native Nations today, although the Bureau and some eastern Oklahoma Indians don't seem to care about this danger."

 

The following by Steven Pony Hill in his work “Patriot Chiefs and Loyal Braves”

http://sciway3.net/clark/freemoors/CHAPTER1colonial.htm

“Arguably the most influential event to occur in the 1600’s happened in 1660 when Virginia determined that “…an Indian sold by another Indian or an Indian who speaks English and who desires baptism will now receive his or her freedom.” This allowed many Algonquin and Siouan war captives held in slavery in the colonies to regain their freedom, but it also provided incentive for their masters to downplay the Indian ancestry of those in servitude in order to retain them. These former slaves quickly rejoined their tribesmen bringing with them their acquired skills as carpenters, wheelwrights, and ferry operators. Most importantly, these newly freed Indians brought with them their new English names and Christian religion. Unfortunately they also retained the stigma of being former slaves, a condition which would cause their white neighbors to eye them with suspicion for generations.”

Jack Goins in Error over DNA Theories and the Cover-Up of Indian Ancestry

DNA testing for heritage has become very popular over the past decade. There are currently two types of DNA tests that are marketed to the general public. One of these is Y-chromosome testing. The Y-chromosome is passed down exclusively from father to son. This type of testing can only tell you a fraction of information about a family’s ethnic background. If you test a man who claims Indian ancestry you may not get the results you are looking for to back up this claim. For example if the Indian man's father was White or Grandfather was White then you will likely come up with a European haplo-type. This would extend even further back in time to the ancestral male line. It only takes one male of European ethnicity to get a European haplo-type. What about the Indian man's mother, the father's mother, the mother's father, and etc.? This Y-chromosome test would not get you the results to include them.

Mitochondrial DNA or mtDNA is the test for the female to female to female line of DNA. This tests the Miochondrial DNA from the mother's line of female descent. If an Indian woman tested and she had only one woman, i.e. her mother's mother's mother's mother, etc., then you would not be able to identify the Indian ancestry if that woman was European or African. You would again get a skewed result leaving out a lot of ancestors. Examples of this would be the Indian woman's father, her mother's father, her mother's father's mother, and so forth.

If you look at the "Melungeon DNA Project", run by Jack Goins, what you will find is a grouping of cherry picked results that completely skew the data in favor of supporting a theory of African or European descent. There are a lot of descendants that are left out of this project and there are a lot of descendants that would never show up in their Y and mt-chromosome testings of haplo-types. This type of mis-information, "Melungeon DNA Project", is being spread around the internet like wildfire. You can see that the Wikipedia entry supports these erroneous and dubious claims hook, line, and sinker. There is a mountain of evidence and proof that the so-called "Melungeons" are originally, and still to this day, are Native American Indians. Along with Wikipedia, the Melungeon Heritage Association, the Melungeon Historical Society, Virginia DeMarce, Jack Goins, and Paul Heinegg are among the top most celebrated researchers that have been glamorized and trumpeted as the so called authorities on the "Melungeons". It would be more appropriate to say that they are the most scandalized representations of Native American suppression to date nearly eclipsing Walter Ashby Plecker in scope.

This is the same as the Native American Holocaust Denial and is a gross denial of Native American descendants. If you want to explore the merits of this article please go to the "Melungeon-L-List" on Rootsweb.com for further research. What you will find in their archive of discussions is blatant and plain for the world to read. If you would like further information on the TRUE ethnic origins of the "Melungeons" go to   http://historical-melungeons.com/ . There are literally hundreds of documents such as court records, tax records, land records, church records, town and county histories, local historical society documents, anthropological/sociological/ethnological reports, Smithsonian Institution and the Bureau of Ethnology reports, and the list keeps mounting. These people are Saponi and Sara/Cheraw/Lumbee mixed blood Native American Indians.