A Kentucky Melungeon Timeline

Melungeon Timeline

1526. Mid-July. Lucas Vazquez de Ayllon. San Miguel de Guadalupe. "History records the first slave revolt in 1526 at de Ayllon's settlement San Miguel de Guadalupe somewhere in the vicinity of Winyah Bay and the Pedee River."(most likely located in the Winyah Bay area of present-day South Carolina). There are several versions of just exactly who and how many colonists accompanied de Ayllon.  Some report there were 500 men, women and children and 100 slaves while others report between 500 and 600 colonists, and while the extent of the revolt has not been recorded it is known that of the  Spaniards and slaves with de Ayllon only 150 returned,  and there indeed was a slave revolt.” A Spanish colonizer Lucas Vasquez de Ayllon, founded, in the summer of 1526, a community whose probable location was at or near the mouth of the Pedee River in what is now South Carolina. The settlement consisted of about five hundred Spaniards and one hundred Negro slaves. founded by Spanish explorer Lucas Vásquez de Ayllón in 1526. The ill-fated colony was almost immediately disrupted by a fight over leadership, during which the slaves revolted and fled the colony. 1526. Trouble soon beset it. Illness caused numerous deaths, carrying off in October, Ayllon himself. Internal dissension arose, and the Indians grew increasingly suspicious and hostile. Finally, probably in November, several of the slaves rebelled and fled to the Indians. The next month what was left of the adventurers, some one hundred and fifty souls, returned to Haiti, leaving the rebel Negroes with their Indian friends. some remained behind to mix with the native tribes, perhaps captured, perhaps by choice. to seek refuge among local Native Americans. De'Ayllón and many of the colonists died shortly afterwards of an epidemic, and the colony was abandoned, leaving the escaped slaves behind on North American soil. When there was a crisis over leadership, the colony fell into disarray. In the midst of this crisis, a slave revolt further ripped the settlement apart. With the colony in shambles, many of the African slaves fled to live among the nearby native people. According to De Soto, these refugees must have lived among the Cofitachiqui and taught them the craftwork of the Europeans. 1526. It was to last only three months of winter before being abandoned in early 1527. 1526. Mid-July. By mid-July 1526, Ayllón was ready to establish a colony with 600 settlers and 100 horses. He lost one of his three ships at a river he named the Jordan, probably the Santee.

1526. September 29. They landed in Winyah Bay, near present day Georgetown, South Carolina, on September 29 (theFeast of Archangels), and Francisco de Chicora abandoned him here.

1526. October 8. They then proceeded '40 or 45 leagues', partly overland and partly by boat, visiting the king of Duahe en route as related by Peter Martyr, and finally arrived at another river, the Gualdape, where they built San Miguel de Gualdape on October 8. The location of this colony has been disputed over a wide area, since it is never related in which direction from the Jordan (Santee) they travelled. Some have asserted that he went north to the Chesapeake; Francisco Fernández de Écija, chief pilot of Spaniards searching the Chesapeake Bay for English activities in 1609, claimed that Ayllón in 1526 had landed on the James somewhere near Jamestown. Ecija also claimed the natives at the Santee had told him Daxe (Duahe) was a town 4 days to the north. Swanton, on the other hand, suggested Ayllón may have gone '45 leagues' to the southwest, that the Gualdape was in fact the Savannah River in Georgia, and that his interactions there had been with the Guale tribe. More recent scholars concur that it was probably at or near present-day Georgia's Sapelo Island and consider attempts to locate the San Miguel settlement (Tierra de Ayllón) any farther to the north to be unsubstantiated conjecture. This colony was a failure and Ayllón himself died, purportedly in the arms of a Dominican friar. Ayllón's rough-hewn town withstood only about a total of three months, enduring a severe winter, scarcity of supplies, hunger, disease, and troubles with the local natives. 1526, a large expedition left the Spanish settlement of Santo Domingo on the island of Hispanola, and landed in coastal South Carolina along the Pee Dee River. Within a short time, however, the few Spaniards not felled by disease and infighting, sailed back to Santo Domingo leaving the enslaved Africans they had brought with them. These had no problem living, and eventually blending in, with the Native Americans. Inspired by these stories, Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón led 600 people to establish a colony that would exploit the supposed riches of Datha. At Winyah Bay, one of his ships were wrecked and Chicora and other Indians escaped from the Spanish. Ayllon established a settlement near Sapelo Sound in present day Georgia, but he died and the colony was abandoned after three months, the 150 survivors returning to the Caribbean. Ayllón's colony was probably the source of items of European manufacture later discovered by De Soto in Cofitachequi.

1527. Spring. Francis Gomez returned the 150 survivors to Hispaniola on two of the vessels, one of which sank, leaving only one ship of the three to return. first group of African's were brought by Ayllón to erect the settlement. The employment of African slaves in the 1526 colony is the first instance of African slave labor used by Spaniards on the North American continent. Upon political disputes within the settlers, there was an uprising among the slaves, who fled to the interior and presumably settled with the native people of North America. This incident is the first documented slave rebellion in North America.

1540. De Soto Kidnaps The Lady of Cofitachiqui. The Lady of Cofitachiqui a gracious and friendly Indian's girl, niece of the chieftainess of Cofitachiqui, a town of the Muskogee Indians, on the Savannah River, in what is now Georgia. When De Soto visited this place in 1540, he was welcomed by the “Lady of Cofitachiqui” on behalf of her aunt, and she presented him with a valuable string of pearls. This friendship was ill returned by De Soto DE SOTO, who carried her away as a hostage to protect his party from attacks of Indians under her influence. After two weeks of captivity the "Lady" managed to escape in the mountainous region of northeast Georgia, and in leaving carried away a box of pearls De Soto had seized, much to the Spaniard's chagrin. 1540. DeSoto & Cofitachiqui. Matters of the Heart. As she approached the bank of the river, their eyes met for the first time. She, the Queen of Cofitachiqui, was borne on a royal vessel, seated upon pillows and accompanied in other canoes by her beloved men. He, a slave of Andre de Vasconcelos, was a follower of Hernando de Soto and the expedition to explore and exploit the natural resources of the American Southeast. The queen "was a young girl of fine bearing...and she spoke to the governor quite gracefully and at her ease" (Bourne, 1904, p. 100). She placed pearls upon the neck of de Soto and said, "With sincerest and purest goodwill, I tender you my person, my lands, my people, and make you these small gifts" (Jameson, 1907, p.172). Without a doubt, the Queen understood the import of de Soto's coming. When neighboring villagers refused to show him to her village, he had them burned alive. When a native warrior challenged de Soto in the traditional way to a manly duel of skill, de Soto set his dogs upon him and had him torn to pieces. However, as much as de Soto had attracted the Lady's attention...her eyes continued to fall upon the African slave. There is little doubt that this was not the first time that she had encountered an African, but this one was somehow different. Over the next couple of days, it was an attraction she could not resist. It was one of those chance encounters that is the stuff of which romance novels are made. On the third day, the Queen disappeared; de Soto sent his guards to find her but she was not to be found (Bourne, 1904, p. 110). Taking advantage of her absence, De Soto entered one of the ancient temple mounds that were scattered about the town of TALEMICO Talemico, the religious and political center of the people of Cofitachiqui. The temple mound was one hundred feet long and forty feet wide with massive doors. As he entered through the doors, he encountered paired rows of massive wooden statues with diamond-shaped heads bearing first batons, then broadswords, and then bows and arrows (Hudson, 1976, p. 111). Like the ancient pyramids of Egypt, these temple mounds contained statues of notable persons of antiquity and chests filled with the remains of the elders. Scattered about the temples were bundles of fur, breastplates, and weapons -- tools for the next life -- covered with pearls, colored leather, and "something green like an emerald" (Bourne, p. 100).De Soto and his men plundered the ancient temple. Among the booty were items of a European make, “Biscayan axes or iron and rosaries with their crosses” (Bourne, 1904, p. 100) De Soto and his men determined that these materials were the remnants of an earlier expedition led by Lucas Vazquez de Ayllon. He and his men had settled on the coast of the Carolinas near on the Peedee River in 1526. African slaves were members of Ayllon's colony; when there was a crisis over leadership, the colony fell into disarray. In this crisis, there was a slave revolt. When the colony crumbled, many of the African slaves fled to live among the nearby Native Americans (Wright, 1902, pp. 217-228). According to de Soto, the items found in the temple bore the marks of European craftsmanship; these refugees must have lived among the Cofitachiqui and taught them the ways of the Europeans (Bourne, p. 101). When the Queen of Cofitachiqui finally returned from her absence, de Soto seized her and questioned her as to where there was more wealth to be gained. She said that there were riches further inland. When de Soto and his men set about to find this land, they carried with them the "'woman chief of Cofitachiqui" (Bourne, 1904, p. 105). After seven days of travel, the party traversed lofty ridges and arrived at the "province of Chalaque" near the Oconnaluftee river in western North Carolina (Jameson, 1907, p. 176). After staying a few days in Xualla, the party set out for Guaxule where "there were more indications that there were gold mines" (Bourne, p. 104). As they were on their journey, the Lady of Cofitachiqui "left the road, with the excuse of going in the thicket, where, deceiving them, she so concealed herself that for all their search she could not be found." De Soto, frustrated in his quest to find her, moved on to Guaxule (Jameson, 1907, p. 176). It seems that the Lady had arranged a rendezvous with others in de Soto's party. These included an “Indian slave boy from Cuba,” a “slave belonging to Don Carlos, a Berber, well versed in Spanish,' and “Gomez, a negro belonging to Vasco Goncalvez who spoke good Spanish” (Bourne, 1904, p. 104). A short time later, Alimamos, a horseman of de Soto who "got lost," somehow wandered upon the refugee slaves. He "labored with the slaves to make leave of their evil designs" but only two of the refugees returned to de Soto. When Alimamos arrived back at the camp with the refugees who had decided to return, "the Governor wished to hang them" (Jameson, p. 177). However, the horseman also made another report. He stated that “The Cacica remained in Xualla, with a slave of Andre de Vasconcelas, who would not come with him (Alimamos), and that it was very sure that they lived together as man and wife, and were to go together to Cutafichiqui' (Jameson, p. 177). In an effort that would be repeated countless times over the next three hundred years, refugee slaves who fled from their masters to the sanctuary of neighboring Native Americans were thus given shelter and protection. Equally as important to our collective history, the "queen of Cofitichiqui" and the "slave of Andre de Vasconcelas" returned to their "village of the dogwoods" on the banks of the Savannah River. It would be in Silver Bluff, South Carolina where they would begin their life together as "Aframerindians" (Porter, 1933, p. 321). Cofitachequi was a paramount chiefdom founded about 1300 AD and encountered by the Hernando de Sotoexpedition in South Carolina in April 1540. Cofitachequi was later visited by Juan Pardo during his two expeditions (1566-1568) and by Henry Woodward in 1670. Cofitachequi ceased to exist as a political entity prior to 1701. The town and ceremonial center of Cofitachequi was located near the present-day city of Camden, South Carolina. Cofitachequi ruled a large number of towns in an area of several thousand square miles in the northeastern part of South Carolina. It was the easternmost extension of the Mississippian culture that extended over much of the southern part of the future United States. Cofitachequi may have come to the attention of the Spanish as early as 1521 when two Spanish slave ships explored the South Carolina coast. At present day Winyah Bay, near the city of Georgetown, they captured about sixty Indians who said they were subjects of a ruler called Datha or Duhare. Datha may have been the ruler of Cofitachequi, some 90 miles inland from Georgetown. One of the captives, called Francisco Chicora, learned Spanish and visited Spain. He described Datha to Peter Martyr as "white", tall, carried on the shoulders of his subjects, and ruling a large area of towns featuring earthen mounds upon which religious ceremonies were held. Large quantities of pearls and jewels, Chicora said, could be found at Xapira, a town or chiefdom near Datha.

1550s. The first use of the term "Maroons" being used in the American Hemisphere was by the Spanish in Jamaica. The Spanish brought swine and African slaves to Jamaica and began to export swine products from the island. By the mid 16th century, 80,000 swine were killed annually on Ashanti, who came to be known as "Maroons" a word probably derived from the Spanish word, mareno, meaning porker." (Harcourt-Smith, p. 22) The Spanish lost control of the Maroons on Jamaica. They became virtually free men. "Their occupation bred in them an almost fanatical love of liberty, and martial powers of a singular kind. They came to know every twisting forest track every pool where the water was sweet, every fern-hung cave whence secret rivers gushed. . .Above all; they knew every glade where the wild pig rooted. ." (Harcourt-Smith, p. 22)

1583. The Roanoke Colony on Roanoke Island in Dare County, present-day North Carolina, United States, was a late 16th-century attempt by Queen Elizabeth I to establish a permanent English settlement. The enterprise was financed and organized originally bySir Humphrey Gilbert, who drowned in 1583 during an aborted attempt to colonize St. John's, Newfoundland. Sir Humphrey Gilbert's half brother Sir Walter Raleigh later gained his brother's charter from Queen Elizabeth I and subsequently executed the details of the charter through his delegates Ralph Lane and Richard Grenville, Raleigh's distant cousin.The final group of colonists disappeared during the Anglo-Spanish War, three years after the last shipment of supplies fromEngland. Their disappearance gave rise to the nickname "the Lost Colony". To this day there has been no conclusive evidence as to what happened to the colonists. The earliest Melungeon ancestors were white northern Europeans, Bantu Africans and North American Indians. Among the northern Europeans, the Melungeon ancestors include English, Scot, Irish, Welsh, Dutch, and German parents. North American Indian ancestors include people from the tribes of Powhatan, Mattaponi, Monie, Nansemond, Rappahanock, Pamunkey, Chickahominie, Cherokee (Buffalo Ridge) and Choctaw.

1618-1620. European conquest of interior Angola began when Portugal attacked the Mbundu kingdom of Ndongo in the modern Malange district of Angola in a military campaign lasting from 1618-1620. At the time, England and its American colonies had no direct trade in African slaves. Nevertheless, during Portugal's war on Ndongo, Africans began appearing in British Virginia aboard Dutch and English privateers, which specialized in robbing Portuguese merchant-slavers leaving the Angolan port of Luanda.

1619. The very first black ancestors of Melungeons appeared in tidewater Virginia, not in the 18th century, but in 1619. Melungeons are not the offspring of white southern plantation owners and helpless black slaves. Most of the African ancestors of Melungeons were never chattel slaves. They were frequently black men freed from indentured servitude just like many white servants of the 17th century. Less often, African ancestors of the Melungeons either purchased their freedom from slavery or were freed upon the deaths of their masters. The black patriarchs of the Melungeons were commonly free African-American men who married white women in Virginia and other southern colonies, often before 1700. Paul Heinegg in his revealing book, "Free African Americans in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Maryland and Delaware" provides strong evidence that less than one percent of all free Africans were born of white slave-owners. Understanding the status of the African-American ancestors of Melungeons and the era, in which they came to America, is critical to understanding their history and the origin of the name "Melungeon". Now we have the DNA study, which tends to support Heinegg's work, since it identifies African ancestry in the male lines and European in the female. There is almost no American Indian genetic connection. Why does anyone even fuss about this? If there were Africans in Melungeon family trees generations ago, and the families are now "white," who cares? People do. We are not in Brazil where "race" is constructed differently. We are still harnessed to HYPODESCENT hypodescent (the one drop rule) of "race." We still live in a highly racist society, and Melungeons live in conservative Appalachian areas. Genetic evidence shows that the families historically called Melungeons are the offspring of sub-Saharan African men and white women of northern or central European origin. "tri-racial isolate" groups of theSoutheastern United States; historically, Melungeons were associated with the Tri-racialdescribes populations thought to be of mixed European, African and Native American ancestry. Cumberland Gap area of central Appalachia, which includes portions of East Tennessee, Southwest Virginia, and eastern Kentucky.

1620s From the 1620s, in southern British colonies like Virginia, white northern Europeans intermarried with Indians. They also intermarried with Africans who began entering the American colonies as early as 1619. Melungeons originate from these red, white and black peoples in this period of American history.

1655-1740. When the English took Jamaica from Spain in 1655, they inherited the problem of the Maroons. Until 1740, the Maroons were involved in slave revolts against the British. Just like the Maroons in North America, the Jamaican Maroons raided the Jamaican plantation houses by night whenever they had need of supplies, or whenever British encroachments upon their hunting grounds grew unbearable. The Maroons of Jamaica formed the first Free Negro society in the New World.

1660. They began forming identifiable separate mixed communities when the first anti-African laws started restricting some of their freedoms by 1660. Until recently, not much has been known about the Melungeons' African ancestors. New evidence now indicates that the black ancestors of Melungeons were peoples of Kimbundu and Kikongo-speaking Angola and historic Kongo along Africa's lower west coast. The nation of Mbundu in Angola yielded more black ancestors for Melungeons than any other African people.

1662. According to the principle of partus sequitur ventrem, which Virginia incorporated into law in 1662, children were assigned the social status of their mother, regardless of their father's ethnicity or citizenship. This meant that the children of African slave mothers were born into slavery. But it also meant that the children of white women, even if fathered by enslaved African men, were born free. The free descendants of such unions formed many of the oldest free families of color. Estes and her fellow researchers theorize that the various Melungeon lines may have sprung from the unions of black and white indentured servants living in Virginia in the mid-1600s, before slavery.They conclude that as laws were put in place to penalize the mixing of races, the various family groups could only intermarry with each other, even migrating together from Virginia through the Carolinas before settling primarily in the mountains of East Tennessee.Claims of Portuguese ancestry likely were a ruse they used in order to remain free and retain other privileges that came with being considered white, according to the study's authors.

1676. Bacon's Rebellion. However, at times Blacks joined whites in exploiting the indigenous peoples. For example, Bacon’s Rebellion, the uprising of Black and white poor in 1676 in Virginia and Maryland, was actually sparked by the planters refusal to allow them to expand into Native American lands. And the Buffalo Soldiers, Black US cavalrymen who patrolled the far West after the Civil War, many of partial Native American ancestry, at various times protected or fought against the indigenous peoples as their white commanders directed.

1676-1776. Most black slaves were imported into Virginia in the 100 year period between 1676 and 1776, though they were present as early as 1619. Slaves began to outnumber the white indentured servant workforce in the late 1600s. The majority were brought into the colony from Africa and the Caribbean. In particular, the African regions of the Bight of Biafra (modern Nigeria), Senegambia (modern Senegal and Gambia), West Central Africa (modern Angola and Congo), and the Gold Coast (modern Ghana) were hotspots for Virginia slave traders. Smaller numbers came from theWindward Coast (modern Ivory Coast), Sierra Leone, Bight of Benin (modern Togo and Benin), and Southeast Africa (modern Madagascar and Mozambique) according to surviving shipping registers. There was a strong Muslim presence in Senegambia during the period of the slave trade. Many Tidewater Virginia slaves must have been influenced by Islam before their arrival in America. Slaves were usually renamed once they arrived in English-speaking colonies. They were given English Christian names to replace names from their native languages (some of which were Muslim names like Mohammad).

The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database Internet site contains references to 35,000 slave voyages, including over 67,000 Africans aboard slave ships, using first name, age, gender, origin, and place of embarkation. The database documents the slave trade between Africa, Europe, Brazil, the Caribbean, and what is now the United States. They settled in Virginia one year before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. They sparked a major conflict between the Engllish Crown and American colonies one hundred and fifty years before the American Revolution. They lived free in the South nearly two hundred and forty years before the American Civil War.. Yet the African ancestors of the American Melungeons have remained elusive ghosts for the past four centuries; the missing characters in the developing saga of America's largest mixed community. Now finally, though stridently denied by some descendants and misunderstood by others, the African fathers and mothers of Melungia are beginning to emerge from the dim pages of the past to take their rightful places of honor in American history.

One misconception over Melungeon origins comes from confusion over the status of these African-Americans who, along with whites and Indians, gave birth to this mixed community. Modern scholars mistakenly assume that the African heritage of Melungeons derives from the offspring of white plantation owners and black female chattel slaves in the years 1780 to 1820. Wrong on two counts. In fact: 1. The very first black ancestors of Melungeons appeared in tidewater Virginia, not in the 18th century, but in 1619. 2. Not one single Melungeon family can be traced to a white plantation owner and his black female slave. The vast majority of the African ancestors of Melungia were freeborn for more than three hundred years.

1715. Since there was not a clear distinction between slavery and servitude at the time, he said, "biracial camaraderie" often resulted in children. The idea that blacks were property did not harden until around 1715 with the rise of the tobacco economy, by which time there was a small but growing population of free families of color.

1754. March 12. On March 12, 1754 John Scott, a "free Negro" of Berkely County, South Carolina filed an affidavit notifying authorities in Orange County, North Carolina that: "Joseph Deevit, Wm. Deevit, and Zachariah Martin entered by force the house of his daughter, Amy Hawley, and carried her off by force with her six children, and he thinks they are taking them north to sell as slaves." These three cases among many illustrate how that by 1750, free blacks, mulattos and mixed Melungeons lived in constant danger of illegal abduction and loss of liberty during the long night of American slavery. A single drop of African blood could land a free Melungeon in court, fighting false charges that he or she was a runaway slave. Travel abroad was even riskier than remaining in their vulnerable communities. Melungeons quickly learned to move in large groups from county to county to escape opportunistic man-stealers.

1778. April 10. CARRIED AWAY IN THE NIGHT. On April 10, 1778, the following advertisement was placed in the North Carolina Gazette by Johnson Driggers, a desperate Melungeon father seeking his abducted children. April 4. 1778. "On Saturday night, April the 4th, broke into the house of the subscriber at the head of Green's Creek, where I had some small property under the care of Ann Driggers, a free Negro woman, two men in disguise, with marks on their faces and clubs in their hands, beat and wounded her terribly and carried away four of her children, three girls and a boy, the biggest of said girls got off in the dark and made her escape, one of the girls name is Becca, and other is Charita, the boy is named Shadrack..."This early newspaper notice describes a common nightmare inflicted on free blacks and mixed Melungeons in the 18th and 19th centuries. The lucrative American slave market prompted man-stealers to prey on African and mixed African communities. Anyone with the slightest amount of African blood might be kidnapped in the middle of the night regardless of their free status.

1790. VIRGINIA. In 1790, counties with more than 10,000 slaves were Amelia and Caroline. Counties with more than 7500 slaves were Culpeper and Hanover. Counties with more than 5000 slaves were: Albemarle, Amherst, Brunswick, Chesterfield, Dinwiddie, Essex, Fauquier, Gloucester, Halifax, Henrico, King and Queen, King William, Norfolk, Southampton, Spotsylvania, and Sussex. However, the original tidewater colonies like Virginia, Maryland, Delaware and the Carolinas knew otherwise. Virginia grandfathers from the colonial era could remember the Negro ancestors of the Melungeons even though the issue of black and white marriage had never scandalized them as it did their grandchildren. For the Stoney Creek church, the possibility of sexual attraction between the children of white members and the children of Melungeon members represented a danger. When Stoney Creek's Melungeons members began to move away into Kyle's Ford, Tennessee, the white church members of Virginia breathed a sigh of relief. From time to time, these Melungeons would return to visit Stoney Creek, a 40-mile trip that required a one-night stopover. Sister "Sookie" came under suspicion from other white church members for allegedly "harboring them Melungeons" overnight.

1715. South Carolina. Many Cherokee were employed as runaway slave catchers. It was the Cherokee who came to be the most cultivated of Native Indian tribes by the South Carolina colonial government in the early 18th Century. William S. Willis, in an article, "Divide and Rule: Red, white, and Black in the Southeast", provides evidence which strongly supports the theory of Melungeon origin: i.e. they were a mixture of Negro, Indian and White people. In his well-documented scholarly paper, Willis shows that in the early 18th Century, the colonial governors and other whites in South Carolina consciously sought to make the Indians and Negroes hate and fear each other. The reason was simple. Whites obviously felt outnumbered and physically threatened by a coalition of Indians and Negro slaves it the colony. Runaway slaves were finding refuge with the Indians. To protect the whites from an attack from a combined group Indians and runaway slaves, a policy of dividing the two groups was established by 1715. Many Cherokee were employed as runaway slave catchers. It was the Cherokee who came to be the most cultivated of Native Indian tribes by the South Carolina colonial government in the early 18th Century.

1754. It is not far from here {somewhere in the vicinity of Winyah Bay and the Pedee River.} that in 1754 there were reported to be 50 families a 'mixt crew' that were listed as "not Indians". Whoever these people were there is very strong evidence they were the people who would later be called Redbones, Lumbees, Melungeons etc. It is *not* speculation, but indeed fact, that the families named in the court records in 1874 as Melungeons were living on this land in 1754.

1754. There may have been several of these slaves left behind, there may have been a dozen or they might just as likely been the majority of them left to live among these South Carolina tribes in which case many of these Native tribes would be carrying the DNA of these early settlers for two hundred years before they mixed with the Portuguese Adventurers found living on Drowning Creek in 1754.

While among the Apalachee Indians in Florida, a captured boy called Perico told him of a province named "Yupaha" ruled by a woman and rich in gold. De Soto decided to strike out for Yupaha—which turned out to be an alternative name of Cofitachequi. In the Spring of 1540, de Soto and his army traveled north through central Georgia to the Oconee River town of Colfaqui in present day Greene County, Georgia, in the chiefdom of Ocute. The people of Calfaqui were aware of Cofitachequi but did not know its exact location. De Soto impressed 700 Indians from Colfaqui and struck off eastward into a large uninhabited wilderness separating the chiefdoms of Ocute and Cofitachequi. He reached Coafitachequi only after two weeks of hard travel and near starvation. De Soto was met by a woman the chroniclers call the Lady of Cofitachequi who was carried from the town to the river's edge on a litter that was covered with a delicate white cloth. They considered her the "chieftainness" of the villages.[8] After spending several weeks in the village, the Spaniards took the "Lady" as a captive and hostage and headed to the next chiefdom to the northwest, Joara. She eventually escaped. The Spaniards found no gold in Cofitachequi, nor anywhere in its vicinity.

1566-1568. Juan Pardo with a force of 125 Spaniards visited Cofitachequi (which he also called Canosi) on two expeditions between 1566 and 1568.

1627-1628. Juan de Torres led 10 Spanish soldiers and 60 Indian allies to Cofitachequi on two expeditions in 1627-1628. He was "well entertained by the chief who is highly respected by the rest of the chiefs, who all obey him and acknowledge vassalage to him."

1670. In 1670, an Englishman, Henry Woodward, journeyed inland from Charlestown, South Carolina to Cofitachequi. He called the chief "the emperor" and said the town counted 1,000 bowmen.

1670-1672. The "emperor" of Cofitachequi visited Charleston in 1670 and 1672. Sometime after that, Cofitachequi was abandoned. By 1701, whenJohn Lawson passed through, the area of Cofitachequi was inhabited only by small settlements of Congaree Indians

1300AD 9after). Cofitachequi was typical of several Mississippian paramount chiefdoms in the American south at the time of de Soto: a large town at the center of the chiefdom, often containing large ceremonial mounds and temples, controlled a large number of smaller settlements with the influence of the center extending out many miles. The chiefdoms were often bordered by a large uninhabited area as a buffer zone between warring chiefdoms. The basis of the economy was maize agriculture. Cofitachequi was perhaps the easternmost of the Mississippian chiefdoms and one of the latest, founded after 1300 A.D The people of Cofitachequi are believed by most scholars to have spoken a Muskogean language; if correct, the chiefdom of Cofitachequi was the easternmost extent of this language family. However, the area of influence of Cofitachequi probably also included Siouan (Catawba) and Iroquoian (Cherokee) speakers. Although Cofitachequi's fame was widespread, its area of political control and influence is uncertain. Most likely, Cofitachequi politically controlled a cluster of towns around present-day Camden, an 80 to 100 mile (130–160km) stretch of the Wateree River and vicinity in South Carolina, and a similar portion of the Pee Dee River. More distant towns in the piedmont of North Carolina and the coastal plains of South Carolina may have paid tribute to Cofitachequi,but retained a measure of freedom. The scholar Charles Hudson listed more than 30 towns that might have been under the control of Cofitachequi, indicating a population of the chiefdom of several tens of thousands of people. The chiefdom of Cofitachequi may have been in decline when visited by de Soto in 1540 and Pardo in 1566, much of the decline occasioned by the brutal passage of de Soto and his army. De Soto found little maize in the town to feed his soldiers and saw evidence that an epidemic, possibly European in origin, had wiped out the population of several settlements. Nevertheless, the fame and some of the influence of Cofitachequi endured another 100 years until the time of Woodward's visit. Why Cofitachequi disappeared, replaced by smaller and simpler communities of Indians, is unknown although the ravages of European diseases was probably a factor.

1701. The Muskogean speaking inhabitants of Cofitachequi were probably absorbed by the Siouan people who were inhabiting the area in 1701 when Lawson visited

1784. March. Kentucky. In March 1784, Joseph Hanks sold his property via a mortgage and moved his wife, 8 children, and young granddaughter Nancy to Kentucky.The family lived on land along Pottinger's Creek, in a settlement called Rolling Fork in Nelson County, Kentucky, until patriarch Joseph's death in 1793. Nancy's grandmother, also named Nancy but generally called Ann, decided to return to her homeland, old Farnham parish in Virginia. At that time, Nancy went to live with her mother, now Lucy Hanks Sparrow. having married Henry Sparrow in Harrodsburg, Kentucky two or three years earlier.Nancy Hanks Lincoln was born to Lucy Hanks in what was at that time part of Hampshire County, Virginia. Today, the same location is in Antioch in Mineral County, West Virginia. Years after her birth, Abraham Lincoln's law partner William Herndon reported that Lincoln told him his maternal grandfather was "a well-bred Virginia farmer or planter.” According to William E. Barton in the "Life of Abraham Lincoln" and Michael Burkhimer in "100 Essential Lincoln Books", Nancy was most likely born illegitimate due to the fact that Hanks' family created stories in order to lead Abraham to believe he was a legitimate member of the Sparrow family. It is believed that Nancy Hanks Lincoln's grandparents were Ann and Joseph Hanks and that they raised her from infancy until her grandfather died when she was about 9 years old. At the time of Nancy's birth, Joseph and his wife and children were all living on 108 acres near Patterson Creek in then-Hampshire County, Virginia. Abraham Lincoln. Indeed, anyone who looks at photographs of Abraham Lincoln is no doubt struck by his distinctive Semitic features: the thick, coarse black hair, the dark skin, dark eyes, prominent nose, and equally prominent cheekbones. Abraham Lincoln's paternal cousin Mordecai Lincoln, a photo is a history of Jonesborough, Tennesse book. Mordecai has many of Abraham Lincoln's features, which suggests his father may have been Melungeon. ”My parents were both born in Virginia, of undistinguished families-second families, perhaps I should say…If any personal description of me is thought desirable, it may be said, I am, in height, six feet, four inches, nearly; lean in flesh, weighing, on an average, one hundred and eighty pounds; dark complexion with coarse black hair, and grey eyes — no other marks or brands recollected. Yours very truly, A. Lincoln.” Abraham Lincoln’s mother, Nancy Hanks (who is buried in Hoosier soil), has long been said to have been a member of the Melungeon community of Appalachian Tennessee and Kentucky. He inherited a dark complexion, coarse, black hair, and grey eyes all of which is consistent with the physical features of the Melungeons. Abraham also inherited color blindness and once told his mother that he could not see things like other people. As Poet Walt Whitman wrote, “I see very plainly Abraham Lincoln’s dark brown face, with the deep cut lines, the eyes always to me, with a deep latent sadness in the expression. …None of the artists or pictures have caught the deep though subtle and indirect expression of this man’s face.” Honest Abe, Father Abraham, The Great Emancipator, The Railsplitter, is related to The King of Rock-N-Roll, Elvis Presley. Yes, arguably the two most famous Melungeons are kin Elvis Presley. Melungeon people in the hills of southwestern Virginia. But many historians believe that Elvis Presley was a Melungeon who did indeed have Amerind blood — Cherokee to be exact. The King’s great-great-great-grandmother was Morning Dove White, a Cherokee Indian from Tennessee. That seems to be the bridge to Presley’s Melungeon heritage.

1790s. By the late 18th century, a Maroon revolt was put down and many of them were transported to Nova Scotia and to Sierra Leone. But outside of this revolt, the Maroons usually aided the British in putting down other Slave revolts from 1745 until 1865.