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This is not based on a theory or what *I think* --this is who they said they were in 1848. The court records, the local histories, anthropoligists, their tax collectors, sheriffs, attorneys - all testified they were Portuguese.
''The legend of their history, which they carefully preserve, is this. A great many years ago, these mountains were settled by a society of Portuguese Adventurers, men and women--who came from the long-shore parts of Virginia, that they might be freed from the restraints and drawbacks imposed on them by any form of government. These people made themselves friendly with the Indians and freed, as they were from every kind of social government, they uprooted all conventional forms of society and lived in a delightful Utopia of their own creation, trampling on the marriage relation, despising all forms of religion, and subsisting upon corn (the only possible product of the soil) and wild game of the woods.
These intermixed with the Indians, and subsequently their descendants (after the advances of the whites into this part of the state) with the negros and the whites, thus forming the present race of Melungens.''
http://www.geocities.com/ourmelungeons/littels.html
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To put this in perspective in 1754 Governor Dobbs made inquiries as to the location of Indians in North Carolina - it was reported;
''The reports of the colonel of Bladen County [Robeson formed from -1787]and of Captain William Davis, who had a troop of light horse, both said “no Indians” in that county. Colonel Rutherford of that county, who was also the receiver-general, added this memorandum; “Drowning Creek, on the head of Little Peedee, fifty families, a mixed crew, a lawless people possess the lands without patent or paying quit rents; shot a surveyor for coming to view vacant lands, being enclosed in great swamps. ''
http://www.geocities.com/ourmelungeons/joannesmalungeons.html
The Bolton, Ivey, Perkins, Shoemake, Chavis, Lowery, Gibson, Hall, etc., families that were later called Portuguese and/or Melungeon lived on the 'Drowning Creek' - Peedee River and were very likely the 'mixed' families spoken of in 1754. They were not reported as Indians, and they were not 'white' -
Joanne
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