The Appalachian "Black Dutch"

[Menydh]

Wayfaring Stranger:

The Black Dutch, German Gypsies, or Chicanere,
and their relation to the Melungeon

By Linda D. Griggs

Introduction The Melungeons are an olive complected, dark eyed, dark skinned people living in Appalachia. Their claim of Portuguese descent was largely ignored and they have been historically dismissed as "tri-racial isolates", part African, Indian and White. Ironically, for a people accused of miscegenation, they marry only within their community. Some physical characteristics claimed by those of Melungeon descent are an Anatolian bump, a donut shaped protuberance on the back of the skull; shovel teeth, which are curved across the back rather than straight and end in a ridge at the gum line (also common to American Indians); and Familial Mediterranean Fever, an inherited rheumatic disease ethnically restricted to non-Ashkenzi Jews, Armenians, Arabs and Turks. As racial tensions hardened around the Civil War their status as mulattos deprived them of basic rights such as property ownership and education. N. Brent Kennedy's The Melungeons: The Resurrection of a Proud People - An Untold Story of Ethnic Cleansing in America [1] documents the denial and loss of their history and culture.
Investigations into their origins have turned up many significant theories and clues. One of these theories, that they are part Gypsy, was put forward as early as the October 1889 issue of American Anthropologist by Swan Burnett, M.D. [2] and as recently as 1999 by Henry Robert Burke, African American historian.[3] One of the clues is the large number of Melungeon who explain away their dark skin by claiming a Black Dutch ancestor.
In her comprehensive and objective article, In Search of the Black Dutch, Myra Vanderpool Gormley, C.G., relates that, "The so-called 'Black Dutch' have long been an enigma in American genealogy. Their descendants are widely reported, yet no authoritative definition exists for this intriguing term.''[4]
Currently speculations on the meaning of Black Dutch range from American Indian to Sephardic Jew. But rarely does German Gypsy enter the list of possibilities. Curiously, American German Gypsies living today have always called themselves Black Dutch, have never heard of it meaning anything but German Gypsy, and are surprised to hear it could mean anything else.

Origin of Terms
In the 1800's German Gypsies were called Chicanere, the low German or Pennsylvania Dutch transposition for Zigeuner. This high German word may have been derived from the expression, "go away, thief" or from Atsinganoi, the name of a religious group who, like the Gypsies, did not like to be touched by outsiders. It is interesting to note that although the words "gypped" and "Gypsy" are related (and obviously hurtful and offensive to law abiding Gypsies) the name Chicanere has nothing to do with the word chicanery, a word which has it's origins in 14th century France. But this unfortunate linguistic coincidence coupled with the oppression and stereotypes that Gypsies have always faced make it impossible for even present day Gypsies to be open about their ethnicity. The term Black Dutch, a corruption of Deutch for German, must have come into favor fairly quickly after their arrival in America as an obfuscating way of explaining dark features. In any case the term begins to show up in print and I have excerpted those germane to this article from The Dictionary of American Regional English

black Dutch n. also black Dutchman, esp. common Sth, S Midl. A dark-complexioned people of uncertain origin: see quotations." 1854 (1932) Bell Log TX-CA Trail 35.224, "Along down the center of my breast is a brown stripe like the stripe on a black Dutchman's [sic] back." 1930 Shoemaker 1300 Words cPA Mts (as of c1900), "Black Dutch - Dark Pennsylvania Mountain people, probably of Near Eastern or Aboriginal stock." 1939 Hall Coll. eTN, wNC, "Black Dutch ... a local type of people of Germanic(?) extraction. The Foxes are known as 'Black Dutch.' Pennsylvania is as far back as we can trace them. They are low, not tall, small and have black features.[5]

Physical Characteristics The second citation is taken from Henry W. Shoemaker, Chairman of the Pennsylvania Historical Commission, who wrote and lectured about the Chicanere in the 1920's and 30's. He remains the best authority and this paper is primarily based on his writings. In a 1924 address he stated that "At least until the 1850's the men were of medium size, very slim and erect, with good features and large dark eyes. They wore their hair long; very little hair grew on their faces, but they tied to cultivate small side-burns."[6] In a March 31, 1930 Altoona Tribune article he described diverse Shekener girls and women ... of astounding loveliness and their kinship to the so-called Pennsylvania German people, where strange, dark types predominate, was apparent. In fact the Pennsylvania German is but a more cosmopolitan scion of the She-kener ... and all spring from the same Central and near Eastern polyglot that swarmed into Pennsylvania in the Eighteenth century of diverse origins.[7] The Chicenere "ranks decimated whenever a chance to settle down came in view; by these judicious marriages their blood is in the veins of almost every "Pennsylvania Dutchman. And the Pennsylvania Dutch boys and girls with their glorious dark eyes, wax-like complexions, wavy dark hair and features of Araby, show the undying presence of forgotten Romany (Gypsy) forbears."[8] Shoemakers describes their intermarriage as "giving an added dark strain to the already swarthy Pennsylvania German type, fused as it has been from South German, Huguenot, Esopus Spaniard, Hebrew, Swiss, Waldensian, Greek and Indian, the type of the true Pennsylvanian, Tauranian ..."[9]

Reasons for Immigration
There have been Gypsies in America since 1640 when entire families of English Gypsies called Romanichals were, for the crime of being Gypsy, enslaved or "indentured for life" alongside Africans on the Virginia plantations. German Gypsies arrived under similar duress. German Gypsies, who had "inhabited the Palatinate or Rhine County, for many centuries, wandering the entire distance between Schaffhausen and Middelburg on their migrations" [10] arrived in the late 1720's with the Huguenots, Swiss Moravians, Alsatians, Jews and Waldensians searching for freedom from oppression and an escape from the poverty and chaos caused by the Thirty Years War (1618-48).* But Gypsies had been given additional reason to emigrate. Since 1577 anti-Gypsy legislation had forbidden them to do business or settle. By 1710 flogging, branding, separation from kin and exile became the standard punishment for Gypsy men and women with no criminal charges against them. The punishment for returning was execution. Those deemed fit for work faced "life confinement with forced labor."[11] In 1734 Gypsy hunts became an established and profitable sport, with a reward of "six Reichstaler for every live Gypsy brought in and three for a dead Gypsy, as well as keeping their belongings." In 1826, Freiherr von Lenchen displayed his trophies publicly: the severed heads of a Gypsy woman and her child. In 1835, a Rheinish aristocrat entered into his list of kills, "A Gypsy woman and her suckling babe."[12]
Henry W. Shoemaker in a 1924 address related that although the Gypsies were

Proscribed, hated and despised, there were strict regulations against these Nomads being embarked in a body as if, though they were not wanted at home, they were not allowed to go elsewhere! On a number of occasions Gypsy bands endeavored to charter whole ships at Rotterdam, but as they were watched with the same argus-eyed authority as are bootleggers today, their efforts were always at the last minute frustrated. It is related that one ship, the 'Stein-Awdler,' giving it the Pennsylvania Dutch pronunciation, got away under cover of darkness, but during an unfavorable tide, it still lay in the harbor at daybreak, when the papers were scrutinized and declared invalid by the port authorities. Several boat-loads of port wardens went in pursuit, but the boats were not to carry the unfortunate Chi-kener back to dry land, but order them off the ship -- they were driven overboard, men, women and children, like a plague of rats, and had to jump out in the mud up to their waists, and get ashore as best they could, leaving their possessions behind, which were seized as a fine levied against them as a body. On shore the mud-saturated refugees were attacked by a mob armed with boat-hooks and soundly beaten, and probably quite a few died of their wounds and exposure afterwards.[13]

Method of Immigration - Ports Entry Forbidden to come to America as a free people, Gypsy individuals "'sold' themselves to redemptioners for the price of their fare to America. This species of servitude, and the selling of emigrants for their passage had not a few of the features about it, of involuntary chattel slavery, and it was characterized at the time as the 'German slave trade'," according to Ian Hancock's, The Pariah Syndrome: An Account of Gypsy Slavery and Persecution.[14]
But Shoemaker notes that "while it meant breaking up of the families, the Gipsies deliberately sold themselves into servitude as individuals and bravely faced the great adventure, hoping to re-assemble and re-unite in Philadelphia or Lancaster ..." No doubt the exact numbers could be ascertained and identified through a careful perusal of I. Daniel Rupp's Thirty Thousand Names of German Emigrants.[15]
There were those who "posed as being as poor as the most poverty-stricken Palatines, but on arriving at their final destinations in inland Pennsylvania sometimes bought out their employer's farm, buildings, livestock and implements and all to the surprise of those worthy Pietists."[16] Others "were canny enough to know that they would never work out their passage money. They would either marry the sons or daughters of the Huguenot, Swiss and Palatine farmers they were bound out to, or else they would run away."[17]
As runaways it would seem that the German Gypsy had an advantage over the English Gypsy. English Gypsies would have had dark oriental eyes, dark skin and hair in contrast to the fair complected English making them more easily singled out and controlled. "Most of the Chi-kener families were broken up by this Redemptioner method of emigration, as some were dumped on the inhospitable New England coast, others in New Jersey, and still others in the far South instead of at the ports along the Delaware." [18] Warren B. Smith's White Servitude in Colonial South Carolina reports that "The largest group represented outside of the British Isles were the Germans. Many of these Germans came as redemptioners."[19] He goes on to quote Robert L. Meriwether's, The Expansion of South Carolina which states, "The largest bodies of the Germans and Scotch-Irish who settled the piedmont and mountainous regions from Maryland to Georgia came to America through the ports of Philadelphia and Newcastle, Delaware, and finding lands occupied in Pennsylvania and New Jersey were gradually pushed toward the south, till they were met by a smaller stream of the same people who came through the port of Charleston to South Carolina and thence to the frontier."[20]

Common Names of the Black Dutch
As if the genealogy and origins of the Black Dutch were not complex enough, it is important to note that Gypsies often have two names, one that is private and for family use and one that is public for official records and conducting business. Imagine the brick wall you would encounter if your Granny Palmer was listed on public documents as a Smith. The public name that is chosen is very often the most common name in the area in which they have settled. This creates the kind of research problem Brent Kennedy faced when he found his Melungeon ancestors had "some sort of secret pact to give their children the same names" with "five Andrew Jackson Mullinses living at the same time."[21]
Interestingly, a variant of the name Mullens, Mullen, may have been a Gypsy name as it appears alongside Chicanere and Romanichal names in an August 30th, 1862 article in The Rock Island Argus.[22] The article describes a caravan of Gypsies arriving in town to deal horses. The men, Constant Smith , Frank Schwartz, John Boswell and Cornelius Mullen, approached the press to offer references and assurances of their honesty. The press encouraged the town to make the Gypsies unwelcome. The name Kaiser is also common to both Gypsies and Melungeons. In the The Pariah Syndrome, Ian Hancock mentions the Kaiser name when he quotes an article from the National Gazette, May 19th, 1834 which

tells of the indiscriminate flogging of Gypsies, called Yansers, in New York State, apparently as a means of sport for whoever could afford it." He quotes the paper as saying, "There is yet another tribe, at or near Schenectady, called Yansers, although their patriarchal name is Kaiser. A gentleman appointed some years ago to some town office there, states that he found a charge of four pounds, ten shillings for whipping Yansers, the amount being small, was allowed. A similar charge being brought the next year, he asked what in the name of goodness it meant? Behold, it was for chastising Gypsies whenever occasion presented, which was done with impunity and for some profit ...[23]

Brent Kennedy's The Melungeons: Resurrection of a Proud People also lists the names Kiser, Kayser and Colley. "Regardless of how these darker genes may have slipped in, by the early 1800's both the Kisers and the Colleys were a dark-complexioned, black and curly-haired people alternately claiming an Indian or 'Black Dutch' heritage."[24] Other names of Chicanere reported by Shoemaker were Hemperley, Rau, Reinhold, Einsich, Dapp, Grosmere, Ingraham, Stanley, May, Nesselrode, Lovell, Shaw and Wharton.[25] Additional Black Dutch/Chicanere names are Smith, Schwartz, Womeldorf. Stanley, Smith, Ingram and Lovell are actually English Gypsy or Romanichal names. This confusion may have arisen when Chicanere began traveling with Romanichals. The members of the second German Gypsy migration of 1850-70 also traveled with Romanichals and were absorbed into their culture.[26]

Loss of Culture or Romnipen
It seems almost certain that any Melungeon/Black Dutch ancestry that can be linked to the Chi-kener must be descended from those German Gypsies who were never able to reunite with their clan or families, married non-Gypsies or gadje and lost their cultural heritage. I say this because in reading about the Melungeon I can find no evidence of the ritual cleanliness regulations that the Gypsies brought with them when they migrated out of India 1000 years ago and continue to practice today in varying degrees as a key component of their cultural identity.
Since many of the regulations involve menstruation, childbirth, cleaning and cooking it falls to the women to maintain them. As long as the family and the clan can stay together they can retain their customs and heritage or Romnipen which loosely translates to Gypsyhood. But when the individual is separated from his family and clan his culture is not inclined to survive intact.

Fate in America
But, "Only a small percentage of the hundreds of continental gipsies who came to Pennsylvania as redemptioners in the last half of the Eighteenth Century ever rescued themselves from this new environment."[27] Chicanere "who reached Philadelphia were ultimately reunited into family groups, and as soon as this was done their instinct took them to the road."[28]
"Lancaster for some reason was the first headquarters of the Gipsies in Pennsylvania, that is outside of Philadelphia. In 1763 there were enough of them there to attempt to form themselves into a band, and live in the open in the groves of giant white oaks along the Conestoga and Mill Creek."[29] Other "favorite harboring spots for a century or more; Philadelphia, Lebanon, (called by the Gypsies Stitestown,) Lancaster, Reading and York [30] and, up until 1930, "Most of the traveling She-kener wintering in little narrow alleys adjacent to the railroad tracks at York" [15a] or at Pittsburg.[31]

Arts
In 1930 Shoemaker wrote that

They were expert horsemen, and created the first interest in horse-breeding and horse-racing in rural Pennsylvania. In other words, they stood for better horses. They were expert potters, making better pots, jugs and flasks than the Indians, or the potters of Huguenot, Spanish or Moravian antecedents. They were expert coppersmiths, and turned out finer work than any other foreign element in Pennsylvania. They were clever ironworkers and artistic tile makers. Everything they executed was distinctive and of artistic merit, and yet they did not try half so hard as the plodding gentiles they out-created and out-sold. They knew how to make glass, and the famous Baron Stiegel whom Pennsylvania is so tardy in honoring, used every inducement to secure their staying with him at Manheim, his chief glass-maker's name was Stanley, a German speaking Gipsy, whose descendants are today part prosperous and sedentary and part wanderers and impecunious. They were famous musicians, and as dancers excelled for their grace. The She-kener were the vanguard of the artistic impetus which the so-called Dutch gave to Pennsylvania, the colonial houses, furniture, stoves, firebacks, glassware, tiles, illuminated manuscripts, sconces, urns, pottery and bells, as well as ballads and music that have caused antiquarians to remark that the Pennsylvania Germans alone of all the colonial elements left behind them artistic remains.[32]

Because no people are ever all good or all bad, they also had the reputation of being able to put a "disturber" on a person, a spell that may last indefinitely. Pennsylvania witchcraft, the black art, the hechs, is theirs ... and in telling fortunes the She-kener girls and women never impart anything that is pleasant, for example, they will tell a married man that his wife is false."[33]
The Pennsylvania Dutch people, although pious, were also superstitious, which brings us to the famous Pennsylvania Dutch Hex Signs that decorate the barns of Lancaster County. By all accounts the symbols are purely decorative, but I find it hard to imagine that the Pennsylvania Dutch, believing it possible to be hexed, would just coincidentally call their barn decorations "hex signs".
Their superstition also made the Long Lost Friend: A Collection of Mysterious Arts and Remedies for Men As Well As Animals by Johann Georg Hohman, the second most popular book after the Bible, and it has remained in continuous print to this day. The book's introduction claims the information was collected from a Gypsy. I have not been able to find any evidence that there is overlap between traditional Gypsy folk medicine and those remedies in The Long Lost Friend, however further research is needed. This book influenced not only the culture of the Pennsylvania Dutch but that of African Americans in the South who purchased the book from Jewish peddlers and used it in the development of Voodoo.

Costume - Early
The Chikener brought vivacity to their dress as well as their arts. The men "usually wore a red sash under their coats into which were sewed leathern scabbards or sheaths, where they carried long knives with rapier like handles."[35] "The sashes and "handsome cashmere shawls formed leading elements of their costumes."[36]
"The girls were of marked beauty, the same dark coloring as the Pennsylvania mountain girls of today, the hair worn long and in two braids, tied with red ribbons, and sometimes bound upon their heads, and into which silver half-moons and stars were woven. The skirts were worn short, and striped patterns predominated. They wore long, bright colored stockings or tights, and low shoes of soft leather. A scarlet scarf was draped about the neck, over which were many stings of bright colored beads of glass or metal. Bobbed hair was only worn by girls who had had a love affair with a white man and failed to win him into the tribe."[37]
Gypsy youth never wore hats and often ornamented their dark hair with vulture feathers.[38]
Many people erroneously thought that Gypsies darkened their skin deliberately and Shoemaker was misinformed on this point. He wrote, "The darkness of the Chi-kener complexions was heightened, so Dr. Stephen tells us, by the use of various greases or schmeres, which recalls William Penn's famous letter of 1683 to the Free Traders, at London, in which he says: The Pennsylvania Indians are of complexion black, but by design, as the Gypsies in England." Some Pennsylvania Germans called the Gypsies Smutsers, and "Dutch" mothers whose babies had dirty faces called them "regular smutsers."[39] This last custom is now being questioned. It seems the English Gypsies had skin dark enough that the English assumed erroneously that they had deliberately darkened their complexions. Among English Gypsies there is no such tradition or history of such a tradition.
By 1875 "they gradually adopted more modern styles of apparel. The Chi-kener girls dipped snuff, smoked sumac leaves in long-stemmed pipes, bobbed their hair, and wore short skirts ... They were cleanly in their habits, great bathers, and always on the move looking for fresh water. They were fond of a wild dance, perhaps the ancestor of the present 'Charleston,' [40] "their favorite musical instrument was much like a banjo, and they often sang a song or dirge about their ancestors having been dumped into Rotterdam harbor."[41]

Customs and Superstitions
Apart from having "their long tresses publicly bobbed ... Chi-kener were kind to their children, never resorting to corporal punishment, and were always respectful to the older members of the tribe ... When on the march the men and boys rode the horses and ponies, the women walked" or "occasionally rode ponies astride, but never used a saddle ... In those days tents were set at night, but later when vans or wagons were adopted, they slept in these vehicles."[42]
Historically all Roma have believed in the supernatural and are superstitious. The Chikener "believed in dreams and ghosts, familiar spirits followed the caravans, annoyed the picketed horses at night by pulling their tales, or tapped on the windows of the wagons, if ill-fortune was at hand. When the wind moaned at night, it was the spirit of long dead Chikener longing to return to the Gipsy trail."[43]

Tree Language
Chikener also brought with them a symbolism of good and bad trees. They classed as good trees first the beech, widely known as the "Gypsy tree," after that the ash, and the rowan or mountain ash, the white oak, the birch, the linden and the maple. Pines and aspens were evil, and the Chi-kener's prejudice became a prime cause for early settlers cutting down all pine trees near their dwellings.[44] As well, the giant stag-horn sumac was called the "devil tree."[45]
The Chicanere also used trees medicinally. For example, in newly cleared pastures rattlesnakes and copperheads killed many cattle. As a remedy the head of a newly killed reptile was inserted into a hole bored into a young "snake ash" and plugged up. The following year switches were cut from the suckers of the tree and gently used on the bitten area.[46]
"As they were naturally an extremely reticent people, the Pennsylvania German Gypsies developed a tree language which in time was their chief defensive weapon against the constant persecutions of the white people."[47] Pictographs were carved into trees. "A circle quartered on a beech, ash or linden indicated ... a safe and pleasant place to camp." A half or quarter circle meant danger, ranging from loss of money to death, the severity being indicated by which quadrant the quarter was taken from and the type of tree on which it was carved" ... "a diamond, cut on a beech, bisected, translated to mean that 'must leave for reasons' (best known to self). Will be within two days journey." ... "The bisecting line when extending on both sides beyond the diamond, "four days journey." On one side only a "three days journey." ... Also carved on a beech tree a heart and a cross were "symbols of Gypsy lovers."[48]
Shoemaker also describes "the white man's warning against the Chi-kener: a black star and black hand."[49] While still In the Rhine when a Gypsy came to a house looking for work and found their was no money to be made he painted a discrete white star on the doorjamb as notice for the next Gypsy traveling through.[50] It is uncertain who added the black hand and when, but the black hand and white star appear in a Gypsy Holocaust Memorial in Salzburg leading me to believe that this image originated in the Rhine and traveled to Pennsylvania, a clear visual indicator that the intolerance they had hoped to escape in the New World had followed them.

Language of the Chicanere
Because the language of older kin is a clue to origins, I have included some notes on Chicanere language for those researching their Black Dutch heritage.
Of their own Chicanere words, those collected by Shoemaker [51] and confirmed by John Sampson of the Gypsy Lore Society [52] are: schater - tent; schaw - herb; ruh or ru - wolf; schokel - dog; daddie - father; mami - grandmother; and schetra - fiddle. Also used by the Chicanere were Pennsylvania Dutch words which have a German base: fluent - gun; haws - rabbit; kots - cat; baum - tree; blech - pewter; schmere - grease; schifwoga - conestoga wagon; goul - horse; gow - gelding; goo - cow; sal - soul or spirit; shar - scissors; lewa - love; schlong - snake; shmardsa - pain; dame or dama - mother; jagger or yagger - hunter, woodsman; rawba - raven; schwatza - blackbird; boocha - beech tree; bilda - candle mold; barrich - mountain or hill; werdhaus - inn or tavern; wektora - pigeon; and wekawdler - vulture, lit. eagle. Words of uncertain origin used by Chicanere are: aschpin - whetstone; meilbahr - milestone (bahr however, does mean stone in Romani [53]); wek'nia - hawk; dada - grandfather; hausleira - peddler; shosich - young girl, flapper; schlor - dagger; and boga-man - boogie-man, lit. "dark man with bow", Indian, enemy.
It is also worth noting that "native Dutch farmers, with whom the Chi-kener came into daily business intercourse, ... compelled them to adopt certain Indian words commonly used."[54] An example of this might be "pow wow" which in Pennsylvania Dutch Country refers to a "white magic" ceremonies often for healing.[55]

Later History
"Some authorities have claimed that from 1845 to 1870 there were approximately three thousand of the She-kener following the roads in Pennsylvania."... By the 1930's "three hundred would be a liberal estimate of their numbers. The World War drew many of them to Hog Island and other industrial plants, with the result that they settled down in cities, and will probably never take the roads again."[56] The three thousand would not have included the second wave of German Gypsy migration in 1850-70. Those "Gypsies in large numbers ... travel in handsome automobiles ... on the Pennsylvania highways in the summer months. But beyond acknowledging a racial and lingual kinship the She-kener maintain no intercourse with them."[57]

Black Dutch - Indian relations
Many people researching their Melungeon and Black Dutch heritage also claim Indian ancestry. In the same way that Melungeons marry within their community Gypsies traditionally marry only other Gypsies and usually within their clan or vitsa but far more men than women arrived in the colonies. Under those circumstances it is not unreasonable to think that German Gypsies would have married Indians. There was a community of Gypsy men married to Indian women in Paskagola, Louisiana documented in 1780.[58]
Anyone familiar with the history of the treatment of the American Indian would find it hard to imagine that a dark skinned person would claim Indian ancestry in order to receive better treatment, but while Indian may be synonymous with second class citizen, it is not synonymous with thief. An Indian is still allowed to conduct business. He is not considered a criminal by birth. Even today there is enough discrimination and stereotyping to compel Gypsies to "present themselves as American Indians, Hispanics, or southern Europeans, and they usually do this rather than identify themselves as Gypsies."[59]* Unfortunately, the only encounter between Indians and Gypsies described by Henry Shoemaker in his 1924 address was nightmarish.

About this time came the first contact between Gipsy and Indian, a romantic and historic fore gathering of oppressed peoples. In the market-cross at Lancaster these two groups of dark-skinned peoples met, the Indians to buy, the Chikener to sell their trinkets and wares. As one old man from the Little Sand Hills of Dauphin County said in describing it, "They hated one another." This did not augur well for journeys into Indian countries, but they went. It was in the fall of 1763 that they left Lancaster, following the Conestoga to its source, as they had the Rhine from Schaffhausen to Rotterdam and Middelburg. Evidently their journey was uneventful, as there are no records, but at length they came to an abandoned Indian camp with huts, stockades, good water, forage, which they calmly pre-empted. A wandering redman came upon them there, and in the name of the tribe ordered them off. They meekly went, and the Indian hurried back to his kindred to tell of the vile intruders, with the result that all of this particular group of Conestogas returned to their camp in Paxton Hollow, which became in a few days their Valhalla. Shrewd Ulster Scots noticing the Gipsy fires, the movement of Indians, and the untoward atmosphere of excitement opined some sort of an unfriendly gesture on the part of the hated Conestogas, and their fancied allies, and promptly spread the report along the Blue Mountains. The story of a Bolshevik plot against the Capitol at Washington could not have a more explosive effect on a legion Post today than this story of probable Indian reprisals to the self-constituted Regulators of the frontier, chafing for an outlet for pent-up patriotism. Mounting their horses they swooped down on the unsuspecting Indians, the Gipsies had vanished, where their chroniclers do not tell "they put on their invisible garments" to use their own phraseology, and the Indians were barbarously exterminated, down to the few remnants housed in Lancaster Gaol for safe-keeping, who were brained, scalped and mutilated by the same bloodthirsty Paxton boys. Yet there are some who advocate a monument to the Paxton boys! The various tribes of Indians inherited a hatred of Gipsies, with the result that the Chi-kener never ventured into the Indian county until after it had been thoroughly pacified.[60]

It is hard to imagine that competition for limited resources wouldn not have also been a cause for conflict as both the Indians and Chicanere needed good camp sites with fresh water at a time when European encroachment strained those resources. But "old hates and feuds are buried with the flesh" as Chi-kener buried their dead "frequently in abandoned Indian graveyards."[61]
I do not envy the genealogist trying to untangle a story of a grandparent who claimed to be Indian but appears on no known Indian roles; talked about migrating to winter camp and made baskets; had dark skin and eyes and wore her hair in braids; who had a husband who had worn feathers in his hair and was now buried in an Indian burial ground, especially if that person descended from a runaway indentured servant who chose to claim to be an Indian and therefore a Free Person of Color.

Reticence to share oral history
Henry W. Shoemaker wrote that "Gipsy history like Indian history is oral, it must be gotten from the Gipsies themselves."[62] But because of discrimination most Gypsies are wary of strangers, reticent to even admit to their ethnicity, much less provide a history of their people. Their trepidation was justified. The only other significant research on German Gypsies was conducted by the Nazis who collected thousands of genealogies in preparation for a genocidal action against them. "Between a half and one and a half million" [63] Gypsies were murdered.

Closing statement
I am not saying that the all Melungeons and Black Dutch are simply Gypsies hiding under another name. There is no evidence that present day Gypsies have any of the genetic traits common to those of Melungeon descent such as the Anatolian bump, shovel teeth, Familial Mediterranean Fever, etc. But neither am I saying that I believe the Chicanere are the only Gypsy component of the Melungeon. There are too many intriguing clues. A strong sense of fatalism, of accepting your lot in life, is shared by both peoples. They are both historically superstitious. There seems to be a strong and ordered division of the sexes. Both are metalsmiths. Regarding the Melungeon nomadic lifestyle, Brent Kennedy asks "Why did our ancestors migrate so readily and without apparent reason, often to and from the same general areas of North Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia?"[64] English Ethnomusicologist, Peter Kennedy, finds a great deal of Gypsy influence in the music of Appalachia and Alan Lomax describes the singing style and gestures of the Appalachian Mining Union man and singer, Nimrod Workman, as appearing "Nowhere else but among the Gypsies of Scotland."[65]

My thanks to:
Dr. Ian Hancock and the Romani Archives, Regina Marsh, H. T. Bryer, Henry Burke, Bob Foster, Brian Raywid, Lalla Weiss, Karla Shahan, Jane Pierce and the Librarians at the Hamilton Fish Branch Library of the New York Public Library, Dr. Brent Kennedy, all those at Romnet, the Melungeon List, the Patrin list, and the Black Dutch list.

Requests for bibliographic information as well as questions, comments and criticism may be sent to ldgriggs@erols.com. I would also welcome any family histories relevant to Gypsy history in the American South.


[source]

[Menydh]

Black Dutch

by Mike Nassau

Some people in America describe themselves as Black Dutch or Black German. These terms mean the same thing, Dutch is the English form of Deutsch in German or Duits in Dutch (Nederlands). It has come to mean only the people of the Netherlands in English recently, but it originally meant all speakers of German in the broadest sense. This includes the entire German sub-branch of the Germanic Branch of the Indo-European Language Family. The other sub-branches are the Anglo-Friesian (English, Scots and Friesian) and the Nordic (Swedish, Dano-Norwegian [Danish, Rigsmal and Landsmal], Icelandic, and Faeroese). There are many dialects and languages in the German sub-branch, divided into High German and Low German. The forms of High German are German [High Saxon, Alemanni, High Frankish, Swabian, Bavarian, Austrian, Luxembourgese, Alsatian, Styrian], Swiss German, and Yiddish. Low German includes Dutch, Flemish, Afrikaans [South African Dutch], Hanoverian [Low Frankish], Hessian, Low Saxon [Brandenburgian], Holsteiner, Pomeranian and Prussian. The Frankish area includes Rheinland-Pfalz and Hanover, with the area south of Aachen [Charlemagne's capital], centered on Frankfurt, speaking a High German dialect, and the area from Aachen north, centered on Essen, speaking a Low German dialect. The Pennsylvania Dutch are Low Germans from Germany, not Dutch from Netherlands. The Dutch called themselves Nederduitser (Nether German) until recently, when they switched to Nederlander. Belgium is trilingual, the northern part speaks Flemish (Vlaams, a dialect of Dutch), the southern part speaks Waloon (Valone, a dialect of French), and the eastern edge speaks German (Luxembourgese).

There are at least six quite different groups of people described as "Black Dutch". If you have been told you are Black Dutch or part Black Dutch, you must find out what the name of the German, Dutch or Flemish immigrant was (if there was one), where he or she came from, what their religion was, if any, etc., before you can figure out to which group they belonged.

1. Melungeons are a Mestee group originating along the VA-NC border, particularly Henry and Patrick county, VA, and Rockingham, Stokes and Surry counties, NC. They, like other Mestee groups of the Southeast, were formed by an amalgamation of various mixed-race and non-white people, particularly the remnants of Indian groups which had absorbed a lot of Black, White and Mulatto people. The white ancestry included many ethnic groups, including both northern European (English, Scots, Irish, etc.) and Mediterranean (Moorish, Portuguese, Jewish, etc.) groups. From this origin along the VA-NC border, they spread westwards to other NC counties, up into the SW corner of VA, into the adjoining mountains of TN (Hawkins, Hancock, Grainger), down the Tennessee valley to Hamilton, Rhea and Roane counties, into eastern KY and from there into southern OH, and along the Sabine river in Louisiana and Texas. There are a lot of Melungeons now in other locations like southern WV, northern AL and the Ozark mountains (AR and MO).

Melungeons sometimes call themselves Black Dutch, Black Irish or Black German to hide their mixed race origin while explaining their being darker than most Whites. If they know of German or Dutch ancestry or have a name which sounds German or Dutch, they are very likely to call themselves Black Dutch, more rarely Black German. If not, they are more likely to use Black Irish. For information on the "Black Irish" in America, please see Tom Kunesh's Black Irish site at http://www.darkfiber.com/blackirish . Also see "Shirley Hornbeck's This and That Genealogy Tips, Genealogy Tips on Black Dutch and Irish, Melungeons, Moravians, Pennsylvania Dutch" at http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~hornbeck/blkdutch.htm. For more information on the Melungeons, see Melungeons and Other Mestee Groups
and the Open Directory list of Melungeon sites at http://dmoz.org/Society/Ethnicity/Th...cas/Melungeon/.

2. Another Mestee group, the Ramapo Mountain People or Ramapough Indians, are sometimes called Black Dutch. This is more true when they leave the Ramapo Mountain area (NJ-NY border) than when they are in this location. They are the descendants of free Mulattos from Dutch farms in the Hudson Valley who moved to the mountains, where they may have mixed with some remnant Indians, who probably would have been the Munsee group of Lenape (Lenni-Lenape or Delaware) Indians, definitely Algonquian speaking Indians of the East Coast. They may have been joined by some Tuscarora (Southern Iroquoians related to the Cherokee) as they fled north after the Tuscarora War. Since they are mainly a mixture of Dutch and Black, the term Black Dutch would fit them in a way. The two main names are Van Dunk (Van Donck) and De Freese (DeFries). For more information on these people, see the links on the Open Directory at http://dmoz.org/Society/Ethnicity/Me...untain_People/.

3. Schwarzer Deutsch or Black Germans, found along the Danube River in Austria and Germany, in the Black Forest and, to a lesser extent, along the Rhine River, have dark hair and eyes, unlike the fairer people both north and south of them. Their descendants in America may be called either Black Dutch or Black German. The origin of their dark coloration is ancient, from the Roman army in the third and fourth centuries, C.E. The Roman army of this time period was mostly made up of German mercenary soldiers, but along the German border, the Romans preferred to station non-Germans. The army on the Danube was mostly drawn from Black African soldiers from Nubia (northern Sudan and southern Egypt) and Numidia (Libya). One significant Numidian people were the Garamante, who were fierce warriors and long resisted Roman conquest, but were later incorporated in the Roman legions and particularly sought as soldiers. The Garamante (called Tubu now) were Black Africans from the central Sahara. Now the Tubu live in northern Chad, eastern Niger and southern Libya. They are not usually found north of Marzuk in Fezzan or Kufra in Cyrenaica now, but in Roman times they ranged north to the central coast of Libya and to Ghadames in southern Tunisia. As well as Garamante and other Africans, there were some Iranic people stationed on this frontier, especially Sarmatians (called Ossets now) and Scythians (Ashkenazi in the Bible) from southern Russia and the Ukraine. These African and Iranic soldiers left many descendants who tend to have black, heavy hair and dark eyes even yet.

Beethoven and Hitler are two famous examples of this group. It is interesting to imagine Hitler's reaction to someone telling him he probably got his heavy, black hair from Black African ancestry. Since this was so long ago, with population movement and inter-marriage, all Europeans must have some ancestry from these Black African soldiers. In sixty generations, a person could leave 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 descendants with just two children per person each generation so long as no descendants married each other. Obviously, after a time, many descendants will marry each other, but still it works out statistically that most people from that long ago who left descendants at all are ancestors of everyone in Europe today. The tendency for people to stay in their own community explains why we can see the effects along the Danube and in the Black Forest in the people with black hair and dark eyes but do not see it far afield like Iceland. The concentration is far greater at the point of origin, but the dispersion radiates out to everywhere given enough time.

4. Tziganes or, more commonly (but erroneously), Gypsies, are another group called Black Dutch in America. A Tzigane from Germany, who could speak German, could be accepted much better by saying he was Black Dutch than if he admitted to being Gypsy. Tziganes were called Gypsies because of the mistaken belief they came from Egypt. At other times and places, they were called Bohemians (as in La Boheme) because they were thought to be from what is now the Czech Republic. Their language is called Romany, sometimes attributed to their self-given name of Rom (or Dom) but more likely because they were thought to be from Romania. In actuality, they come from the Indus valley area of Pakistan and western India, their language is Indic, their traditional religion a form of Hinduism. The name Rom or Dom comes from the Sanskrit word Domba, meaning low caste ("untouchable") musician. Tzigane, which has cognates in most European languages including Russian and Turkish, is derived from the Sanskrit name of their caste in ancient India. Words for Tzigane in a few languages:

English = Tzigane; French = Tzigane; Russian = Tsygan
Dutch = Zigeuner; German = Zigeuner; Hungarian = Cigany
Italian = Zingaro; Spanish = Gitano; Rumanian = T¸igan
Turkish = Çingene; Polish = Cygan; Czech = Cikan

There is already an excellent site on Tziganes as Black Dutch in America: Wayfaring Stranger by Linda Griggs. It also tells about their connections with the Melungeons. Please see:
Part One at http://foclark.tripod.com/gypsy/Patrin1.htm
Part Two at http://foclark.tripod.com/gypsy/Patrin2.htm.

5. Dutch and Belgian Jews were sometimes called Black Dutch in America because they spoke Dutch or Flemish and were darker than the other Dutch and Flemish. They had only recently moved to the Netherlands and Belgium (then Spanish Netherlands) from Iberia (Portugal and Spain). When Spain annexed Portugal for a while, many Portuguese Jews fled to Spanish Flanders to escape the Inquisition (see http://www.theotherside.co.uk/tm-her...d/flanders.htm for Flanders as part of Spanish Netherlands). Most, like the famous philosopher Baruch Spinoza, crossed into Protestant Netherlands for greater freedom of expression and religion (see http://users.erols.com/jyselman/ for more on Spinoza). These Sephardic Jews were, on the average, darker than the Ashkenazic Jews of northern Europe, so an explanation like Black Dutch suited them well.

6. Mulattos, Quadroons, Octaroons and other mixed children of German, Dutch or Flemish fathers who appeared mostly White, but were too dark, would use the term in order to live in White society. Of course, they frequently learned the term from one of the other types of Black Dutch and then would seize it as their own.

How many people were in each of these groups, I have no idea. But there are a lot of people finding ancestors called Black Dutch, so there could have been a sizeable number in any of them.

Mike Nassau, June 26, 2001


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[Menydh]

Arch Goins and family, Graysville Melungeons

[Menydh]

A Lucky Appalachian
by Brent Kennedy

I am a proud American. An Appalachian American to be exact, which is a little different than Northeasterners, or Midwesterners, or even other Southerners for that matter. But an American all the same. Some people call us hillbillies: I just call us lucky. I am in love with my sometimes ridiculed mountain culture and I must admit that with each year that I tack onto my life, I become even prouder of all that she is: Bluegrass music, High Knob, Jack Tales, coal mines, tomato gravy and the Powell Valley sunset. Things I once took for granted are now enshrined in my heart.

However, my beloved Appalachia has been shortchanged on its rich heritage. Outsiders, and to some degree insiders, have essentially “whitewashed” our origins. When I was a kid in the 1950s and 1960s, being Scots-Irish or English was the only game in town. We were told that we were lowland Scots who took to the mountains, refused to become educated and pretty much intermarried amongst ourselves. Even the most dark complexioned among us was invariably “northern European”. While we certainly possess a high degree of northern European blood, Native Americans, Melungeons, Africans, southern and eastern Europeans and Asians all figure into the history of the Appalachians. But back then it was a rare occasion when someone would be brave enough to claim an ancestry from one of these categories.

I still vividly recall when beloved J.J. Kelly football coach and history teacher, W.G. Bays, talked about the courage of Ethiopian leader Haile Selassie against the overwhelming Italian Fascist forces during World War II and, furthermore, how “dark people” as often as not didn’t get their due respect from historians. The Ethiopians, he explained, fought against the well-armed Italians with knives and sticks and stones, and were mercilessly slaughtered by the land-grabbing Fascists. He then looked our eighth-grade class in the eyes and proudly proclaimed his own Native American roots, another people who fought bravely with whatever weapons they could muster. That was probably the first time I ever heard a respected member of the community admitting a mixed background with pride and, as a consequence, I have never forgotten W.G. Bays.

That learning experience also fueled a personal passion to better know my own roots. While my family, too, was “Scots-Irish” it didn’t take a genius to know our heritage had to be a bit more complicated than the purely Emerald Isle imagery that the name Kennedy conjured up. Simply crossing the threshold of my front door each day after school was proof of that. My Mother and my brother looked as if they had stepped out of Lawrence of Arabia, and other cousins and relatives added to the smorgasbord of non-Anglo faces. Later in life, a smattering of Mediterranean genetic diseases and DNA testing would lead me to discover my own genetic ties to Native Americans (through three of my four grandparents), northern India, Eastern Europe, the British Isles, sub-Saharan Africa, and the Middle East. A Mitochondrial DNA connection on my Mother’s side finds its vast preponderance of exact matches not in England or Ireland or Wales, but in Syria, Yemen, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Lebanon, and Palestine. Other “English” ancestors turned out to have manufactured their surnames to hide Italian and Greek and French origins. Just because New World settlers set sail from England did not mean that they were ethnic English. Maybe there was a reason some of my Wise County ancestors placed Stars of David on their tombstones and maybe it wasn’t a “paper error” that two of my Mom’s (and my) direct eighteenth-century ancestors were classified as “taxable mulattos” in York County, Virginia.

Science and sleuthing and time have a way of sorting out the truth. The “gospel” I had accepted as a kid turned out to be only a small part of who I was. The truth is that I am a walking, talking, physical embodiment of the United Nations and the same is true for each and every one of us whether we know it or not. Every single person on this planet has an origin that is as complex as the literally millions of people who make up his or her ancestry. We are far more than our parents, with our total ancestry doubling in number with each generation traveled back in time. I have two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents and a whopping 1024 directancestors a mere ten generations back. How could we not be ethnically diverse, Appalachian or otherwise?

Twenty years ago, such ethnic influences as discussed above were all too often seen as somehow “un-American.” To admit being part Native American, or Jewish, or Turkish or Portuguese would, in the minds of some, cast a dispersion on one’s patriotism. In a strange and illogical twisting of thought, genetics went hand in hand with being an American, and even being an Appalachian. If you didn’t hail 100% from the British Isles you weren’t a “real” Appalachian, no matter how long your family had been here. Never mind that my ancestors, whoever and whatever they were, were among the first to enter these mountains, build cabins, plow the land, fight the British at Kings Mountain, and even distill a little moonshine in this hollow or on that ridge. No, if they weren’t “pure” Scots-Irish in the old way of thinking then they didn’t quite count.

Well, I’m happy to say, things have changed and today they – and we - do count. Our actions and attitudes and the way we live our lives is what really matters when it comes to evaluating our worth. If tomorrow morning you discover that your great-great grandfather had a little Portuguese, or Powhatan Indian, or Turkish or sub-Saharan African in him, would you take down his portrait from the mantle? I would hope not because he’s still your great-great grandfather. Whatever I may discover regarding my family’s ethnic origins, or whatever you may discover about yours, will not change one iota who and what they were and the pride we can take in what they accomplished. I like to remind myself that if I remove any single ancestor from my lineage – any single ancestor – then I am not here. That self-serving rationale alone makes me appreciative of all who came before me.

So what’s the point? The point is that we are all part of one big human family, with culture, politics, and religion – NOT race or ethnicity – defining and unfortunately dividing us. And that racially and ethnically, no one really knows who they are unless they can literally see back to the beginning of time. Like it or not, we are all kin and, frankly, I like it. We in the Appalachians could hold hands with our cousins and literally form a chain of kinship that would extend through every nation on earth. That’s how diverse we are. My hope is that scholars will revisit the history of this region with an understanding that this wonderful but overlooked diversity has had a major, positive impact on the development of our Nation: just as important as the millions of settlers who wagoned westward through the Cumberland Gap. Recognizing this truth will not only give us a little more pride in who we are as a people, but it might just help us better understand the rest of the world. And what a marvelous opportunity for us in Appalachia to be at the forefront in teaching our Nation the real meaning of diversity.

In the meantime, I will continue to feel a surge of adrenalin when hearing our National Anthem or Rocky Top, or when watching the Tennessee Volunteers charge through the Big Orange T. I’ll take pride in UVaWise’s steady rise in the academic rankings and in the expert renditions of our mountain music by folks like Bill and Nancy Jones. And I’ll enjoy the everyday images of Appalachian life, be it local community festivals, exquisite fall foliage, or coal trucks rumbling by my Dad’s service station. For I am a lucky man – I am an Appalachian.


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