So-called American Ancient "Tri-Racial Isolates" explained

"The term"tri-racial isolates" is distasteful today, but its existence is part of history that we must recognize....

"As details have fallen together, it has become apparent that the isolate groups are, in fact, remnant Native American communities that have remained outside the official system of recognized tribes."   (Ned Heite)

Only a few terms refer to bi -ethnic Indian-white and black-Indian mixes. The only terms for Indian and white mixes are half-breed [ 1775], quarter-breed [ 1862], and cross-breed, all of which have been shortened to breed. Griffe was occasionally used for a black and Indian mix. Most racially mixed descendants of these original groups long ago passed into one of these three racial categories. But communities of TriRacial Isolates have been denominated with as many as 68 terms, and there are undoubtedly others. These refer to racially mixed groups who live in scattered settlements of persons of various Native American Indian, black, and white ancestry.

Best historical tri-racial group origin map on the Internet. 

CLICK MAP TO EXPAND

Lumbee Indian Origins

Kentucky Melungeons

Below in a historical accounting of the West Feliciana Houma-Choctaw People:

For various historical reasons some descendant's of these mixed unions, many of them tri-racial mixes, settled into more than 200 small, rural, and isolated communities in the eastern United States. Many of these local settlements soon acquired local names. Some of these names derive from surnames prevalent in the communities and from the names of places where the groups live. Other names for Tri-Racial Isolates reflect the same themes of outgroup derogation as terms for other groups. Dunlap and Weslager ( 1947), Berry ( 1963), and others studied the origins of names for these groups and noted 68 terms and their etymologies. Some of the names apply to several different settlements, which accounts for some of the discrepancy between the number of communities and the number of terms (there are more than 200 communities and only 68 terms). Melungeon [or malungeon] is probably the best known of these names, and it designates several related communities.

Though these groups, taken together, have no single, widely accepted proper name, scholars have used terms such as mixed-blood. Genteel regional writers have referred to them with names such as mystery-people, referring to their obscure origins, raceless-people, and racial-orphans. They also have been referred to as local-mixed-groups, mixed-blood-racial-islands, and, unkindly, as half-castes, half-breeds, or just breeds. Estabrook and McDougle ( 1926) coined the acronym WIN, apparently for White, Indian, and Negro, as a pseudonym for one such community. Berry ( 1963) suggests borrowing the Spanish mestizo. But the jargonish term Tri-Racial Isolates has favor among most academics who write about these communities.

Most of the local, informal terms leveled at these communities are derogatory. (Certain names, such as our-people and others, are applied by the groups to themselves without pejoration.) While nicknames for these people are a product of intergroup contact and conflict, they are an exception to the principle that the coinage of outgroup nicknames flourishes where many different groups are in forced, close contact, such as at the center of an industrial city. Each community, sometimes including a few nearby communities, has been given a separate nickname. The proliferation of nicknaming occurs, not because the outgroup is large and compact, but because its communities are small and geographically so widely dispersed as to be seen as separate communities and thus as separate peoples. The isolation of these communities and their particular origins and histories also produce distinctive subcultures or variegated ethnicity.

The explanation for the large variety of terms nonetheless lies with the demographic and ecological situations of the groups rather than just with the prejudice of the name-callers.

The allusions of these terms are similar to those of nicknames for other groups. Allusion to dark color is a frequent but not a dominant theme. Certain other themes are noteworthy.

About a dozen nicknames derive from, sometimes as alterations of, patronymic names of clans thought to predominate in these communities: bones [probably from Boone, but possibly short for red-bones]; chavises; clappers; coe-clan; collinses; creels [possibly a variant of creoles]; goins; goulds [also gould-towners]; laster-tribe; males [possibly from Mayle, Mail, or Mahle]; pools [from Vanderpool]; slowters [from Slaughter]; and vanguilders (see Berry 1963).

A score of nicknames for other groups derive from place names: adamstown-indians; west-feliciana creole-indians; black-waterites [or black-waters]; cane-river-mulattoes; carmel-indians; cecil-indians [or cecilville-indians]; croatans [or croatan-indians. Very offensive when shortened to cros, i. e., "crows"]; g. -and-b. -indians[from the initials of the Grafton and Belington Railroad]; haliwa-indians; keating-mountain-group; marlboro-blues; pea-ridge-group; person-countyindians; ramapo-people; ridgemanites; sabines; sand-hill-indians; summerville-indians; west-hill-indians.

Yet other groups are named after actual nationalities, whose names are symbols widely applied to notably foreign, especially dark people: arabs; cajuns; creoles; cubans; greeks; guineas; moors; Portuguese; and turks.  Several of these terms--arab, greek, guinea, and turk--were associated with groups as various as blacks, Italians, Irish, and Jews.

A few groups have nicknames, which are used generally for mixed persons: breed; creole; half-caste; and half-nigger. Half a dozen terms make direct allusion to color: blue-eyed-negroes; brown people; red-bones [possibly from a folk belief that Native American Indians have bones with a reddish hue]; red-legs; red-nigger; yellow-people; and yellow-hammers [Hammer is an old term of general derogation, possibly reinforced in this usage by "yellow." Also yellow-hammer is a term for the yellow-shafted flicker. Cf. peckerwood].

A few nicknames echo-historical events, such as issues, which is short for "free-issue"--a free-born black before the Civil War. This is probably also the origin of free-jacks, a term used in the late nineteenth century for any black ( Cohen 1972). Jackson-whites may be a rendering by folk etymology from jacks-and-whites, where jacks is short for free-jacks. Other names may derive from putative dietary practices, such as ramps, possibly from eating ramps, a pungent cousin to the onion, and clay-eaters, from alleged geophagy [the same term was applied to certain poor whites in the middle South]. At least one term is said to derive from a phrase: Wesorts, traditionally from "We sort of people is different." Bushwacker is also a term for any rustic.

Etymologies are less certain for other terms. Folk, folkloric, legendary, and traditional etymologies abound. Gilbert ( 1946) and Dunlap and Weslager ( 1947) repeat and cite sources for certain speculative etymologies. But Berry ( 1963) is cautious and concludes that the origin of several, after all, are unknown: bonackers; brass-ankles [also a name for any "mulatto"]; buckheads; dominickers; hi-los; honies; and pond-shiners. It seems probable that melungeon derives from French méglanger, to mix; the first-person plural,present indicative is mélangeons ( Dunlap and Weslager 1947). Or possibly it is related to Afro-Portuguese, melungo, shipmate.

ETHNONYMS: Aframerindians, Creoles, Creole-Indians, Half-Breeds, Marginal Peoples, Mestizos, Metis, Micro-Races, Middle Peoples, Quasi-Indians, Racial Islands, Racial Isolates, Southern Mestizos, Submerged Races, Tri-Racials, Tri-Racial Isolates

This generic label covers some two hundred different groups of relatively isolated, rural peoples who live in at least eighteen states mainly in the eastern and southern United States. In general, the label and the various alternatives refer to distinct peoples thought to have a multiracial background (White-Indian-African-American, African-American-White or Indian-White, Indian-Spanish) who historically have been unaffiliated with the general White and African-American population or with specific American Indian groups. Estimates place the number of people in these groups at about seventy-five thousand, although some groups have disappeared in recent years through a combination of migration to cities and intermarriage with Whites and African-Americans. The best known of these groups is the Lumbee Indians, numbering over thirty thousand mainly in North and South Carolina.

Classification of a group as an American Isolate rests on (1) real or ascribed mixed racial ancestry of group members; (2) a social status different from that of neighboring White, African-American, or American Indian populations; and (3) identification as a distinct local group with the assignment of a distinct group name.

American Isolates existed prior to the American Revolution, perhaps as long ago as the early eighteenth century, and they increased in number throughout the nineteenth century as they came to public attention in the areas where they lived. Among factors leading to group formation were the presence of offspring of African-American male slaves and White women and the offspring of Indians and free or enslaved African-Americans.

Once a small community of multiracial members began, it grew primarily through a high fertility rate and became more and more isolated both socially and physically as its members were rejected by Whites and chose, themselves, to shun African-Americans. The movement of Indian groups west also contributed to their isolation.

More recently, isolation was maintained in part through government action, most significantly through the banning of Isolate children from public schools. Most Isolate groups were and continue to be described by outsiders in such stereotypical terms as lazy, shiftless, criminals, violent, illiterate, poor, or incestuous.

Groups known to have still existed in the 1950s and 1960s include the following, listed by state: 

Alabama: Cajans, Creoles, Melungeons (Ramps) 

Delaware: Moors, Nanticoke 

Florida: Dominickers 

Georgia: Lumbee Indians (Croatans) 

Kentucky: Melungeons, Pea Ridge Group (Coe Clan, Black Coes) 

Louisiana: Natchitoches Mulattoes, Rapides Indians, Redbones, Sabines, St. Landry Mulattoes, Zwolle-Ebard People, Creole-Indians, Houma's, Houma-Choctaw People

Maryland: Guineas, Lumbee Indians, Melungeons, Wesorts (Brandywine) 

Mississippi: Creoles 

New Jersey: Gouldtowners, Ramapo Mountain People (Jackson Whites), Sand Hill Indians

New York: Bushwhackers, Jackson Whites 

North Carolina: Haliwa Indians, Lumbee Indians, Person County Indians, Portuguese, Rockingham Surry Group 

Ohio: Carmel Indians, Cutler Indians, Darke County Group, Guineas, Vinton County Group 

Pennsylvania: Karthus Half-Breeds, Keating Mountain Group, Nigger-Hill People, Pooles 

South Carolina: Brass Ankles, Lumbee Indians, Turks 

Tennessee: Melungeons 

Texas: Redbones 

Virginia: Adamstown Indians, Brown People, Chickahominy Indians, Issues, Melungeons, Potomac Indians, Rappahannock Indians, Rockingham Surry Group

West Virginia: Guineas.

While it is difficult to generalize across all Isolate groups or individuals, most live in rural areas and derive their income from farming and unskilled or semiskilled labor. Social status within a group is based on wealth, access to the White Community, primarily through intermarriage, and residence in a settled, named Isolate community.

The Bordeaux Band of West Feliciana Houma-Choctaw People command INDISPUTABLE indigenous sovereign rights.  We DO NOT abdicate or defer these rights because we are involved in commerce with the public or government. 

The State of Arkansas Officially acknowledged these indigenous rights by way of the Arkansas Department of Education in 2005 after a year-long, highly intensive and exhaustive Equity Assistance Center (EAC) investigatory review, led by Tripp Walter of the Arkansas DOE Legal Counsel Division. After which, the state of Arkansas confirmed that the Bordeaux Band of West Feliciana Houma-Choctaw are a "Protected Ethnic Class", in accordance to Title VI federal regulations and statutes; ethnically unique unto themselves & their unique historic culture that pre-dates USA acquisition, per Tripp Walter Arkansas Department of Education, Staff Attorney and Interim General Counsel

E Pluribus Unum

Chief Elder Ean Bordeaux

West Feliciana Houma-Choctaw People

D'Choctaw Clan, Band Bordeaux

Harvard anthropologist tells what he learned about local Indians

Bill Ellzey Correspondent

In May and June 1917, Harvard-trained anthropologist Dr. John R. Swanton was in coastal Louisiana, investigating the origins and language of several Indian groups, including those in Lafourche and neighboring Terrebonne.

“The first of these,” reported the journal of the Smithsonian in 1918, was “the mixed-blood Houma Indians in La Fourche parish and the eastern part of Terre Bonne.

“Dr. Swanton was accompanied and his work greatly facilitated by Mr. Ernest Coycault, a creole living in New Orleans and married to one of these Indians.” The party apparently traveled by boat.

“The brother-in-law of Mr. Coycault acted as pilot, guiding Dr. Swanton to all of the more important Indian settlements between New Orleans and Point au Chien, where the oldest Houma town in the region is said to have been situated until destroyed by three huge waves from the Gulf about 1909.”

Swanton represented the Bureau of American Ethnology. “A few notes, relating chiefly to the material culture of the people, were made and a number of photographs were taken, but only a single expression in the old Houma language could be secured, and it is evident that the vocabulary obtained in 1907 from an old woman belonging to the western settlements of these Indians is all, relating to their language, that can now be expected from them.”

Years of contact with other tribes and with French settlers had evidently eroded the original Houma language.

“Before setting out on this trip Dr. Swanton spent a few days in New Orleans examining some of the manuscripts belonging to the Louisiana Historical Society ... was able to add several items to his material on the history of the southeastern Indians.”

The report suggested a bit more success with a second regional tribe.

“After returning from the Houma (Indians), Dr. Swanton proceeded to Charenton, La., where he spent a few days revising some of his material on the Chitimacha language with Benjamin Paul, one of the four surviving speakers of this tongue and a man who had assisted him on previous visits.

“Although it was found that there was little new material to be had, Dr. Swanton secured some grammatical information of great value in fixing the proper position of Chitimacha among the languages of the region.”

The Houma Indians were also mentioned in “Indian Tribes of the Lower Mississippi Valley and Adjacent Coast of the Gulf of Mexico,” published by Swanton in 1911.

“This tribe, when the French first descended the Mississippi, was located on high ground ... in the northern edge of West Feliciana Parish, La. The river at that time made a grand sweep to the westward in front of them to meet Red river, so that there were two Houma landing places, one below and another, the principal one, above the bend.”

But the Houma gradually moved southward. “The remnant of the tribe, mixed with other Indian peoples and white and Negro blood, now live along the coasts of Terre Bonne and La Fourche parishes, where they were visited by the writer in April, 1907, and the following facts learned regarding them:

“They occupy six settlements on as many bayous, and are principally engaged in hunting the otter, mink, and such other animals as occur in their country, and in fishing and gathering shellfish.

“During the sugar season some of them work on the plantations, especially at crushing, and some cattle are raised, particularly by Bob Verret, the leading man among them.

“Mr. Verret gave the following estimate of their population: On Point au Barree, 28 houses and 165 people; Lower Point au Chien, 36 houses and 160 people; Champs Charles, 13 houses and 117 people; Lower Bayou La Fourche, about 25 houses and 175 people; Bayou de Large, 12 to 14 houses and 84 to 98 people; Bayou Sale, below Bayou Grand Caillou, at least 25 houses and 175 people; total, 139 to 14l houses and 876 to 890 people.

“For Point au Barree and Point au Chien this was a house-by-house statement, and is nearly complete.

“According to tradition, moreover, these are the descendants of only a part of the ancient Houma. When they first came across from the Mississippi, it is said that they located near the city that bears their name (Houma), but, being driven out by the whites, moved to their present situation.

“Being followed down by the settlers, all except three families, or possibly bands, went back north about one hundred and twenty years ago and were never heard of again. The three families, which were known by the French names ‘Couteaux,’ ‘Billiout,’ and ‘Verdine,’ held their ground, and it is from them that all the Houma of Terre Bonne and La Fourche are descended.

“In spite of mixture with whites and Negroes, they form a distinct class of the population, and prefer to be called ‘Indians.’ The rate at which they have increased in recent years shows either that they have been protected by their isolation or that the mixture has chanced to be a very virile one.

“Although they call themselves ‘Houmas,’ or, rather ‘Homas,’ it has been intimated above that remains of several other tribes, such as the Bayogoula and Acolapissa. have been incorporated with them. To these must be added Biloxi and Chitimacha (pronounced by them ‘Sitimasha’), who were often introduced in the capacity of slaves, and probably the remnants of the Washa and Chawasha, besides individuals from a number of other Louisiana and Mississippi peoples.

“The family history of the writer’s oldest informant, Felicite Billiout, will serve to illustrate this tribal complexity. Her grandmother, whose Indian name was Xuyu’n, but who was baptized ‘Marion’ after her removal to Louisiana, was born in or near Mobile; her grandfather, Shulu-shumon, or, in French, Joseph Abbe, and more often called ‘Couteaux,’ was a Biloxi medal chief; and her mother ‘an Atakapa from Texas.’

“In addition, she said that Cherokee, Choctaw, and Alibamu had all married with her people. Among other tribes she had heard of the Chickasaw, Tallapoosa, and Tunica.

“Her grandmother, whom, she said, had moved successively to the Mississippi, ‘Tuckapaw canal,’ Bayou La Fourche, Houma, and the coast of Terre Bonne, was evidently among the Indians who migrated from the neighborhood of Mobile after 1764, in order not to remain under English rule.

“It is plain that remnants of all sorts of tribes joined the Houma before and at this period, though it is certain that most of these were Muskhogean, and that the Houma was always the dominating element.”

The Courier is looking for your old photographs and the memories that go with them to run in this weekly feature. In order to protect your valuable photographs, do not send unsolicited photographs. Instead, contact Bill Ellzey at 876-5638 and leave a message. You may also write to him at: The Courier, P.O. Box 2717, Houma, LA 70361. 

The Tri-Racial Isolate Communities of Delaware & So. New Jersey

 The first 5 papers are part of one large web page:

• Delaware's Invisible Indians Part I. by Dr Louise Heite
• Delaware's Invisible Indians Part II. by Edward Heite
• Searching for Invisible Indians: Finding Assimilated Indian Populations.... by Edward Heite
• Mitsawoket, the Community on Pumpkin Neck (and Biographical Directory).
• Bloomsbury. Introductory Remarks. Discoveries in Duck Creek Hundred. by Edward Heite
• Isolates Communities by Ned Heite

---

• Racial Islands by Elizabeth Pollard
• Racial Islands by Rick Gildemeister
• The Moors of Delaware: A Look at a Tri-Racial Group (author unknown)
• Gouldtown  (New Jersey)  Ebony magazine, Feb. 1952
• Colleagues of Ned Heite address mixed-race communities of the Eastern U.S.

Articles describing Cheswold and the Delaware “Moors”

• True Story of the Delaware Moors Philadelphia Press 1 Dec 1895
• Delaware’s Forgotten Minority --The Moors Delaware Today, Jan 1972
• Kent County’s Moors Times, Philadelphia, May 9,1892
• Train Whistle Recalls Cheswold Of Past Wilmington Morning News 4 Sep 1967
• Moor Says His People Started ‘Big Thursday’ Wilmington Journal-Every Evening, 13 Aug 1959
• Cheswold: Home Town Of Senator J Caleb Boggs Wilmington Evening Journal 11 Feb 1961
• Memories Have Replaced Industry in Town That US 13 Passed By (unknown newspaper)
• The Moors of Delaware monograph by Donald V.L. Downs, 10 Aug 1960
• The So-Called Moors of Delaware by George P Fisher, Milford Herald, 15 June 1895
• The Moors of Delaware: A Look at a Tri-Racial Group (author unknown)
• He Bought the Plane Before Lessons by Deedie Kramer, Evening Journal, Wilmington, Del, October 30, 1967
  More About Moors:
• Another View - The Moors of Delaware
• Muncey & Heite reply to Delaware Genealogical Society about Moors & the Lydia Clark tale
• The Melungeons   "Traditions still persist that the Melungeons were descendants of the ancient Phoenicians who migrated from Carthage to Morocco, whenced they crossed the Atlantic before the American Revolution and settled in North Carolina."