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The Cherokee called them the Moon People. The Utes and Paiutes spoke of a hideous race of cannibals ten feet tall living in caves. And the Choctaw also have an account of the race of giants that first colonized the Ohio Valley. 

From Old World Roots of the Cherokee, chapter 5, "America's Middle Ages," pp. 78-79, we read:

What kind of Indians lived in the territory the Choctaw and Chickasaw carved out for their new home? According to their traditions, reports Cushman, as confirmed by excavations of bones in Tennessee, it was a “race of white giants”:

[T]he tradition of the Choctaws . . . told of a race of giants that once inhabited the now State of Tennessee, and with whom their ancestors fought when they arrived in Mississippi in their migration from the west, doubtless Old Mexico. Their tradition states the Nahullo (race of giants [literally, wizards]) was of wonderful stature; but, as their tradition of the mastodon [which used to be found on the Great Plains], so this was also considered to be but a foolish fable, the creature of a wild imagination, when lo! Their exhumed bones again prove the truth of the Choctaws’ tradition (151).

These giants could have been Rafinesque’s Atlans.

Cushman then recounts the discovery in 1880 at a burial mound site near Plano, Texas, of human bones “of enormous size . . . the femoral bones being five inches longer than the ordinary length, and the jaw bones . . . so large as to slip over the face of a man with ease.” Cushman goes on to identify them with the older occupants of North America called Allegewi or Taligewi (Talegans). Many historians, moreover, speculate they were the builders of the Adena mounds.

As for the Chickasaw, Cushman notes that they have no record of their history before the colonial period, although it is assuredly "the same as the Choctaws, being one tribe and people until the division made by their two chiefs Chikasah and Chahtah many years after their arrival and location east of the Mississippi River" (p 358). Of the Natchez, Cushman records that they, "if tradition may be believed, also came from Mexico where they had lived for centuries" (p 440).

A story was told by the Comanches in 1857: 

Innumerable moons ago, a race of white men, ten feet high, and far more rich and powerful than any white people now living, here inhabited a large range of country, extending from the rising to the setting sun. Their fortifications crowned the summits of the mountains, protecting their populous cities situated in the intervening valleys. They excelled every other nation which was flourished, either before or since, in all manner of cunning handicraft—were brave and warlike—ruling over the land they had wrested from its ancient possessors with a high and haughty hand. Compared with them the palefaces of the present day were pygmies, in both art and arms. They drove the Indians from their homes, putting them to the sword, and occupying the valleys in which their fathers had dwelt before them since the world began. At length, in the height of their power and glory, when they remembered justice and mercy no more and became proud and lifted up, the Great Spirit descended from above, sweeping them with fire and deluge from the face of the earth. The mounds we [i.e. the speaker Chief Rolling Thunder and his Spanish listener] had seen on the tablelands were the remnants of their fortresses, and the crumbling ruins that surrounded us all that remained of a mighty city.[i]

The word Nahoolo or Nahullo “is now emphatically applied to the white race and no other . . . The Nahullo were of white complexion, according to Choctaw tradition, and were still an existing people at the time of the advent of the Choctaws to Mississippi,” concludes Cushman (p 153) . In agreement, the Indian trader Adair often refers to the Nani Ishtahoolo as departed white ghosts vested with spiritual powers whose descendants were priests and magicians. Their cries and magic spells could still be heard in the mounds like those at Ocmulgee.[ii] These references contribute to the suspicion that the “Indians” who preceded Asiatic tribes from Mexico were, as we would say today, Caucasian.

About exactly a year ago on this blog, we published a post about "Neanderthals in America," mentioning also the peculiar archaic skeleton that is now a roadside attraction in Arizona, called The Thing. In the meantime, we acquired a copy of Fritz Zimmerman's book, The Nephilim Chronicles, which reproduces over 300 historical accounts of Giant skeletons. Many are associated with the earliest mound sites in America, but Zimmerman's survey of this worldwide phenomenon ranges from the Hunter-Fisher People of northeast Europe and Red Paint People whose movements were circumpolar to the giants of the Bible, noted by the Babylonian Talmud as having double rows of teeth, and "Giants' Remains in the British Isles" (pp. 157-65).

Navajo legends speak of the Starnake People, a regal race of white giants endowed with mining technology who dominated the West, enslaved lesser tribes and had strongholds all through the Americas. They were either extinguished or "went back to the heavens." The name may be a corruption of the Biblical race known as Anakim (Num. 13:33, Deut. 1:28). The name Og (Hebrew "chief") appears to be characteristic (see Zimmerman, pp. 188-91). The ogham alphabet is attributed to this cultural founder. 

Certainly, many of the mound sites uncovered in the nineteenth century tell a story of constant warfare by incoming Asiatic tribes  against the giants occupying the land. One grisly scene showed thousands of skeletons, male, female and young heaped in a mass grave, with warriors' skulls pierced by arrows. It would appear that as these aboriginal inhabitants of the Ohio Valley were gradually displaced, some members of their society went over into the ranks of the new conquerors, bequeathing a strain of great stature still noticeable, for instance, in the Mobilian chief Tuscaloosa and DeSoto's Indian queen Cofitachiqui, both of whom were said to be seven feet tall.

We are struck by the following traits of this giant race or ethnic group from human prehistory:

• Mother Goddess religion
• Copper (not bronze) axes 
• Polished slate tools including fishing plummets, which were apparently regarded as sacred
• Belief that the Grandmother Moon was the repository of souls
• Diet emphasizing shellfish (for which the double row of teeth probably was selected as an evolutionary advantage in their beachcomber origin out of Africa?)
• Building of fish weirs in North American rivers to trap migrating eels
• Certain vegetarian habits (wild rice, for instance)
• Inscriptions on artifacts, especially pipes, often buried with the dead
• Use of coal and petroleum
• Weaving and looms
• Knowledge of seafaring, mathematics and engineering, including canals and irrigation
• Burying of a dog with a child to guard the latter in the afterlife
• A language apparently Afro-Asiatic and close to Semitic tongues
• Kingcraft:  nobles were buried in seated positions on thrones surrounded by a coterie of their retainers

As you choose your summer reading, please take a moment to mourn the demise of several "ethnic" titles that have been taken off library shelves recently in several states, including Arizona. Among the incendiary books that are now taboo, thanks to the work of lobbyists in Washington, are Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha (too foreign), Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird (too liberal) and Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 (too hot).

Then there's also that sleeper on the bestseller list, which community college students are probably reading on their IPhones in radical cafes in Tucson as we speak, Critical Race Theory:  An Introduction (too racy).

"The anti-ethnic studies law passed by the state prohibits teachings that 'promote the overthrow of the United States government,' 'promote resentment toward a race or class of people [in this case, white people],' 'are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group,' and/or 'advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals.'" A full report on these shenanigans is in Patricia J. Williams' article in this week's The Nation, also on her blog Diary of a Mad Law Professor.

Among the books that were removed from the Tucson public school system are Isabel Allende (who is an American citizen and lives in California), Junot Diaz, Jonathan Kozol, Sandra Cisneros, James Baldwin, Howard Zinn (who wrote A People's History of the United States), Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience" and even Shakespeare's The Tempest (because Caliban was a person of color?).

Tucson School Board member Michael Hicks in explaining the move said he was proud that he had not visited any of the classrooms affected or read any of the materials being axed. He called out the culprit of multiculturalism weakening the country as "Rosa Clark" (not Rosa Parks).

A friend of ours in Tucson, after reading of these and similar acts of ignorance, has suggested we test the authors of such statements for the "Moron gene."

If you disagree with the far-sighted public servants behind this wave of ethnic censorship, you might trying writing them a letter, but we doubt if they can, or will, read it.

For more insight into the Tucson anti-intellectual movement we recommend Tom Zoellner's A Safeway in Arizona.

Photo:  Chilean American novelist Isabel Allende. (c) Lori Barra.

Sorry, Jack, no cigar. Your Grandpa's Indians are not what you think. And it is not true "most free African American families that originated in colonial Virginia and Maryland descended from white servant women who had children by slaves or free Africans" (source). Negro males did not go around selectively "fathering" little man-children on "white servant women" in early America.

It is ironic that these fantasies should even emerge in the recently publicized report, "Melungeon DNA Study Reveals Ancestry, Upsets a 'Whole Lot of People.'" The authors of the report, Roberta J. Estes, Jack H. Goins, Penny Ferguson and Janet Lewis Crain, have spent the better part of ten years trying to prove they and others with Melungeon ancestry are just plain folks, that is, white folks.

Maybe they are just that, though. Among the conclusions of the report are that Melungeons aren't Portuguese, aren't Native American, aren't Jewish, aren't Romani/Gypsy, aren't . . . . On and on. They just have a teeny-tiny bit of Sub-Saharan African in some lines. Not to worry, though, it is just a little soupçon of non-white. And it goes back to a few heroic "negroes" (the report's language) who left a trace their Sub-Saharan African Y chromosomes in the fathers and sons and grandpas of three Melungeon families.

From an article published, lo! way back in 2002 in the Appalachian Quarterly, now sadly defunct,

Shalom and Hey, Y'all (243 KB)

comes the true story of these "negroes" (the report's language) fathering "multiethnic" babies on innocent white indentured servant women.

In discussing the will of Indian trader James Adair, the author of the study remarks on the fact that Adair did not apparently approve of his daughter Agnes marrying John Gibson (from the selfsame Melungeon Gibson family that is creating all the brouhaha today). (Agnes, by the way, was not an indentured servant; her father had a considerable fortune.)

           "Notice the harsh treatment Adair accords his daughter Agnes, leaving her and her husband John Gibson the nominal sum of only one shilling (if he had left her nothing, she could have protested to the probate court that he simply forgot her). John was one of the “mulatto” Gibsons of the Great Pee Dee river valley region. Gideon Gibson stands large on the pages of history for his role in the so-called Regulators Revolt. The Gideon Glass Antiques Store today pays testimony to the “richest man in South Carolina” of his time. When members of the Gibson family first moved to the state in 1731, representatives in the House of Assembly complained “several free colored men with their white wives had immigrated from Virginia.” Governor Robert Johnson summoned Gibson and his family and reported:

            I have had them before me in Council and upon Examination find that they are not Negroes nor Slaves but Free people, That the Father of them here is named Gideon Gibson and his Father was also free, I have been informed by a person who has lived in Virginia that this Gibson has lived there Several Years in good Repute and by his papers that he has produced before me that his transactions there have been very regular. That he has for several years paid Taxes for two tracts of Land and had several Negroes of his own, That he is a Carpenter by Trade and is come hither for the support of his Family [Box 2, bundle:  S.C. Minutes of House of Burgesses (1730-35), 9, Parish Transcripts, N.Y. Hist. Soc. By Jordan, White over Black, 172.]

"The Gibsons are discussed as Melungeons in Brent Kennedy and as true-to-form Sephardic Jews in Hirschman. Melungeon Gibsons derive their origins from the Chavis family, one of the oldest Portuguese-Jewish names in America. If they are Jewish, it is ironic—and probably funnier than any Fanny Brice skit—that historians trot them forth as shining examples of non-slave African American colonials owning land and marrying white women."

The moral of the story? Melungeons have often been hauled into court to prove they are not black. Now they are being dragged through the court of Internet opinion. The outcome is doubtful.

Now about those Indians . . . That will have to wait until another blog post.

Photo: Black Revolutionary soldier. Blackpast.org.

Article cited:  Donald N. Panther-Yates, “Shalom and Hey, Y’all:  Jewish-American Indian Chiefs in the Old South,” Appalachian Quarterly 7/2 (June 2002) 80-89.

More information about Melungeons
Toward a Genetic Profile of Melungeons in Southern Appalachia
Melungeon Studies
Melungeon Match
Melungeon DNA Fingerprint Plus
The War on Melungeons
Melungeons.com

Shalom and Hey, Y'all (243 KB)

Brent Kennedy's book on Melungeons
Elizabeth Hirschman's book on Melungeons
Lisa Alther's new novel on Melungeons

Over a year ago, there appeared one of the few studies of autosomal DNA in Ireland and Britain. If you have English/Welsh, Irish, northern Irish, Highlands Scottish, Lowlands Scottish or Swedish matches, you will want to read this post. Here is the original article and abstract.

Population structure and genome-wide patterns of variation in Ireland and Britain.