Chat
|
Daily Search
|
My GenForum
|
Community Standards
|
Terms of Service
|
|
|
Thanks for responding, Kevin.
To keep it short, I'll just focus on two points that keep recurring:
1. Why the Portuguese myth needed to stay alive, and
2. Who kept the word "Melungeon" alive after the main body of the migration finally stopped moving.
>>>1. I'm satisfied that my answer to that one is accurate and make sense: The story worked. The people continued to bear the outward "marks" of ethnic mixing (we are sure from our own families' experiences) and, therefore, would have had to keep dealing with the questions and suspicions of neighbors, census takers, church folk, etc. So the cover story would have remained important to them long after the specifics of what they were trying to "cover" would have ceased to be important.
>>>2. Th think the word was kept alive at first by people who remembered the crossing, then by their children and grandchildren who knew them and had listened to their stories AND listened to how they referred to their special friends who shared that tie. But the "need" for the support that such a bonding word can give was strengthened for several generations while the laws started chaning and--to whatever extent--they were "persecuted," or, at the very least, subject to the threat of different treatment, loss of rights, etc. That would have served to hold the commununity together ... at least in quiet, secret, ways. But as they trekked away from the coast and into the mountains, and--especially--as tey began to settle, and when the questions about their history began surfacing again 9the first time having already been several generations earlier), they would have had a reason NOT ONLY to perpetuate the cover story--which would have needed no dusting off (having remained in active use), but ALSO to polish off (i.e., do away with) all links back to the past that could in any way put them at risk, or undo the progress they had made by literally walking away from the past, and up into the mountains. Therefore, in the 1930's and 1840's, I suggest that there was a deliberate effort to both embrace the cover story AS IF TRUE and--simultaneously--to begin to vehemently deny the "ugly rumors" of their actual origins. At that point, they would have ceased to tell the truth to the hildren and would have adopted the attitudes of their White neighbors toward Blacks. This is the origin of the kinds of subtle (and not-so-subtle) racism found in the responses of some members of the Melungeon discussion lists to the prospect of African ancestry. Denial of the type describe would carry with it both self-hatred for those who both verbally denied, but who could--at the same time--see the truth (or at least the reasonableness) of the rumors on the faces of their own family members.
When you say that they denied and hated to be called Melungeon it reminds me of something Shakespeare put in the mouth of a character: "Me think he protests too much." In that situation, the Bard was pointing out that those who deny a thing the most vehemently, are often the most at-risk of being discovered to BE that thing. But for them and everyone else, the Portuguese story was a comfort AND a dodge. It worked because it shut people up. That and the threat of being bull-whipped "if you ever call me that again!"
Who kept the word Melungeon alive, then, if the people themselves stopped using the term "Melungu" or any evolved version of the original greeting and special-friend word? their neighbors. Those who followed them to the places they want. Thoes who moved with them. those who heard them before they stopped saying it. Those who were once trusted. Those who married in. Those who married out. Folks in church. People who made the transition to White--and strongly voiced their disgust and disdain with their cousins and former friends, or their parent's friends. People whose memory of the Melungeon groups, families and individuals stretched back--directly or as handed-down memory, to the days BEFORE the ancestors stopped owning the word and the places to which it connected.
And in its place, and in ANSWER to all questions about heritage, that place the old word once connected them to became a reminder ... NOT FOR THEM, but for US, of who they really were, and where they really came from.
Passed down to us as something disgarded. Something shameful. And yet, we can speculate ... and I do ... something that once held pride and meaning to people with a shared experience, brought here to start a new people together with other groups already here.
Curtis friend9
Notify Administrator about this message?
Followups:No followups yet |
| http://genforum.genealogy.com/melungeon/messages/25710.html | ||
 |
Link to GenForum Add Forum |
|