Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
CHAPTER 10
IN 1587, a group of 115 English settlers-men, women and children-sailed from Plymouth to
set up the first colony in the New World, on Roanoke Island off what is now North Caro-
lina. Shortly after they arrived, a child named Virginia Dare was born and thus became the
first white persontoarrive inAmerica headfirst. Twoyears later,asecond expedition set off
from England to see how the settlers were getting on and to bring them their mail and tell
them that the repairman from British Telecom had finally shown up and that sort of thing.
But when the relief party arrived, they found the settlement deserted. There was no message
of where the settlers had gone, nor any sign of a struggle, but just one word mysteriously
scratched on a wall: “Croatoan.” This was the name of a nearby island where the Indians
were known to be friendly, but a trip to the island showed that the settlers had never arrived
there.Sowheredidtheygo?DidtheyleavevoluntarilyorweretheyspiritedoffbyIndians?
This has long been one of the great mysteries of the Colonial period.
I bring this up here because one theory is that the settlers pushed inland, up into the hills of
Appalachia, and settled there. No one knows why they might have done this, but fifty years
later, when European explorers arrived in Tennessee, the Cherokee Indians told them that
there was a group of pale people living in the hills already, people who wore clothes and
hadlongbeards.Thesepeople,accordingtoacontemporaryaccount,“hadabellwhichthey
rang before they ate their meals and had a strange habit of bowing their heads and saying
something in a low voice before they ate.”
No one ever found this mysterious community. But in a remote and neglected corner of the
Appalachians,highupintheClinchMountainsabovethetownofSneedvilleinnortheastern
Tennessee, there still live some curious people called Melungeons who have been there for
as long as anyone can remember. The Melungeons (no one knows where the name comes
from) have most of the characteristics of Europeans-blue eyes, fair hair, lanky build-but a
dark, almost Negroid skin coloring that is distinctly non-European. They have English fam-
ily names—Bro-gan, Collins, Mullins-but no one, including the Melungeons themselves,
has any idea of where they come from or what their early history might have been. They are
as much of a mystery as the lost settlers of Roanoke Island. Indeed, it has been suggested
that they may be the lost settlers of Roanoke.
Peter Dunn, a colleague at the Independent in London, put me onto the Melungeon story
whenheheardthatIwasgoingtothatpartoftheworld,andkindlydugoutanarticlehehad
done for the Sunday Times Magazine some years before. This was illustrated with remark-
able photographs of Melungeons. It is impossible to describe them except to say that they
