Introduction

We think of America as a patchwork quilt ofstates. So our perceptions of geography areconditioned by those state boundaries –drawn mostly during the past couple ofhundred years. The state of Tennessee wasadmitted to the union in 1796; the presentlimits of Virginia were established only in1863, when the amputated West Virginiawas admitted to the union. Being political,these boundaries only by accident, if at all,reflect the underlying cultural or ecologicalunity of a region.1

Linked by the Holston and Clinch rivers, andsharing the mountain and ridge ecosystem ofthe Appalachian chain, Northeast Tennesseeand Southwest Virginia form a region ofcultural, geographic, and ecological unity.They also share a common history. I havenamed that region "Holstonia."2

Because it was where my research started in2003, I originally defined the core region ofHolstonia quite precisely; it is shown anddefined in Figure 1 (page 39). As myresearch developed, and especially as mycatalog of archeological artifacts from theregion expanded, the region of sharedculture and history bridging theTennessee-Virginia state line becameapparent, though its boundary remainssomewhat fuzzy. I call that bridging regionGreater Holstonia; it is shown and describedin Figure 2 (page 39). Readers of theRedbone Chronicles familiar with the

geographical distribution of the Melungeonsknow that distribution is a perfect exampleof Holstonian interstate Tennessee-Virginiabridging.

In this article, I will use the unqualified term"Holstonia" to mean Greater Holstonia.

To my knowledge, no Native Americanhistory of Holstonia has ever been written.The nearest thing to such a history has comeonly in the past twenty-five years. It camewith the belated, but rather wonderful,development of full scale Melungeon studies.However, although by definition thosestudies include an examination ofMelungeons' American Indian heritage,Indians are not the objective of those studies.Furthermore, Melungeon studies areoverwhelmingly focussed on the years post1850.

It is the purpose of this article to examineand survey our present knowledge of theAmericans Indians of Holstonia across theeight centuries from 1200 AD to the presentday. The specific objective is to describewhat Indians lived in Holstonia and what lifestyles they had. The method of theexamination will be primarily through aconsideration of the scholarly literature,supplemented by the author's personalinvestigations, and with judicious use of thesecondary, online literature. The approachadopted has been to review the relevantliterature, describe some of the most usefulreferences, and suggest lines of research. The

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Reprinted from the Redbone Chronicles. Volume II, issue 1, March 2008, pp. 20-52.

Aboriginal and Remnant American Indians of Holstonia

by Jim Glanville

Copyright Jim Glanville, 2008. All rights reserved.

literature reviewed has been very broad.However, the reference list included here isselective rather than exhaustive.

The eight centuries from 1200 AD to thepresent day will be divided for convenienceinto four periods:

Period 1. 1200-1567 AD. Ancient Hol-stonia and the conquistadors.

Period 2. 1567-1740 AD. The forgot-ten centuries.

Period 3. 1740-1838 AD. The arrivalof the English and Indian removal.

Period 4. 1839-2008 AD. Melungeonsand modern Indians.

The orientation map shown below in Figure3 (page 40) gives the approximate locationsand some rivers and places mentioned in thisarticle.

Holstonia is now, and has long been, atrading center and a cross roads. PrehistoricAmerican Indians were a highly mobilepeople and routinely traveled vast distanceson foot. The importance of Indian trails inthe Southeast has long been recognized andHolstonia is crossed by many of them.3

The prehistoric American Indians conductedcontinent-wide trade or exchange. Copper,their only significant metallic resource, camefrom the upper Great Lakes; the shells ofmarine mollusks such as whelks and conchscame from the Florida and Gulf coasts.4

Everywhere in Indian America, copper andshell were among the most valued prestigematerials. Salt, another important trade item,was available in abundance at Saltville inHolstonia. The Long Island of the Holston atmodern day Kingsport was a traditionaltrading center for Indians, even into thehistoric period.

The Long Island was also the first site ofVirginia trading posts in the interior. To

compete with the South Carolinians for theCherokee deer skin trade, Richard Pearisbegan operating on Long Island as early as1750.5 By a little more than a century later,Holstonia had become the busiest route inAmerica as the pioneers flooded west viaDaniel Boone's Wilderness Trail through theCumberland Gap. Today, the role of trade inHolstonia is readily apparent to anyone whotravels the busy and congested Interstate 81corridor.

One of the themes developed in this article isthat the historic mobility of people throughthe region makes it difficult to discern itspermanent residents.

Period 1. From 1200-1567 AD:Ancient Holstonia and the

Conquistadors

The principal evidence describing this periodcomes from archeology. The period endsabruptly with the arrival of conquistadorswho left brief and cryptic written accounts.

Virginia professional archeologists place theinterval 1200-1567 AD in the "LateWoodland Period." Tennessee professionalarcheologists and most others who specializein the US Southeast place the interval1200-1567 AD in the "Mississippian Period."The distinction is confusing for the layperson, but there it is.

The archeology of American Indians inHolstonia has been poorly studied and evenmore poorly described. In broad-coveragebooks about Native American life in thepre-contact Southeast, Holstonia is a stepchild. It is either simply left unlabeled onregional maps, or, if labeled, ismisinterpreted.

For example, Volume 15 of the authoritativeHandbook of North American Ind-ians6 devoted to Native Americans of the

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Northeast shows a map (page ix) that locatesHolstonia at the edge of a region labeled"Poorly known tribes of the Ohio Valley andinterior." The more recently publishedVolume 14 of the same Handbook of NorthAmerican Indians,7 devoted to NativeAmericans of the Northeast shows a map(page ix) that leaves Holstonia unlabeled.

Likewise, a superbly prepared regional map(page 13) in a recent, important "art" book8

about Native America shows Holstoniadevoid of any culture, stranded in a gapbetween the Ohio Valley culture to the northand the Southern Appalachian culture to thesouth.

Particularly disappointing, from the point ofview of Holstonia, is the ambitious attempt,in a work of regional archeological synthesis,to summarize cultural boundaries in theentire eastern half of the United Statesduring this period.9 For Holstonia, thedetailed shaded and annotated mapsillustrating the cultural affiliations for threeseparate time frames (AD 1400-1450, AD1500-1550, and AD 1600-1650) areambiguous and confusing, and the under-lying river system displayed bears littleresemblance to the actual watersheds of theregion.

So where does a non-specialist, interested inthe peoples of Holstonia before theEuropeans arrived, turn? To two works offiction.

The first work of fiction is a little bookcalled Kentuckians Before Boone.10 Itdescribes Indian life in the year 1585, in aplace perhaps 150 miles northwest ofHolstonia, as imagined by a skilledprofessional archeologist writing for apopular audience. Extrapolating to Hols-tonia, people there lived in settled villagesalong the river bottoms. The rivers providedfish and shellfish. They used bows and

arrows and blowguns. They hunted deer,bear, and many smaller animals, and theygrew crops such as corn, beans, and squash.Animal skins served for clothing and sinew;gourds and turtle shells became containers.They fashioned tools and weapons out ofstone and bone, and made pottery from clay.Baskets and other utilitarian items weremade from the abundant cane that grew ingiant brakes along the rivers. Trees werekilled by girdling (cutting off large rings oftheir lower bark) to provide wood for fueland clearings for planting. Tobacco was animportant part of their ritual life; they madesmoking pipes from stone and pottery forboth utilitarian and ceremonial use. They hadcontacts with other Indian cultures across awide region, and engaged in the trade orexchange of salt, marine shell and copper.

The second work of fiction is calledConversations with the High Priest ofCoosa.11 It tells about the intellectual,cultural, and religious life in 1560 of Indiansin a place about 200 miles southeast ofHolstonia. Its author, the now-retired,prominent southern anthropologist CharlesHudson, was a lifelong student of the NativeAmericans of the Southeast. In this book,published after his long career at theUniversity of Georgia, he wrote with greatrespect for the known facts, and produced avivid account of the Indians' social, athletic,and ceremonial life. He also recounted theircosmology and told their stories of thenatural world. Events such as Hudsondescribed surely occurred along the banks ofthe Holston, and stories similar to the oneshe recounts were surely told there.

The professional archeological literature ofHolstonia, with a single, significantexception, divides between Holstonia inTennessee and Holstonia in Virginia. Thatexception is a relatively recent paper byRichard W. Jefferies which centers on the

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Cumberland Gap and was published as partof a collection of essays prepared as afirst-ever effort to treat the archeology of theAppalachian highlands as a geographic unit,that is a work deliberately ignoring stateboundaries. Down stream from Holstonia,immense archeological knowledge has beengathered along the Tennessee River betweenKnoxville and Chattanooga in consequenceof Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA)dambuilding activities.12 In contrast, asJefferies says of upriver regions such asHolstonia:

"…we know much less aboutthe Mississippian groups thatinhabited the rugged uplandparts of the northern Southeast,where river valleys are oftennarrow, areas of level arablesoil are limited and widelyscattered, and wet areasneeded to support largepopulations of fish andwaterfowl are minimal ornonexistent."13

Unfortunately, even in this article, Holstoniagets little coverage. Of the thirty-nine sitesJefferies discusses (see his map on page207), only three lie along the Holston River– with farthest upriver of those being CobbIsland, which is about fifty miles northeast ofKnoxville, near the most southwesterly edgeof Holstonia.

The Archeology of Holstonia in Tennessee

Holstonia in Tennessee was called the UpperValley in the earlier archeological literature.Older studies that touch on the Upper Valleyinclude the articles by Kneberg14 andWhiteford.15 Older studies of the archeologyof the Norris basin in the upper Clinch river(excluding the Holston drainage) aredescribed in the edited, 1995 reissue16 of acollection of many separate reports prepared50 years earlier but never published. Many ofthese reports are by analogy relevant tostudies of Holstonia. The Norris basin was

flooded when the upper Clinch became thesite of the first TVA dam (constructed in the1930s). Tribes that Slumber: Indians of theTennessee Region is an extremely popularand readable book about Tennesseearcheology that has been in print for fiftyyears.17 It was written by the authors ofmany of the professional reports cited in thisparagraph. However, in common with thosesame authors' professional writings, the booksays little about Holstonia.

More recent general works about easternTennessee archeology that describe theDallas culture people who lived 100-200miles down river from Holstonia include tworelated books by Jefferson Chapman. One isa book published in connection with a 1982exhibition mounted at the McClung Museumin Knoxville.18 The other summar- izes thearcheology of sites in the Little TennesseeRiver Valley, salvage excavated before theirinundation by Tellico Lake around1980.19 Also worth examining is a bookpublished in 2000 which describes theMississippian Period archeology fromKnoxville southwest to Alabama and Geor-gia and discusses the kingdom of Coosawhich was contiguous with much of thehomeland of people of the Dallasculture.20 At its northeastern end, thekingdom of Coosa abutted Holstonia.

The books mentioned in the precedingparagraph were selected because theydescribe the Mississippian Period Dallasculture of the lower Tennessee Valley ineastern Tennessee. Although the connectionhas not yet been made in the professionalliterature, it turns out that artifacts of theDallas culture (particularly the marine shellornaments called gorgets) are abundant inHolstonia, and occur in substantially thesame Dallas art styles, see Figures 4 and 5.From the technical, professional arche-ological literature of Dallas culture we note

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the fine work of synthesis describingspecifically the excavation of the Toqua siteon the Little Tennessee River before the sitewas flooded, but describing much moregenerally the nature of the Dallasculture.21 The map of east Tennessee Dallasculture sites in this work (Figure 13.5 onpage 1249 of volume 2) speaks eloquently tothe fact that Tennessee archeologyessentially stops fifty miles northeast ofKnoxville, before it reaches Holstonia.

To conclude this subsection on a positiveand optimistic note, we record that withinthe past year preliminary results havebecome available from an unprecedentedprofessional investigation22 at the HollistonMills site along the Holston River inHawkins County, Tennessee, a few mileswest of Kingsport and only a few miles southof the Virginia line. This site is a fortifiedtown that has been radiocarbon dated to theperiod 1400-1600 AD. Preliminary studies ofpottery and over 660 burials at the site raisethe distinct possibility that the occupants ofthe site were an as-yet-unidentified ethnicgroup not ancestral to the Cherokee.Preliminary analysis of the archeologicalevidence suggests that these prehistoricpeople were possibly Yuchi. A small marineshell gorget with a rattlesnake design wasexcavated at this Holliston Mills site.

The Archeology of Holstonia in Virginia

There is only one book dedicated to thearcheology of Southwest Virginia, and that isthe excellent survey carried out by C. G.Holland in the 1960s on behalf of theSmithsonian Institution and published in1970.23 Unfortunately, as its name implies, itis just a survey, and it is now almost fortyyears old. Notwithstanding, Holland tells ofmany sites along the three forks of theHolston River (Figures 1 and 3) in Virginiathat are even today mentioned nowhere elsein the archeological literature. A

state-sponsored book about Virginia Indiansprovides a brief description of Holstonia inVirginia. Concerning the time period hereconsidered, the authors' remarked:

The Late Woodland people achieved arichness of culture that was unmatched todate. They created a wide range of potteryforms and ceremonial and symbolicobjects of stone, copper, and shell.Symbolic designs reflected an extensivemythology and belief system that includednatural and supernatural figures.Sophisticated burial customs reflected thepeople's view of the world as a timelesscycle, as a continuous, unchangingprocession of death and rebirth.24

Two now somewhat dated surveys of thearcheology of Holstonia in Virginia in theprofessional literature are the paper from1989 by Howard MacCord synthesizing thethen known cultural aspects of theregion,25 and a complementary survey byKeith Egloff from 1992 which reported someadditional sites.26 Together, these two paperscover essentially all the Late WoodlandPeriod sites that have been described in theliterature. Unfortunately, most of theVirginia Holstonia sites from this period, andall of the most significant ones – many ofwhich lie along the Holston North Fork,have never been professionally studied orreported, including up to the present day.

The link between Holstonia in Virginia andthe well-known Mississippian mound culturecenters to the south and southeast (Etowah,Moundville, Ocmulgee, Hiwassee Island,etc.) was described in a 2002 paper byMaureen Meyers.27 She takes the positionthat there were mound building culturespresent in Holstonia. However, her positionhas not received much professional support,and at least one archeologist remains politelyskeptical.28 Leaving the matter of moundsaside, there is plenty of other evidence, suchas the evidence from the similarities of theartistic styles of gorgets and other recovered

24

artifacts, that strong cultural links to thesouth and southeast do indeed exist.

During the past year, I have begun to publishthe results of my investigations into culturalartifacts from Holstonia. The exceedinglyrich cultural heritage of the region has nowbeen unequivocally demonstrated. Many ofthe artifacts are in New Jersey.29 I have alsobegun to write about and document themodern-day culture of archeological sitelooting that has been so characteristic of theregion.30 Many more artifacts remain hiddenin the private collections of relic enthusiasts.However, I have seen, photographed, anddocumented a significant fraction of them.They will all be reported and recorded infuture publications. I presented a progressreport on my studies to a group ofprofessional archeologists in June 2007. 31

Two examples of shell gorgets fromHolstonia are pictured below. Even in theabsence of formal excavations, the mereexistence of these objects is sufficient toestablish the presence of an important culturethere. Saltville style gorgets (Figure 5) areprobably the most important single categoryof artifacts that define the Mississippianculture of Holstonia. With the exception ofsome specimens that were found at and nearSaratown, NC, the geographic range ofSaltville style gorgets is restricted toHolstonia.

The Arrival of the Conquistadors

Holstonian Indian culture was abruptly andbrutally changed in the mid sixteenth centuryby the arrival of two separate parties ofSpanish conquistadors.

The written history of Holstonia begins whenthe de Soto entrada 32 arrived in the region in1540 and passed along its southern edge.The documents that tell the story are in theSpanish archives, which further record thattwenty-seven years later, in 1567, a

detachment from the Juan Pardo entradaentered Holstonia and burned Indian townsthere.

In the standard scholarly work on theSpanish documents of the de Soto entrada,fewer than ten of its almost eight hundredpages of translations say anything related toHolstonia.33 Less than a hundred milessoutheast of Holstonia, de Soto and his partyof 800 men rested at Chiaha for most ofJune, 1540.34 Chiaha was a large andprosperous Indian town at the northern endof Zimmerman's Island in Jefferson County.It now lies under Lake Douglas in JeffersonCounty. Although it is hard to believe, noarcheological studies were carried out onZimmerman's Island before its inundation.There is, however, perhaps one arche-ological remnant of de Soto's presence. Ahundred years ago, a rusty steel sword-blade,found at the side of a human skeleton, wasexcavated, at the Brakebill Indian mound atthe junction of the Holston and FrenchBroad Rivers.35 The mound is five miles eastof present day Knoxville and about ten mileswest of the Douglas Lake Dam.

In 1567, a detachment from the Pardoentrada under the command of HernandoMoyano traversed Holstonia in a quest forgold. The party left death and mayhem in itswake. Moyano attacked two Indian towns,probably at Elizabethton, Tennessee, andSaltville Virginia. The standard scholarlywork on the Spanish documents of the Pardoentrada is that of Charles Hudson, withtranslations provided by Paul Hoffman.36

Partly as a result of the pre-1990 research forthat book, archeological field work wasundertaken in western North Carolina toseek sites where the Pardo entrada hadencamped. That field work revealed that theBerry site near Morganton, NC, had beenoccupied by Spaniards for about a year. Itwas from this base at Morganton that

25

Moyano marched into Holstonia. The basewas called Fort San Juan by the Spanish andthe nearby Indian village was Joara.

The Berry site has yielded unequivocal proofof a sixteenth century Spanish occupancy ofthe region. The finding of the Berry site wasfirst reported in the professional arch-eological literature in 1997.37

Convincing insight into Moyano's violentbreach of Holstonia is achieved when thearchaeological conclusions reached at theBerry site are combined with thedocumentary evidence of the Pardo entrada.This writer summarized that combination ofevidence in an article written from aHolstonian perspective in 2004.38

Archeologists excavated at Berry for over adecade and the team issued a compre-hensive, professional report of their work inlate 2006.39 The team also published aretrospective analysis of their work'ssignificance as an afterword to the unrevised,reprinted edition of Hudson's pioneeringbook on the Pardo entrada.40

Incidentally, the accounts of sixteenthcentury Spanish activities in the region arenaturally of considerable interest toMelungeon writers.41 Among them, ManualMira in particular has written extensivelyabout a possible Portuguese connection.42

After 1567 the curtain descended onHolstonia.

Period 2. From 1567-1740 AD: TheForgotten Centuries

This period has been well named the"forgotten centuries."43 Neither archeologynor history offer much illumination of theperiod. No Europeans were present to writea historical record and the archeologicalrecord44 is a rather blunt instrument forprobing the massive social upheavals that

occurred. Our lack of detailed knowledgenotwithstanding, this period irrevocablytransformed the Southeast.

The Spanish entradas were brutal events andin their wake terrible changes occurred insoutheastern American Indian societies. Thedisintegrating cultures that resulted havebeen aptly called "societies in eclipse."45 InHolstonia, as elsewhere, the story of theforgotten centuries was disease,46 displace-ment, and change. After the Spanish wentaway, native societies underwent populationcollapse, population relocation, and tribalconsolidation. Some estimates tell that morethat 95% of all American Indians in theSouthest died within a few years of theSpanish leaving.47 Alfred Crosby wrote "Theannals of early Spanish empire are filled withcomplaints about the catastrophic decline inthe number of native people."48  Amy TurnerBushnell said bluntly "Southern historybegins with an act of ethnic cleansing."49

The faintest historical glimpse of Holstoniafrom this period comes from a single briefaccount (it's about five transcribed pages) ofthe exploits in the region of a party of twoEnglishmen (James Needham and GabrielArthur), eight "Appomattock" Indians, andfour horses. The party was sent out fromPetersburg, Virginia, in May 1673 by thetrader Abraham Wood on a mission prin-cipally intended to explore possible tradewith Indians.50 Wood reported in a letter toEngland that Needham was killed, whileGabriel set out on wide ranging, longdistance excursions with Indians.51 Gabrielalmost certainly traveled to the SouthCarolina coast, perhaps even to NewOrleans. During these perambulations heprobably crossed Holstonian territory.Unfortunately, Woods' letter provides only aglimpse.

So what can we actually say about theHolstonian Indians during the forgotten

26

centuries? Not much, beyond the fact thatmost of them disappeared

Of course, it is eminently plausible thatisolated, remnant Indian groups remained,especially in the high mountains of countiessuch as Hancock and Johnson in Tennesseeor Scott and Washington in Virginia. Aconsistent element of the history of theregion is the survival of isolated, uplandgroups of people. Unfortunately, it is quiteunlikely that direct evidence, in these orother nearby counties, will ever be found toestablish a cultural continuity betweenIndians of the sixteenth century and theearliest Melungeon arrivals that can bedocumented to the late eighteenth or earlynineteenth century.

Period 3. From 1740-1839 AD: TheArrival of the English to Indian

Removal

In this section we will examine the role theCherokee played in stimulating Englishactivity in Holstonia.

The Cherokee were one of the strongest ofthe tribes at the beginning of this period andwere broadly divided into three sub groups,depending on where they located theirtowns. The Lower Towns were in thenorthwest corner of South Carolina; theMiddle and Valley Towns were in westernNorth Carolina; and the Overhill Towns layin Tennessee along the Hiwassee and LittleTennessee rivers. It took only a few decadesafter the 1670 English settling at Charleston,SC, to establish substantial, and highlyprofitable (for the English), trade betweenthe mountains and the coastal plain. Deerskins came out, in exchange for metal goods,cloth, guns and gunpowder, etc., that wentin. Between 1700 and 1760 an average of75,000 skins reached Charleston every year.Meanwhile, the Cherokee population

plummeted: from an estimated 38,000 in1685 to only 7,000 in 1765 following threesmall pox epidemics, and two "scorchedearth" military campaigns. By then, thetraditional Cherokee independent lifestylehad been replaced by a largely dependentone, and the Cherokees had become a small,deer-hunting cog in a big Europeaneconomic system.52

Because of its remoteness, until about 1740Holstonia remained cut off from the life ofcolonial, tidewater Virginia. Long hunters,adventurers of the forest such as CharlesSinclair and Stephen Holston, and Indiantraders such as "Vaughn" of Amelia Countywere definitely there by 1740 – possibly adecade earlier.53 After 1740, prospectiveprofits from land sales and Indian tradinglured ever increasing numbers of Englishspeakers to Holstonia.

Holstonia in 1740 was French territory.However, when war broke out between theFrench and the British in 1744,54 Virginiaauthorities ceased to be squeamish aboutclaiming and staking out French territory. OnOctober 10, 1746, the Virginia Council madeJames Patton a "Great Grant" of 100,000acres of land to be taken up piecemeal in theterritory stretching from modern dayMontgomery County, Virginia, to HawkinsCounty, Tennessee – along today's I-81corridor.55 With this grant, Holstonia wasopen for legal English settlement.

In April 1748, seventeen months afterobtaining his grant, Patton and othersexplored the Holston Valleys. They wentperhaps as far as the future state ofTennessee and the Cumberland Gap andsurveyed and selected a number of tracts ofland in Holstonia. The first well-documentedaccount of a visit to the region came twoyears later. In 1750 Dr. Thomas Walker kept

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a journal while he and others inspected andselected land.56

Walker frequently mentions Indians in hisjournal. They are the first descriptions ofHolstonian Indians since those of the Spanishdocuments, written 180 years earlier. Hereare some quotations from Walker: "We …discover'd the tracks of about 20 Indians"(March 30th). "In the Fork between theHolstons and the North River, are five IndianHouses built with loggs and covered withbark, and there were abundance of Bones,some whole Pots and pans some broken, andmany pieces of mats and Cloth. On the westside of the North River, is four Indian Houses… four miles below [on the opposite bank is]a large Indian Fort" (March 18th). "…wecame on a fresh track of 7 or 8 Indians butcould not overtake them" (April 24th)."[Here] are the remains of several IndianCabbins amongst them a round Hill made byArt about 20 feet high and 60 over the Top" (April 27th). "…Indians have lived about thisFord some years ago" (April 18th). "[Here] anIndian Camp, that had been built this Spring"(May 3rd). "There is a great sign of Indianson this Creek" (June 6th). "This Creek tookits name from an Indian, called JohnAnthony, that frequently hunts in theseWoods. There are some inhabitants of theBranches of Green Bryer, but we missed theirPlantations" (July 6th). "The [settlers] hereare very Hospitable and would be better ableto support Travellers was it not for the greatnumber of Indian Warriers that frequentlytake what they want from them, much to theirprejudice" (July 8th).

In summary, Walker's journal tells thatIndians were assuredly present in Holstoniain 1750 and possibly resident there.

Indian trade between Virginians theCherokees began soon after Patton's landgrant. The route through Holstonia fromVirginia to the Overhills Cherokee Townsoffered a back door to the deer skin trade.

The Cherokee wanted competitors for theSouth Carolinians and the better pricescompetition would bring. The Virginianswanted a piece of the deer skin action

Perhaps the earliest Virginia Cherokee traderin Holstonia was Richard Pearis, who beenborn in Ireland in 1725. His trading post onthe Long Island may have opened as early as1750,57 and its presence led to a "viciousrivalry between the Carolina and Virginiatraders" for Cherokee business.58 It is certainthat in 1754 Pearis petitioned VirginiaGovernor Dinwiddie for a grant of land onLong Island.59 Dinwiddie was very interestedin recruiting Cherokees warriors to join theongoing British incursions into the Ohiocountry,60 and Pearis served (ineffectively) asa recruiting agent for the Overhill Cherokeeswho lived 150-odd miles downstream fromthe Long Island. Apparently, few if anyIndian warriors lived at this time near theLong Island.

Transits through Holstonia by Englishspeakers accelerated when GovernorDinwiddie, ordered Virginia frontiersmanMajor Andrew Lewis to build the "VirginiaFort" at Chota, an important OverhillCherokee town. Dinwiddie's principalpurpose was to ingratiate the Cherokees withtrading goods and "presents" and bring theirwarriors to the British cause. However,through incompetence, once built the fortwas never named or manned.61 In contrast,Fort Loudoun, built nearby soon after by theSouth Carolinians was manned, and brieflyserved to promote the Carolina trade.

Relations between colonial Americans andthe Cherokee American Indians collapsed in1759. The collapse lead directly to theoutbreak of the Cherokee War of 1760.62

This war irreversibly opened Holstonia tosettlement. To fight the war, the Britishplanned a two-pronged strategy, with theMiddle and Lower Cherokee Towns to be

28

attacked from South Carolina and theOverhill Cherokee Towns to be attacked viathe back door down the Holston Riverrouteby Virginia forces. The Cherokeeweathered the first summer of the war in1760, and even captured Fort Loudoun.However, in summer 1761, the MiddleTowns were devastated by British regularsunder Colonel James Grant. Meanwhile, thatsame summer, Major Andrew Lewis and 200men hacked out a road through thewilderness from Fort Chiswell in WytheCounty, Virginia, past Chilhowie, to theLong Island. Grant's success forced a peacetreaty on the Carolina front and peace on theVirginia front quickly followed. OnNovember 20, 1761, the Treaty of LongIsland was signed there by Colonel AdamStephen and Cherokee leaders.63 Though itinvolved no actual fighting, the Virginians'campaign had significantly opened a militaryroad into Holstonia. That road was shortly tobecome the great American highway to theWest, to be traveled by tens of thousands ofEnglish speaking pioneers headed forKentucky and far beyond.

At the conclusion of the French and IndianWar the British and the defeated Frenchsettled the immediate fate of North Americaat the Treaty of Paris in 1763. Thereimmediately followed a brief moment whenit seemed that by proclamation of KingGeorge III, Holstonia and all the land west ofthe eastern continental divide might bereserved for the Indians.64 However, theforces driving American westward expansionwere far too strong to be resisted, and anywaythe coming Revolution was already in the air.King George was ignored and the land wasup for grabs.

We now enter the time of well-documentedhistory. Events in East Tennessee movedswiftly and the Indians we read about beingthere are the Cherokee, who at the time laidclaim and hunting rights to a huge land area

west of the Blue Ridge Mountains. In 1770,in the treaty of Lochaber, SC, the Cherokeenation ceded a triangle of land boundedroughly by modern day Kingsport, TN,Huntington, WV, and Rocky Mount, VA. In1775 came the Henderson Purchase, in whichthe Cherokee ceded large tracts of land incentral and western Kentucky, SouthwestVirginia, and north and northeasternTennessee.65 With the ink scarcely dry on theHenderson Purchase, Daniel Boone and hisaxmen chopped out the wilderness trail fromthe Long Island into Kentucky territory.66 Asecond Cherokee war was fought at LongIsland in 1776, while the Wataugan settlers atthe same time hung on to their wildernessfoothold near Sycamore Shoals.67 In 1781 the"overmountain" men, the settlers of Hols-tonia, marched back over the mountains andwon the Battle of King's Mountain, a pivotalfight in the Revolutionary War. After theRevolution in 1796 the state of Tennesseeentered the union. By 1810 the route downthe Holston Valley, and thence west to theCumberland Gap, had become the mosttraveled highway in America as settlersstreamed through Smyth County, acrossHolstonia and onward to populate westernTennessee and Kentucky. That rush ofwell-documented history records little ornothing of resident Holstonian Indians.

Strife between the Indians and settlerscontinued. In Holstonia, the Cherokee, andfar-ranging Indians such as the Shawnee fromthe Ohio country and Creeks and Choctawsfrom the deep south, pressed attacks on thesettlers who streamed into and through theregion.68 Between 1775 and 1795 over 30defensive forts were built and manned by theHolston Militia.69 During all of this time, andon into the early decades of the nineteenthcentury, resident Holstonian Indians areinvisible.

In the early nineteenth century relationshipson the frontier stabilized and to many whites

29

the tribes became increasingly "civilized."Nonetheless, the demand for land wasinsatiable, and in 1830 the US Congresspassed the Indian Removal Act: the Indiansof the Southeast were to go to Oklahomaterritory, removed there by force ifnecessary. With removal, the few HolstonianIndians who remained withdrew farther intotheir mountain refuges.

The Melungeons entered the historicalrecord about this time, with the first writtenuse of a form of the word Melungeonappearing in the minutes of the Stony CreekBaptist Church.70

In summary, at the beginning of the period1740-1839 it is likely that there was a smallpopulation of resident Indians in Holstonia.However, for much of the period it was theCherokee who were prominent through theirwarfare and treaty making. The periodclosed with the Indians mostly gone afterwalking the so-called "Trail of Tears" ordeath march to Oklahoma.

Period 4. 1839-2008 AD.Melungeons and Modern Indians

"Finding much record of Indians inTennessee post 1830s will be very dauntingas the politics of that era required one tohide it or be deported to Oklahoma." Thatwas a recent remark made to the writer by anAmerican  Indian historian of  Tennessee.71

Just so. Indeed, finding documentary recordsof Indian residents in either Holstonia inTennessee or Holstonia in Virginia for thisperiod has proved almost impossible.

This section begins with a description of thetraditional academic books and articles thathave been examined. They have failed toyield any information of value. Aninformation source I once thought wouldoffer good prospects is the now extensive

Melungeon literature, which has exploded inthe past 20-30 years. However, it too hasyielded little of value. The one productivearea of investigation has been the very recenton line documentation of the resurgent,modern Indian tribes of Tennessee, aboutwhom very little has appeared in thetraditional literature. The appearance of theiron line and physical presence, also over thepast 20-30 years, has been a fascinating andsignificant development.

Sources That Fail to Provide Evidence forHolstonian Indians

This subsection reports that an examinationof the diverse, formal literature that onemight expect to produce information aboutAmerican Indian groups in northeasternTennessee or southwestern Virginia yieldsnone.

What is much to be desired, but what will bevery difficult to achieve, is a book such asthe two written respectively about thetwentieth century history of AmericanIndians in eastern Virginia and in easternNorth Carolina. Both of these books coverthe topics of interest in the relevant period ofinterest, but not our region of interest. InPocahontas's People,72 Helen Rountree tellsthe remarkable story of the remnantPowahatan tribes of the Virginia Tidewaterand their revival from almost totalannihilation. Her narrative concludes withthe years 1980-1990, a noteworthy decadethat saw the formation of a state-sanctionedVirginia Council on Indians and theunprecedented formal recognition by thestate of no fewer than eight Indian tribes,two of which (the Mattaponi and thePamunkey) have minuscule reservations onthe banks of their eponymous rivers.Unfortunately, Rountree's excellent bookbarely mentions even the Monacans ofcentral Virginia, who while closer toHolstonia than the Indians of Tidewater, are

30

still over 200 miles away. A parallel situationexists with Christopher Arris Oakley's alsoexcellent book Keeping the Circle73 about theIndians of eastern North Carolina. His mapof North Carolina tribes (page 11) shows thelocations of the one federally recognizedtribe, the Eastern Cherokee of Swain andJackson Counties near the Little TennesseeRiver (Figure 3), and the seven NorthCarolina State recognized tribes in the northcentral, northeast, and southeast regions ofthe state. The two closest of these tribes aresituated about 150 miles from Holstonia.

Discussion of Indians in Holstonia is alsoabsent from the two published collections ofscholarly essays that describe southeasternIndians during the period we are consideringin this section. The first of these, the 1979volume Southeastern Indians Since theRemoval Era,74 edited by Walter L. Williams,contains twelve essays including ones aboutsuch tribes as the Lumbees, Tunica, Houma,Catawba, Alabama Creek, Choctaws,Seminoles, etc. Almost no mention is madeof Tennessee, except tangentially in an essayon the Eastern Cherokee. The second essaycollection, the 1992 volume Indians of theSoutheastern United States in the Late 20thCentury,75 edited by J. Anthony Paredes,contains nine essays including ones aboutNorth and South Carolina and Louisianatribes, the Waccamaw Sioux, Miccosukees,and Poarch Creek Indians. Again, in theseessays, no mention is made of the Indians inwhom we are interested.

Discussion of Indians in Holstonia is alsoabsent from the literature of the peoplecalled variously "remnant Indian groups,""Racial Islands," "tri-racial isolates," or"ethnically complex populations."76

Serious study of such groups did not beginuntil after World War II, and the results ofthose studies attracted very little attentionuntil the past 20-30 years, when they became

widely quoted in the rising tide ofMelungeon studies. In 1947, William Gilbertpublished a survey of the larger mixed-bloodracial islands of the Eastern UnitedStates.77 He followed with wider-ranging,ground breaking report for the FederalGovernment.78 Also ground breaking was the1950 Ph.D. Thesis of Edward Price,79 whichdevoted sixty-one pages to the "Melungeonsof Eastern Tennessee" and touched else-where on topics such as the classification ofmixed blood groups and the genetics ofracial mixture. Calvin Beale, contributed a1957 analysis of triracial isolates usingcensus data and examined geneticallytransmitted diseases.80 Beale returned fifteenyears later to provide an overview mixedracial isolates in the US.81 The first publishedbook on about these groups, written byBrewton Berry, appeared in 1963.82 A veryrecent review of this field was published herein the Redbone Chronicles by WayneWinkler.83

An extensive, pre-1979 bibliography ofmixed racial isolates in the formal academicliterature is one essay in Williams' editedcollection.84 This bibliography includes along section titled "Sources about IndiansRemaining in the Southeast since 1840."However, while that section provides manyreferences to Cherokee Indians, and ahandful to the Indians of Eastern Virginia, itis sadly devoid of references to TennesseeIndians or the Indians of western Virginia.

Are there then no formal references toIndians in this period in Holstonia? Probablynone. However, there is one statement by theprominent Indian student John Swantonpublished in 1922 that unambiguously placesYuchi Indians in Tennessee at thattime.85 According to his footnote, Swanton'sinformant was the prominent ethnologistTruman Michelson. Efforts to follow upMichelson and locate the source of his

31

information have been unsuccessful. Theprecise location these Yuchi in Tennesseeremains unknown – but no doubt in theeastern part of the state. All that remains tobe said in this section is that absence ofevidence is not necessarily evidence ofabsence. Holstonia is full of mountainrefuges.

The Melungeon Literature

The Melungeon literature tells a good dealabout American Indians but not much aboutthose Indians indigenous to, or resident in,Holstonia – precisely those who we areinterested in. It does tell that the AmericanIndian component of the Melungeon triracialmix seems to have been brought intoHolstonia by immigrants.

Rather than list all the sourcesunproductively examined in this study, abrief description of available Melungeonbibliographies will be provided. So doing isnot to say that every one of the citedreferences in each of the bibliographies hasbeen examined. They have not. Nonetheless,significant numbers of them have been seenand reviewed. Five such bibliographies are:An anthropologically oriented bibliographyfor Tennessee with Melungeon coverageprepared by an archeologist was published in1977.86 Three readily available on linebibliographies are the one in Melungeonsand Other Mestee Groups,87 the onepublished in connection with Melungeonhealth issues,88 and the one published at theMelungeon web site,89 which very helpfullyincludes on line, full-text, searchableversions of many of the key Melungeonpapers. A recent, comprehensivebibliography can be found in WayneWinkler's book about the Melungeons.90

Winkler suggests in the "conclusions andspeculations" section of his just-cited book(page 245) that the Melungeons arrived inHolstonia at the end of the eighteenth century

accompanied by remnant members of theMonacan and Powhatan tribes, and initiallysettled around Fort Blackmore in ScottCounty, Virginia, near the junction of StonyCreek of the Clinch River a dozen or so milesnorth of Kingsport, Tennessee. Winklerwrites: "The family groups of theMelungeons who settled in southwestVirginia and northeast Tennessee may nothave been merely affiliated with these tribalgroups, but instead were all that remained ofthose groups."

My working hypothesis, based on theforegoing, is that the Indian-ness of theMelungeons derives from eastern Virginia,and not from long-term, locally residentHolstonian Indians.

A Digression About How and Why

A brief digression is appropriate here toaddress the questions of how and why thesituation being described, so inimical toIndians, came to be.

In 1839 the US Army was hunting downIndians in North Carolina, Tennessee, andthe other southeastern states, fortransportation to Oklahoma. In northeasternTennessee and southwestern Virginia, aselsewhere, white Americans in general hadgrown intolerant of even the mere presenceof Indians. The situation so remained for along time. Indeed, many years later, inVirginia, that intolerance wasinstitutionalized in the form of the so-namedRacial Integrity Law.

Out west on the Plains, from 1836-1890,there was intermittent warfare between theUS army, usually the cavalry, and manydifferent Indian tribes: the Commanchecampaigns, the Colorado War, the BlackHills War, the Red River War, the Battle ofthe Little Bighorn, the Cheyenne War, theWounded Knee Massacre, and many others.The popular white American view of Indiansat this time was that they were ruthless

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savages. That view is exemplified by the titleof a popular 1899 book Indian Horrors orMassacres by the Red Men: Being a thrillingnarrative of bloody wars with merciless andrevengeful savages.91

Today, reasonable people perhaps wonderexactly who was perpetrating the "Horrorsor Massacres." However, at the time, Indianseverywhere were getting little sympathyfrom most white Americans.

In Virginia in the 1920s, in the name of abastardized and corrupt notion of eugenicsdeeply flavored with racism, Indians wereerased in Virginia by the legislative expedientof requiring racial identity identifications onbirth certificates be either black or white.That was Virginia's 1924 Racial IntegrityLaw.92 The law's require- ments denied andbureaucratically assassinated VirginiaIndians.

The immediate perpetrator of this policy wasthe Virginia Registrar of Births, WalterPlecker,93 but of course the responsibilitybelonged to Virginia government authorityand the dominant culture in general. Tounderstand the depth of the attack on Indianheritage in Virginia, Plecker's own words areworth reading in a 1925 article published inthe American Journal of Public Health thatcan be read on line.94 Only very recently haveVirginia authorities recanted. It was 2002when Governor Mark Warner announced:"Today, I offer the Commonwealth's sincereapology for Virginia's participation ineugenics."95

The only direct reference to possibleHolstonian Indians in the 1920s seems to bein a book written in the anti-Indian spirit ofPlecker called Mongrel Virginians, whichcomments obliquely on the Indians ofsouthwestern Virginia as Melungeons.Thankfully, even at the time of itspublication, this work was called by a

reviewer "A really absurd and uselessbook."96

In this ongoing hostile environment is it anywonder that for 120 years the remnantIndians of Holstonia hid, and if they didn'thide they assimilated?

In the 1920s, assimilation of Indianseverywhere was the official policy of theUnites States federal government. Today,that policy and the spirit of arrogantpaternalism behind it are difficult torecapture, except perhaps by directquotation. Here's the Commissioner ofIndian Affairs writing in 1923 in the forwardto a book published by the Institute of Socialand Religious Research:

This volume … is refreshingly free fromthe pessimistic, dramatic, sentimental, andsatirical sketchings of Indian life…. Thepresent policy of assimilating the Indianwith the general population and citizenshipof the country is treated thoughtfully and… the chief requisites to that end areeducation, sympathetic understanding,patience, and fellowship. … It is this policyof sympathy, patience, and humanity,which for thirty years has encountered nohostile Indian uprisings such as markedevery previous decade for three centuries,that is preserving and reconstructing theRed Race. It is this process of spiritualunderstanding and fellowship to which thevirtues of a dependent but valorous people… can effectively cooperate. …Government … efforts … have … taught[Indian] men the dignity of hard work andself-reliance, brought sympathy andunderstanding to Indian mothers andhealth to their babies, put hygiene intohousekeeping, encouraged practical andsanitary clothing, purified marriage rites,revealed the principles of Christian living,and steadily increased the Indianpopulation.

The Indian's spirituality is nourished bytraditions as ancient as his racial infancy.Many of these are as beautiful and asworthy of historic preservation as the finestfancies of classic mythology. Many may beretained and cherished in the Indian's

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cultural progress, but many are benightedand sometimes degrading, and to lead theIndian away from debasing conceptionswhich the loom of time has interwovenwith his sacredest aspirations is a labor offaith, of patience, of philanthropy thatknows no discouragement although theends aimed at may seem far away.

Out of this humane regard for the mind,the body, the character of the AmericanIndian, has developed the mostsympathetic and the profoundest serviceof the Indian Bureau, a service whichcannot be done hurriedly or harshly butmust grow out of kindly and persuasivemethods, and must not be deterred byshort-sighted criticism.97

Enough said.

Modern Holstonian Indians: From 1975to 2008

After all of the preceding discussion aboutthe unhappy period from 1839-1975, and ofthe dearth of information sources for theperiod, it is a relief to finally turn to recentevents and to new kinds of sources.Incidentally, the year 1975 in the headingabove is the year in which the VirginiaGeneral Assembly repealed the remainingportion of the Racial Integrity Act notpreviously held unconstitutional by theSupreme Court.98 Even so, it wastwenty-two more years, until 1997, beforeVirginia Governor George Allen signed a billthat included appropriate bureaucraticprocedures to enable Virginia Indians tocorrect their birth records. 99

In this section much of our informationcomes from the World Wide Web. Thepicture we will develop will lack thetraditional scholarly and academicunderpinning of the preceding sections.However, what the section lacks in formalityis more than balanced by its sources'freshness, vitality, and even boisterousness.

In the modern era, US census data hasincluded enumeration by racial category.

While this set of data is self-selected, and ofdoubtful reliability, it does provide estimatedcounts of American Indians in Holstonia.Counts from the 1990 census aresummarized for the relevant counties100 inTable 1. The 1990 total American Indiancensus count in Tennessee was 10,191; the996 persons in the Tennessee countiesshown in Table 1 thus amount to 9.8% of theTennessee total. The 1990 total AmericanIndian census count in Virginia was 15,792;the 143 persons in the Virginia countiesshown in Table 1 thus amount to 0.9% of theVirginia total.

Table 1 1990 American Indian Census

Counts in Holstonia101

Count Virginia Counties

in HolstoniaCountTennesseeCounties

in Holstonia

143Total VA996Total TN157Washington11Unicoi

374Sullivan14Johnson78Hawkins

30Washington18Hancock48Tazewell85Hamblen34Smyth89Greene17Scott78Cocke14Russell92Carter

As has been previously recounted, inVirginia the year 1980 initiated a decade ofpolitical progress for Virginia Indians; inTennessee, similar progress began at aboutthe same time. A sign of the changing timesin Tennessee came when an anthropologistwriting about Melungeons remarked it hadbecome "… somewhat fashionable inTennessee these days to have a Cherokee inone's family tree… ."102

In 1977, Tennessee's constitutional barrier tointerracial marriage was repealed.103 In 1978,Governor Ray Blanton proclaimed state

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recognition of the Etowah Cherokee Nation,the first time any Indian tribe in Tennesseehad been so recognized.104 However, a fewyears later, the then Attorney Generalconcluded that the Governor lacked thestatutory authority to make such recognition,thereby effectively rescinding the Governor'sdecision.105 The current Tennessee AttorneyGeneral's office has recently issued anopinion that tribal recognition is legal, ifproperly legislated.106  Proposed legislation todo exactly that may shortly be introduced tothe Tennessee legislature.107

In 1983 the Native American IndianAssociation of Tennessee (NAIA) wasformed and that same year the state createdthe Tennessee Commission of Indian Affairs(TCIA), with Governor Lamar Alexandersigning the enabling legislation on May26th.108  In 1990, the TCIA initiated aprogram to officially and legally recognizeAmerican Indians, and began to issuerecognition certificates to individuals. Indiangroups located relatively near Holstonia whocame to the attention of the Commissionaround that time were the East TennesseeIndian League, based in Knoxville, and theUnited Eastern Lenape Nation of Winfield, inScott County, Tennessee.109 In 1994,Tennessee adopted a law requiring the fourthMonday in September to be observed inTennessee as "American Indian Day," and thefollowing year it required "Native AmericanIndian" as a designation of racial or ethnicorigin on any official document requestingsuch information to be divulged.110

One measure of the rebirth of Indianawareness and culture in Tennessee is an online list of "Tennessee Native AmericanIndian & Related Organizations."111 A recentcheck of this list showed 173 organizationsostensibly functioning in Tennessee,although further checking suggests that manyof the listed groups are inactive or were offleeting existence. In Holstonia, an important

and active American Indian group withwhich the writer is personally familiar is theRemnant Yuchi Tribe. This tribe is based inKingsport, however, as noted previously,Holstonia is a cultural not political concept,and Remnant Yuchis live in both Virginiaand Tennessee.

Today, Indian affairs in both Tennessee andVirginia, and hence those in Holstonia, arehighly politicized.

In Virginia, the Virginia Council of Indiansoperates under the aegis of the Governor'soffice and is very much part of the Virginiaestablishment, as demonstrated by itsprominent role in planning the events of theJamestown 2007 celebrations, and itspublication and sponsorship of documentssuch as the "Virginia Indian HeritageTrail."112 Unfortunately, the Virginia Councilof Indians has never had a member from thewestern part of the state. Viewed fromHolstonia the Council is irrelevant.

In Tennessee, in contrast to the staidsituation in Virginia, modern day Indianpolitics are a rough and tumble business.Elections for seats on the TennesseeCommission of Indian Affairs are hotlycontested and the very existence of theCommission is in question.113 UnlikeVirginia, there are no Tennessee staterecognized tribes, a situation which gallsmany members of the Tennessee Indiancommunity because at its inception one ofthe objectives of the Tennessee Commissionof Indian Affairs was to establish state tribalrecognition criteria that would lead in duetime to tribal recognition itself. Sparing thedetails, suffice to say that there are variousTennessee Indian groups, including theRemnant Yuchi of Holstonia, who areheatedly contending to shape the future ofIndian affairs in the state.

In summary, for the reasons that have beenmade clear in the preceding sections, for

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Holstonia it is a challenging, and perhapsimpossible, task to link pre-contact andhistoric Indians to modern Indians by themethods of conventional scholarship.

Other Possible Lines of Inquiry

While archeology, ethnology, and writtenhistory, have shed some light on theHolstonian Indians, the evidence they bringleaves much to be desired. So what otherlines of inquiry are available? The two primecandidates as alternative lines of inquiry areoral history and DNA studies.

Traditional scholarship is extremely reluctantto include the work of the oral historian orfolklorist into its research and speculations.Certainly, such material is less reliable thendocumented history. However, it nonethelesscontains genuine historical information and itis the traditional medium of history amongindigenous peoples. Oral Indian tradition hasmuch to say about the past, sometimes evenabout the very deep past.114 Unfortunately,documented oral evidence is extremelydifficult to find. However, on the rareoccasions it can be found, it raisesfascinating possibilities. Here's one publicexample: an American Indian oral history ofEast Tennessee posted anonymously to anInternet discussion group:

When I was a child and sick in my chest,my father painted his face and arms,danced around my bed singing insults tothe nothing sickness, broke an arrow andmade a washing movement with hishands. Then my mother took me to thehospital. I survived. … I am of two voices,family and American education. Fromfamily stories I will answer first. [About thegorget] The cross in the center of the sunrepresents the four directions and winds.… If the shell gorget is worn on the chest,blue is north, dangerous, cold winds andmuch trouble; black is west and blackwinds bring death; red is east, and redwinds bring success; white is south, as inour home, where there is good wind andalways peace. The sun is always worn on

the chest, whether it is a gorget, copper,silver, or tattoo. … I do not know anyonewho remembers the original clans. I wastold there were four. Then the king inCoosa, who was related to the sun butallowed us to live as before under hisprotection as her relation.

Then the Spanish came, I think DeSoto.Everything was disrupted and changed,but we remained on what is now ClinchRiver. The Yuchi (?) separated fromCoosa, I think they were Ah-ni-ku-ta-ni oranikutani and greatly feared for theirmagic. Then the Cherokee came, andlived by rule of Yuchi magic, and friendlyto us, the Koasati, until the Cherokee andYuchi fought and the Cherokee won. Ithink the Cherokee borrowed the fourcolors from us, and of course we wereinfluenced by Coosa and later by theYuchi. There was a great fear of theCherokee for a long time because so manyYuchi had intermarried with the Koasati inTali, but none of those practiced kutanimagic. These were difficult times. Wewere always a white town, or peace town,but we were in between those who fought.We had caves and underground tunnels aswell as our mounds. Then the Cherokeepushed the Shawnee back, and at this timemore Europeans came. There were manywars, the most important being the Frenchand English, and the English andAmerican. There were numerous alliances,most notably the Creek Confederacy. …Many of our village removed to Alabamawith the Creek, some to Florida with theSeminole, and later Georgia Texas, andOklahoma. Some followed the river toKentucky. St. Augustine, Florida is wheresome great-uncles were imprisoned anddied. It all depended on who one married,and clan rules as well as imposed rules byAmericans. My other lines are through myfather's father and my mother. They areBlue or Panther clan, Long Hair Clan (ortwister), and Deer Clan. I remember oncethat Mamaw talked about the bird clan, butI do not think she meant Cherokee birdclan.

In my other voice, the educated voice, Iam looking for evidence to support thestories I grew up with about my Collinsfamily. I do get confused, since my father

36

and his father were Cherokee and hadtheir own stories and ways.115

The above narrative is fascinating andthought provoking. It is especially sobecause many American Indians todaydecline to share their intimate culturalheritage and object even to its discussion, letalone publication. That aversion means thatoral history also carries limitations to what itcan reveal.

DNA evidence is widely recognized as amodern, powerful investigative technique toassess the relations among living people andprobe their origins. DNA studies have beenincreasingly applied to Melungeons.116 Arecent, amusing, informal discussion of DNAand the author's Melungeon heritage can befound in the concluding chapter of LisaAlther's book.117

To apply DNA studies to the question "whowere and are the Holstonians?" requires asubject group. The obvious subject group isthe Yuchi people. Under the name Chiscas,the Yuchi were the people encountered bythe de Soto entrada in Holstonia. TheYuchis were there in the early historicperiod.118 After much traveling, and sufferingremoval, a substantial population of Yuchilives today in Oklahoma as part of the CreekNation. The Oklahoma Yuchi are deeplysuspicious of "white man's science" and haverefused to participate in it. They do not wanttheir DNA analyzed. Yuchi scholar RichardGrounds (Yuchi) says reasons for theirrefusal include issues such as the ownershipof data and the potential for "extremelylucrative profiteering."119 For the present,Yuchi DNA studies will definitely not takeplace, and so the DNA line of inquiry isunavailable.

Conclusions

The principal overall conclusion of thisarticle is that it is hard to say much about the

permanent Indian inhabitants of Holstoniaduring most of the past eight centuries. It hasbeen demonstrated here that the potentiallyrelevant academic literature is more notablefor what it does not say than for what itdoes. A partial explanation for this situationis that the historic mobility of people throughthe region across all periods has obscuredthe permanent residents.

For the period 1200-1567 AD the availableevidence up until the moment of Europeancontact comes entirely from archeology. Thisarcheological evidence convincingly showsthe presence of large pre-contact populationsof Indians who had achieved awell-developed culture. Spanish documentsprovide brief written accounts of Holstoniain 1540 (the de Soto entrada) and 1567 (thePardo entrada).

For the period 1567-1740 AD the availableevidence comes entirely by analogy withgeneralized archeological and historicalinterpretations that have been made aboutregions to the south and east. A singlewritten record from 1673 tells of a fleetingvisit by a pioneering English expedition.During this period, in common with Indiansthroughout the Southest, natives in theregion suffered disease, death, and departure.We will never know exactly what happened.

For the period 1740-1838 AD there is muchavailable evidence from the historical record.The principal Indians described in that recordare the Cherokee from down the HolstonRiver, to the southwest. The Cherokeeduring this time claimed northeasternTennessee and southwestern Virginia as partof their hunting territory. Unfortunately, theavailable evidence says almost nothing aboutthe Indian residents of Holstonia. Thisobscurity is no doubt a consequence of themany high-visibility epochal events thatoccurred in the region during this time:Cherokee wars, the French and Indian War,

37

the Revolution, the formation of the state ofTennessee, the opening of pioneer trailsthrough the region, and finally Indianremoval.

For the period 1839-2008 AD the evidenceavailable is abundant with respect to theMelungeons. However, the Indian heritagedescribed by Melungeon history seems not tohave been local to the region. Cherokeehistory is also abundant. However, Cherokeehistory tells little about the people ofHolstonia. Reliable information aboutIndians in Holstonia in the period from1839-1975 is extremely scarce and formalstudies are absent. Holstonian Indian historywas reborn after 1975 and its story comesprincipally from Internet sources.

Much further research is needed. Oral historyand the implementation of DNA studies offerpotential alternative avenues of research.

Acknowledgments

The many people in Holstonia who haveencouraged and supported the author'sstudies of their region and culture. The manyprofessional archeologists who have assisted,several of who have traveled with the authorin Holstonia; the author, not they, isresponsible for any errors here. The relicdealers and collectors who have assisted inthe hunt for Holstonian cultural artifacts andallowed them to be photographed anddocumented. Chief Lee Vest and themembers of the Remnant Yuchi Tribe. TheInterlibrary loan office (ILLIAD) staff atNewman library at Virginia Tech. DonMarler for encouragement. For helpfuldiscussions and conversations: DavidHackett, Jay Vest, and Wayne Winkler. Asalways, Deena Flinchum for support,discussions, and editorial advice.

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Figures

Figure 2. Greater Holstonia, shown shaded, is a loosely bounded regionencompassing about 15 counties along the border of Tennessee and Virginia. Itlies principally, but not exclusively, in the Holston River watershed.

Figure 1. Core Holstonia (shown shaded) is the watersheds of the three forks ofthe Holston River in Virginia. They lie principally in Smyth, Washington, andScott Counties, and edge into Bland and Wythe Counties at their headwaters.

39

Figure 3. An orientation map showing some rivers and places mentioned in thisarticle.

In the northeast, Holstonia begins at the head waters of the forks of the HolstonRiver in Virginia. Holstonia ends in the vicinity of Chiaha (modern day LakeDouglas).

American Indian sites along the Clinch River often show strong cultural affinityto those in Holstonia.

Note: This map is not drawn to a strict scale and the twentieth century dams,and the lakes they created, are omitted.

40

Figure 4: A marine shell gorget in the Citico style. It represents a highly stylizedrattlesnake. Such gorgets have long been considered diagnostic for the Dallasculture. Many have come from sites along the Hiwassee river. Recent studies,place thirty-six examples in Holstonia, with twelve of those alone coming fromthe Chilhowie High School site in Smyth County, Virginia. This 5" diameterspecimen is on display at the Space Farms Zoo and Museum in New Jersey.

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Figure 5. A marine shell gorget in the Saltville style. Like the one in Figure 4, ittoo represents a highly stylized rattlesnake. Saltville style gorgets are found inHolstonia but not in the traditional homeland of the Dallas culture. At the timeof this writing, forty-three specimens in this style have been documented – mostfrom Holstonia in Virginia, some from North Carolina and Tennessee. This 2½"diameter specimen is in a private collection.

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Endnotes

6. Sturtevant, William C., and Bruce

5. Johnson, Patricia Givens. GeneralAndrew Lewis of Roanoke andGreenbrier. Second revised edition.Blacksburg, Virginia: Walpa Pub-lishing, 1994. Pages 44-48.

4. It may not be just a coincidence thatHolstonia is geographically abouthalfway between the Upper GreatLakes and their copper and theFlorida and Gulf coasts and theirshell.

3. Myer, William M. Indian Trails ofthe Southeast. Washington DC:Bureau of American Ethnology andthe US Government Printing Office,1925. Reprinted, Nashville: Blue andGray Press, 1971.

2. Glanville, Jim. Unknown Holstonia:Southwest Virginia Before theSettling of Jamestown. Paperpresented at the Virginia HistoryForum, Library of Virginia,Richmond. Saturday April 14, 2007.

1. Writing of the title ("The TennesseeArea") of her 1952 essay for animportant collective work ofarcheology (see citation below),Madeline Kneberg, professor ofanthropology at the University ofTennessee, said "The political,economic, and academic imperial-ism of states' rights is responsible forthis utterly incongruous title, as ifculture could be discussed in termsof state areas rather than naturalprovinces. Like the dachshund thatis a dog and a half long and half adog high, the state of Tennessee haspeculiar proportions."

10. Henderson, A. Gwynn. KentuckiansBefore Boone. Lexington: Univ-ersity Press of Kentucky, 1992.Modestly priced copies of this bookwere available from standard online

9. Milner, George R., David G.Anderson, and Marvin T. Smith."The Distribution of EasternWoodlands Peoples at thePrehistoric and Historic Interface."Pp. 9-18 in Societies in Eclipse,Eastern North America at the Dawnof History, edited by David S.Brose, C. Wesley Cowan, andRobert C. Mainfort, Jr. Washington,DC: Smithsonian Institution Press,2001. The maps in question areFigures 2.1, 2.2, and 2.3, on pages11-13.

8. Townsend, Richard F., GeneralEditor, Robert V. Sharp, Editor.Hero, Hawk, and Open Hand:American Indian Art of the AncientMidwest and South. Chicago: ArtInstitute of Chicago, 2004.

7. Sturtevant, William C., andRaymond D. Fogelson. "Preface."Pp. xiii-xvi in William C. Sturtevant,General Editor, Raymond D.Fogelson Volume Editor, JasonBaird Jackson Associate VolumeEditor. Handbook of NorthAmerican Indians. Volume 14"Southeast." Washington:Smithsonian Institu- tion, 2004.

G. Trigger. "Preface." Pp. xiii-xvi inWilliam C. Sturtevant, GeneralEditor, Bruce G. Trigger VolumeEditor. Handbook of NorthAmerican Indians. Volume 15"Northeast." Washington: Smithson-ian Institution, 1978.

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16. Lewis, Thomas M. N., and MadelineD. Kneberg-Lewis. The Prehistoryof the Chickamauga Basin in

15. Whiteford, Andrew H. "A Frame ofReference for the Archaeology ofEastern Tennessee." Pp. 207-225, inArcheology of the Eastern UnitedStates, edited by James B. Griffin.University of Chicago Press,Chicago, 1952.

14. Kneberg, Madeline. "The TennesseeArea." Pp. 190-199 and figures102-111 in Archeology of theEastern United States, edited byJames B. Griffin. Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1952.

13. Jefferies, Richard W. "Living on theEdge: Mississippian Settlement inthe Cumberland Gap Vicinity." Pp.198-221 in Archaeology of theAppalachian Highlands. Lynne P.,Sullivan and Susan C. Prezzano,editors. Knoxville: The University ofTennessee Press, 2001.

12. Lyon, Edwin A. A New Deal forSoutheastern Archaeology. Tusca-loosa: University of Alabama Press,1996. Lyon argues that TVA andrelated projects transformed arche-ology in the Southeast in the 1930sand 40s and laid the foundations ofthe modern discipline.

11. Hudson, Charles, M. Conversationswith the High Priest of Coosa.Chapel Hill: University of NorthCarolina Press, 2003. Modestlypriced copies of this book wereavailable from standard onlinesources when a check was madeduring the preparation of this article.

sources when a check was madeduring the preparation of this article.

22. Price, Beth and Jay D. Franklin."Mortuary Practices At TheHolliston Mills Site, A Missis-sippian Town In Upper EastTennessee." Abstract of a paperpresented at the meeting of the

21. Polhemus, Richard R. The ToquaSite, 40MR6, a late Mississippian,Dallas Phase Town, two volumes.Knoxville: University TennesseeDepartment of Anthropology, 1987.

20. Smith, Marvin T. Coosa: The Riseand Fall of a SoutheasternMississippian Chiefdom. Gaines-ville: University Press of Florida,2000.

19. Chapman, Jefferson. Tellico Arch-aeology: Twelve Thousand Years ofNative American History. Revisededition. Knoxville: Univ- ersity ofTennessee Press, 1995. Modestlypriced copies of this book wereavailable from standard onlinesources when a check was madeduring the preparation of this article.

18. Chapman, Jefferson. The AmericanIndian in Tennessee: AnArchaeological Perspective. Knox-ville: McClung Museum of theUniversity of Tennessee, 1982.

17. Lewis, Thomas M. N., and MadelineKneberg. Tribes that Slumber:Indians of the Tennessee Region.Knoxville: The University ofTennessee Press, 1958. Modestlypriced copies of this book wereavailable from standard onlinesources when a check was madeduring the preparation of this article.

Tennessee, Lynne P. Sullivan, editorand compiler. 2 vols. Knoxville: TheUniversity of Tennessee Press, 1995.

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29. Glanville, Jim. "The Space FarmsMuseum Collection of Southwest

28. Fuerst, David. Personal communic-ation, 2006.

27. Meyers, Maureen S. "TheMississippian Frontier inSouthwestern Virginia." Southeast-ern Archaeology 21(2): 178-191,2002.

26. Egloff, Keith T. "The LateWoodland Period in SouthwesternVirginia." Pp. 187-224 in Middleand Late Woodland Research inVirginia: A Synthesis, edited by T.R. Reinhart and M. E. N. Hodges.Special Publication No. 29.Richmond: Archeological Society ofVirginia, 1992.

25. MacCord, Howard A., Sr., "TheIntermontane Culture: A MiddleAppalachian Late WoodlandManifestation." Archeology ofEastern North America, 17: 89-108,1989.

24. Egloff, Keith and Deborah Wood-ward. First People: The EarlyIndians of Virginia, 2nd ed.Charlottesville: University ofVirginia Press in association with theVirginia Department of HistoricResources, 2006. For SouthwestVirginia in this work see pages33-40. The quote comes from page32.

23. Holland, C. G. An ArcheologicalSurvey of Southwest Virginia:Smithsonian Contributions toAnthropology Number 12. Washing-ton, DC: Smithsonian InstitutionPress, 1970.

Tennessee Archaeological Society,Nashville, January 2007.

36. Hudson, Charles M. The Juan Pardo

35. MacCurdy, George. "Some Moundsof East Tennessee." Pp. 59-74 inHodge, Frederick Webb, ed.Proceedings of the 19thInternational Congress ofAmericanists, Washington, DC,1915.

34. Hudson, Charles. Knights of Spain,Warriors of the Sun: Hernando deSoto and the South's AncientChiefdoms. University of GeorgiaPress: Athens and London, 1997.Chiaha and its people are describedon pages 199-203.

33. Clayton, Lawrence A., VernonJames Knight, Jr., and EdwardMoore. The de Soto Chronicles: theExpedition of Hernando de Soto toNorth America in 1539-1543, twovolumes. Tuscaloosa: The Univer-sity of Alabama Press, 1993.

32. Entrada literally means entry,beginning, or assault. Applied to theSpanish in the early Americas itrefers to the first expedition into aregion.

31. Glanville, Jim. "Art in Shell of theAncient Southwest Virginians."Paper presented at the New RiverSymposium, Radford University,Radford, June 1, 2007.

30. Glanville, Jim. "Richard G. Slatteryand the History of Archeology inSouthwest Virginia." QuarterlyBulletin of the ArcheologicalSociety of Virginia, 62(2): 86-106,2007.

Virginia Artifacts." QuarterlyBulletin of the ArcheologicalSociety of Virginia, 62(1): 7-30,2007.

45

42. Mira, Manuel. The Portuguese

41. Glanville, Jim. Spaniards in EarlyAppalachia. Paper presented at thesymposium "Before 1607?Melungeons in the New World."Southwest Virginia Museum, BigStone Gap, June 30, 2007.

40. Moore, David G., and Robin Beck."Afterword to the Juan PardoExpeditions." Pp. 343-349 inCharles M. Hudson, The Juan PardoExpeditions: Exploration of theCarolinas and Tennessee,1566-1568. Tuscaloosa: Universityof Alaba Press, 2006.

39. Beck, Robin A., Jr., David G.Moore, and Christopher B. Rodning."Identifying Fort San Juan: aSixteenth-Century SpanishOccupation at the Berry Site, NorthCarolina." SoutheasternArchaeology. 25(1): 65-77, 2006.

38. Glanville, Jim. "Conquistadors atSaltville in 1567? A Review of theArcheological and DocumentaryEvidence." Smithfield Review, (8):70-108, 2004.

37. Beck Robin A., Jr. "From Joara toChiaha: Spanish Exploration of theAppalachian Summit Area,1540-1568." SoutheasternArchaeology 16(2): 162-169, 1997.

Expeditions: Exploration of theCarolinas and Tennessee,1566-1568. With documents relatingto the Pardo Expeditions transcribed,translated, and annotated by Paul E.Hoffman. Tuscaloosa: University ofAlabama Press, 2006. Originallypublished in 1990 by theSmithsonian Institution Press,Washington, DC.

49. Bushnell, Amy Turner. "The First

48. Crosby, Alfred W., Jr. TheColumbian Exchange, Biologicaland Cultural Consequences of 1492.Westport, Connecticut: GreenwoodPress, 1972. The cited quote is onpage 38.

47. Smith, Marvin T. "AboriginalDepopulation in the PostcontactSoutheast." Pp. 257-275 in CharlesHudson and Carmen Chaves, eds.The Forgotten Centuries: Indiansand Europeans in the AmericanSouth, 1521-1704. Athens:University of Georgia Press, 1994.

46. Ramenofsky, Ann F., and PatriciaGalloway. "Disease and the SotoEntrada." Pp. 259-282 in PatriciaGalloway, editor. The Hernando DeSoto Expedition: History,Historiography, and "Discovery'' inthe Southeast. Lincoln: University ofNebraska Press, 1997.

45. Brose, David S., C. Wesley an, andRobert C. Mainfort, Jr., editors.Societies in Eclipse, Eastern NorthAmerica at the Dawn of History.Washington, DC: SmithsonianInstitution Press, 2001.

44. Smith, Marvin T. Archaeology ofAboriginal Culture Change in theInterior Southeast. Gainesville:University of Florida Press, 1987.

43. Hudson, Charles and CarmenChaves Tesser, editors. TheForgotten Centuries: Indians andEuropeans in the American South,1521-1704. Athens: University ofGeorgia Press, 1994.

Making of America. Franklin, NC:Portuguese-American HistoricalResearch Foundation, 2001.

46

55. Johnson, Patricia Givens. WilliamPreston and the Allegheny Patriots.Blacksburg, Virginia: WalpaPublishing, 1976. Pages 67-71.

54. King George's War (1744-1748). Itwas a spill over of the War ofAustrian Succession played out inthe American theater, and part of theongoing eighteenth century contestbetween the British and French forcontrol of North America to thedetriment of the indigenous people.

53. Wilson, Goodridge A., Jr. SmythCounty History and Traditions,(Heritage Books, Bowie, Maryland,1998, originally published 1932).Page 6.

52. Duncan, Barbara R., and Brett H.Riggs. Cherokee Heritage TrailsGuidebook. Chapel Hill: Universityof North Carolina Press, 2003.

51. Briceland, Alan V. Westward fromVirginia: The Exploration of theVirginia Frontier, 1650-1710.Charlottesville: The University ofVirginia Press, 1987. Seeparticularly Figure 11 on page 154which shows Needham's conj-ectured travels.

50. Wood, Abraham. "The Travels ofJames Needham and Gabriel Arthurthrough Virginia, North Carolina,and Beyond, 1673-1674," edited byR. P. Stephen Davis, Jr. SouthernIndian Studies 39: 31-55, 1990. Theaccount his agents' journey was in aletter from Abraham Wood to JohnRichard dated August 22, 1674.

Southerners: Indians of the EarlySouth." In John B. Boles, ed., ACompanion to the America South.Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2002.

60. Well known events in the Ohiocountry around this time includeGeorge Washington's defeat at FortNecessity in 1754, said to haveprecipitated the French and IndianWar, and Braddock's utterlydisastrous campaign against FortDuquesne in 1755.

59. Williams, Samuel C. "The Father ofSequoyah: Nathaniel Gist."Chronicles of Oklahoma, 15(1):3-20, 1937.

58. Johnson, Patricia Givens. GeneralAndrew Lewis of Roanoke andGreenbrier. Second revised edition.Blacksburg: Walpa Publishing, 1994.The cited quote comes from page46.

57. Preston, Thomas W. HistoricalSketches of the Holston Valleys.Kingsport, TN: Kingsport Press,1928. Preston (p. 34) states that thefirst land grant in the territory of thefuture state of Tennessee was madein April 1750 to Edmund Pendleton.

56. Hammett, Carole. Consolidatedelectronic edition of Dr. Walker'sJournal with all footnotes(republished on line atwww.tngenweb.org/tnland/squabble/walker.html). This on linepublication draws on the printversions of Walker's journal byWilliam Cabell Rives, Early Travelsin the Tennessee Country (WataugaPress Johnson City, Tennessee,1928, pp. 165-174) and LewisPreston Summers, Annals ofSouthwest Virginia, 1769-1800(Abingdon, Virginia, Self Published,1929, pp. 8-26) and includes thefootnotes of both these authorsalong with her own.

47

69. Fleenor, Lawrence J., and Dale

68. Durham, Walter T. BeforeTennessee: The Southwest Territory1790-1796. Johnson City: TheOvermountain Press, 1990. Much ofthis excellent work deals with thehorrors mutually inflicted by theIndians and the settlers.

67. Dixon, Max. The Wataugans.Johnson City, TN: OvermountainPress, 1989. Pages 44-51.

66. Faragher, John Mack. DanielBoone: The life and Legend of anAmerican Pioneer. New York:Henry Holt and Company, 1992.Pages 110-114.

65. Perdue, Theda. Native Carolinians:The Indians of North Carolina.Raleigh: North Carolina Departmentof Cultural Resources, 1985.

64. Del Papa, M. Eugene. "The RoyalProclamation of 1763: Its EffectUpon the Virginia LandCompanies." Virginia Magazine ofHistory and Biography, 83(4):406-411, 1975.

63. Ward, Harry M. Major GeneralAdam Stephen and the Cause ofAmerican Liberty. Charlottesville:University Press of Virginia 1989.Pages 73-74.

62. Anderson, Fred. The Crucible ofWar: The Seven Years' War and theFate of Empire in British NorthAmerica, 1754-1766. New York:Vintage Books, 2001. See especiallyChapter 47, pp. 457-471.

61. Williams, Samuel Cole. Dawn ofTennessee Valley and TennesseeHistory. Johnson City: The WataugaPress, 1937. Pages 171-183.

78. Gilbert, William H., Jr. Synoptic

77. Gilbert, William Harlen, Jr."Memorandum Concerning theCharacteristics of the LargerMixed-Blood Racial Islands of theEastern United States." SocialForces 21(4): 438-477, 1946.

76. There is no convenient label forthese groups. Here, I follow WayneWinkler (Redbone Chronicles, 1(2):81-16, 2007) in listing multiplegroup labels in an effort to displeasenone of them.

75. Paredes, J. Anthony, ed. Indians ofthe Southeastern United States in theLate 20th Century. Tuscaloosa:University of Alabama Press, 1992.

74. Williams, Walter L., editor.Southeastern Indians Since theRemoval Era. Athens: University ofGeorgia Press, 1979.

73. Oakley, Christopher Arris. Keepingthe Circle: American Indian Identityin Eastern North Carolina,1885-2004. Lincoln: University ofNebraska Press, 2005.

72. Rountree, Helen C. Pocahontas'sPeople: the Powhatan Indians ofVirginia Through Four Centuries.Norman: University of OklahomaPress, 1990. See especially pages187-278.

71. Woktela. Personal communication,2007. Woktela (David Hackett)maintains the website atwww.yuchi.org.

70. Marler, Don C. Redbones ofLouisiana. Woodville: DogwoodPress, 2003. Pages 66-67.

Carter. The Forts of the HolstonMilitia. Big Stone Gap: Lawrence J.Fleenor, 2004.

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85. Swanton, John R. Early History ofthe Creek Indians and TheirNeighbors. Washington: US Bureauof American Ethnology Bulletin,Number 73, 1922. States on page298 that a few Yuchi were "… stillliving in Tennessee.

84. Williams, Walter L., and ThomasFrench. "Bibliographic Essay." Pp.211-244 in Walter L. Williams, ed.Southeastern Indians Since theRemoval Era. Athens: University ofGeorgia Press, 1979.

83. Winkler, Wayne. "An Overview ofthe Mixed-Ethnic Groups of theSoutheastern United States."Redbone Chronicles, 1(2): 8-16,2007.

82. Berry, Brewton. Almost White. NewYork: Macmillan, 1963.

81. Beale, Calvin L." An Overview of thePhenomenon of Mixed Racial Isolatesin the Unites States." AmericanAnthropologist, 74: 704-710, 1972.

80. Beale, Calvin L. "American TriracialIsolates: Their Status and Pertinence toGenetic Research." EugenicsQuarterly, 4(4): 187-196, 1957.

79. Price, Edward T. Mixed-BloodPopulations of Eastern United Statesas to Origins, Localizations andPersistence. Ph.D. Thesis. Berkeley:University of California, 1950.

Survey of Data on the Survival ofIndian and Part-Indian Blood in theEastern United States by the Libraryof Congress, Publication 3974, 1947.Also published as "Surviving IndianGroups of the Eastern United States,"Annual Report of the Board ofRegents of the SmithsonianInstitution, 1948, pp. 407-438.

93. Fiske, Warren. "The Black & WhiteWorld of Walter Plecker." TheVirginian-Pilot, August 18, 2004.See also Helen Rountree'sPocahontas's People (Norman:

92. Plecker, W. A., M. D. "The NewVirginia Law To Preserve RacialIntegrity." Virginia Health Bulletin.Vol. XVI. March 1924. Extra No. 2.On line at www.eugenicsarchive-.org/html/eugenics/static/images-/436.html.

91. Northrop, Henry Davenport, D. D.Indian Horrors or Massacres by theRed Men: Being a thrillingnarrative of bloody wars withmerciless and revengeful savages.Augusta, Maine: J. F. Hill, 1899.

90. Winkler, Wayne. Walking Towardthe Sunset: the Melungeons ofAppalachia. Macon, Georgia:Mercer University Press, 2005.Bibliography on pages 297-304.

89. References on line atwww.melungeons.org.

88. Morrison, Nancy Sparks.Melungeon Printed Resources.Published on line atwww.melungeonhealth.org-/resources.html. No date, circa2002.

87. Nassau, Mike. Melungeons andOther Mestee Groups. Gainesville:Self published, 1994. Also publishedon line atwww.darkfiber.com/blackirish/mel-ungeons.html.

86. Ball, Donald B. A Bibliography ofTennessee Anthropology, IncludingCherokee, Chickasaw, and Melung-eon Studies. Knoxville, TennesseeAnthropological Association, 1977.

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96. Myerson, Abraham. "A CriticalReview of Mongrel Virginians: TheWin Tribe by A. H. Estabrook andIvan E. McDougle." Annals of the

95. Warner, Mark. Statement fromVirginia Governor Mark R. WarnerMay 2, 2002.

94. Plecker, Walter L. "Virginia'sAttempt to Adjust to the ColorProblem." American Journal ofPublic Health, 15(2): 111-115,1925. Available online atwww.pubmedcentral.nih.gov as:"Paper read at the joint session ofthe Public Health Administration andVital Statistics Sections of theAmerican Public Health Associationat its 53rd Annual Meeting, Detroit,Michigan, October 23, 1924.Reprinted in Attachment D, pp.303-313, in Don C. Marler,Redbones of Louisiana. Woodville:Dogwood Press, 2003.

University of Oklahoma Press,1990). Walter Plecker was a movingforce in the so-called Anglo-Saxonclubs of Virginia. These clubs had asone of their objectives thecelebration of the imagined racialpurity of the Anglo Saxon foundersof the Jamestown colony. In one ofthose grand ironies of history, recentDNA evidence shows that thepeople of the British Isles (thoseAnglo-Saxon founders) are athoroughly racially mixed populationof Vikings, Celts Iberians, Germans,etc. See Stephen Oppenheimer, TheOrigins of the British – A GeneticDetective Story: The surprisingroots of the English, Irish, Scottish,and Welsh (New York: Carroll andGraf, 2007).

102. Cavender, Anthony P. "TheMelungeons of Upper East Tennes-

101. Downloaded January 2008 from theUS Government Centers for DiseaseControl "WONDER" web site atwww.cdc.gov. WONDER = Wideranging Online Data for Epidemio-logical Research.

100. The listing of counties in Table 1 isnot intended to be a limitingdefinition of Holstonia. For example,most of Cocke County, Tennesseeprobably isn't in Holstonia, whilesmall portions of Grayson andWythe Counties in Virginia probablyare.

99. Waugaman, Sandra F., and DanielleMoretti-Langholtz. We're Still Here:Contemporary Virginia Indians TellTheir Stories, revised and updatededition. Richmond: PalariPublishing, 2006.

98. Vest, Jay Hansford C. "Native,Aboriginal, Indigenous: Who Countsas Indian in Post ApartheidVirginia." Proceedings of theMid-Atlantic Conference on theScholarship of Diversity. VirginiaTech, Blacksburg, Va. March 18-19,2004. This work also contains auseful discussion comparing Virginiaremnant Indian groups with Virginiatriracial groups.

97. Burke, Charles H. "Introduction."Pp. v-vii in Lindquist, G. E. E. TheRed Man in the United States: anintimate study of the social,economic and religious life of theAmerican Indian. New York:George H. Doran Co., 1923.

American Academy of Political andSocial Science, 126: 165-166, 1926.

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111. http://cita.chattanooga.org/TNNA-orgs.html.

110. Michie Company. "Legal Code ofthe State of Tennessee." On line athttp://michie.lexisnexis.com/tennes-see.

109. http://cita.chattanooga.org.

108. NAIA. "Legislation Creating theTennessee Commission of IndianAffairs." Website atwww.naiatn.org.

107. Word came that such legislation hasbeen introduced just as this articlewas in the final stages ofpreparation.

106. Nathan Vaughn. Personal commun-ication 2007.

105. White, John R. Opinion of theTennessee Attorney GeneralNullifying Governor Blanton'sRecognition of the Cherokee Peopleof the Etowah Cherokee Nation dueto lack of statutory authority.December 5, 1991. On line athttp://cita.chattanooga.org/etowah-cherokee1978.html.

104. Blanton, Ray. Proclamation of theGovernor of Tennessee Recognizingthe Cherokee People of the EtowahCherokee Nation. Math 25, 1978.On line at http://cita.chattanoo-ga.org/etowahcherokee1978.html.

103. Michie Company. "Legal Code ofthe State of Tennessee." On line athttp://michie.lexisnexis.com/tennes-see.

see. Persisting Social Identity.Persisting Social Identity." Tennes-see Anthropologist, VI(1): 27-36,1981.

117. Alther, Lisa. Kinfolks: Falling Off

116. McGowan, Kathleen. "Where DoWe Come From? The Melungeons,who count Elvis Presley andAbraham Lincoln among their kin,turn to DNA genealogy to resolve along-standing identity crisis."Discover, 24(5): 58-63, 2003.

115. Anonymous. "Sharing my Heritage:Oral Traditions of an East TennesseeAmerican Indian." Excerpt from anemail message to MelindaStrongHeartWoman from anunidentified cousin. Posted byMelinda StrongHeartWoman to theGoogle group Wolves of ManyNations, Monday 6, August 2007.

114. Mayor, Adrienne. Fossil Legends ofthe First Americans. Princeton, NJ:Princeton University Press, 2005.

113. Staff. "Today, December 1, 2007,the Tennessee Commission of IndianAffairs is meeting in Memphis forwhat is expected by most to be oneof the most controversial meetingsyet." On line athttp://www.tanasijournal.com.

112. Wood, Karenne, editor. TheVirginia Indian Heritage Trail.Richmond: Virginia Foundation forthe Humanities and Public Policy,2007. To Wood's credit, one of thetwenty "interpretive sites" catalogedin this little book is the Museum ofthe Middle Appalachians in Saltville.Her description of the museum tellsthat it has locally collected shellgorgets. Such gorgets were notdescribed in Virginia archeologicalcircles until very recently. Wood,incidentally, is a former chair of theVirginia Council of Indians.

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119. Grounds, Richard A. "The YuchiCommunity and the Human GenomeDiversity Project: Historic andContemporary Ironies." CulturalSurvival Quarterly. July 31, 1996,issue 20.2. On line atwww.cs.org/publications.

118. Robinson, W. Stitt. The SouthernColonial Frontier, 1607-1763.Albuquerque: University of NewMexico Press, 1979. The cited mapis on page 77.

the Family Tree. New York:Arcade, 2007. Pages 230-236.

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