IN SEARCH OF THE BLACK DUTCH ANCESTRY OF THE MESTEE (MIXED BLOOD) GROUPS OF MY ANCESTORS. MELUNGEONS, CAROLINA PORTUGUESE, BRASS ANKLES, LUMBEE and REDBONES
Some Redbones in the past have even called some other Redbones "Redneck" and "White Trash" and also "N-lover". This was during a time when the African ancestry was called into question a couple of years back.
What else were they going to call them...."Redbones"?
{Note: Redbone Historian Don Marler replied that Redbones would go after each other like their Dogs go after a Feral Hog in a fight. They were right, and so do Melungeons, Lumbees, Carolina Portuguese, Black Dutch and others. Temperament is these groups run high.}
In this regard, those terms were used in the same fashion by the White population in the 1800's calling people Melungeon or Redbone. No different at all and what a shame to use those terms for their own cousins.
And "Redneck", is a derogatory racial epitaph.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redneck
Sadly, the use of derogatory racial terms continues even in Mestee communities and even though we have tried to turn those terms into a moniker of pride and identity in our mixed ancestors.
The Mestee Communities were called several racial epitaphs. Redbone, Melungeon, Brass Ankles, Marlboro Blues, Cooperhead people, Guineas, Dominickers, Dominos and many many others these are just a few.
However, there were only six terms that the Mestee Maroon Communities used for themselves and all six would take a separate article that we will not go into at this time.
These six terms are....
1. Black Dutch (meaning Black German) a term used to explain dark racial phenotype features such as Black hair color by far the most popular term
2. Portuguese (a historic term used by various Mestee communities throughout the United States) Used by several Maroon communities
3. Black Irish (meaning a Dark haired person of Irish ancestry) rare but sometimes used in Mestee communities
4. Indian (Native American)
5. Blackfoot (Eastern Native American)
6. Cherokee (Native American)
We will look into these terms later....right now our focus is on the term Black Dutch which my family used
http://www.nativepeoples.com/article/articles/164/1/The-Elusive-Black-Dutch-of-the-South/Page1.html
According to Wikipedia...
Black Dutch
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Black Dutch is a term with several different meanings in United States dialect and slang. It generally refers to racial, ethnic, or cultural roots, but its meaning is different in different parts of the nation. A few different groups of people have used the term "Black Dutch," often as ancestral reference. 
Black Dutch is an American ethnic designation no longer used officially but often found in the lore passed down in certain families of mixed ancestry, especially those of
Cherokee descent. In common usage, it does not imply African admixture, although some families that use the term are of tri-racial descent.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Dutch
My family has used three terms 1. Black Dutch 2. Cherokee and on rare occasions 3. Portuguese.
During a family reunion once my father replied when the question of ethnic ancestry came up in our family "We are Black Dutch, Cherokee and Black (African)".
Because our phenotype ranges from Northern European to Mediterranean, this shocked some family members (the younger ones) the older generations did not say a word, no denial, nothing.
We were always brought up with being of partial Cherokee heritage, my Uncle used the moniker of "Squatche" for me saying I was "a little Indian crapper" (laughing and remembering) yet he was not far from the truth as my DNA is very high in Mestizo ancestry.
The only time I do remember being signaled out was once being called a "Guinea Wop" by a guy in Houston. When I asked mom and dad what was a "Guinea Wop" Dad immediately went out and beat the guy up. And that is the thing with racial epitaphs, when it is among family and cousins that is fine, but you never know when someone is going to be offended. What was Dad mad about? It was because the person used it in a derogatory manner.
Some say this about Redbone and Melungeon terms, but why not use those terms, if (like the term Redneck) you can use those terms as a source of pride I say why not? The terms today are not used in derogatory manner are they? What greater way to recognize our mixed blood heritage by turning the terms around and using them as a source of pride?
So I say,
You know what, I am damn proud to be a Guinea Wop Black Dutch!
When one thinks of derogatory and discrimination of ethnic groups in the United States they think of the so called "Minority groups" such as African American, Hispanic, Native American and Jew.
However, as I have stated before in the below blogs, discrimination had as much or more so to do with social status as it had to do with ethnic ancestry.
This is especially true in the United States, where populations were admixing with other races early on and yet, still having a caste system in place based solely on social standing and not so much on skin color (though that also was a part of it of course)
The Barbados Red legs
Such is a group known as the Barbados Red legs who were a class of poor Northern European Celtic ancestry whites mixed with German and some Portuguese.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RedlegsRedlegs
was a term used to refer to the class of poor whites that lived on colonial Barbados, St. Vincent, Grenada and a few other Caribbean islands. In Belize, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago they are known as "Bakras" ("Back-Row"). Many of these people were English, Irish, or Scottish, and had originally arrived on Barbados in the early to mid 17th century as slaves, indentured servants, or as transported prisoners, notably from Oliver Cromwell's wars in Ireland and Scotland and from southwest England following the Monmouth Rebellion. Small groups of Germans and Portuguese were also imported as plantation labourers. Many were described as "white slaves". According to folk etymology, the name is derived from the effects of the tropical sun on their fair-skinned legs. However, the term "Redlegs" and its variants were in use for Irish soldiers of the same sort as those later transported to Barbados, and the variant "Red-shankes" is recorded by Edmund Spenser in his dialogue on "the Present State of Ireland" as early as the 16th century.This group was mostly Northern European and of Celtic ancestry and were basically chattel slaves to the wealthy English.
As you can see, because of their social standing, they were also given a derogratory racial epitaph no different than the Mestee Communities in the United States.
This would be equivilant to the modern day racial derogratory terms of "Redneck" and "White Trash" AND THOSE NAMES ARE DEGROGRATORY RACIAL TERMS. Although adopted by rural Anglo Americans as moniker of their culture today.
http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/CARIBBEAN/2001-04/0986680712The South Carolina Redlegs
I have searched the web for information about this group but could not find a link between them and the Redlegs of Barbados. They were in a area close to the South Carolina Redbones, so they may be of the same ancestry. If anyone has any information on this group would be appreciated. They appear to be of the same racial admixture as the Brass Ankle people of Orangeburgh SC.
DBB, is a little abbreviated saying I like to say when talking about Mestee ancestry. DBB: "The Dreaded Black Blood" in the family tree.
For many Melungeons, Redbones, Brass Ankles this has always been a issue for them and they denied it for several years without really understanding early American history among Mestee Maroon communities.
A Maroon Black Indian Frank Sweet, is a historian I have met who is a facts guy. I believe Frank was a computer programmer at one time. So not only is he way more knowledgeable and smarter than me about Maroon and Mestee communities but he also knows much more about DNA and the ancestry of the Melungeons. I believe Frank is 100% correct about the ancestry and about Sub Saharan African ancestors being in the genepool. But the American public is still not able to accept this fact even to this day. Frank I imagine has been ridiculed for some of his posts which is a shame. He just presents the facts, and we need to take that data and accept it at some point, to deny it is simply not a truth for Mestee research. Besides that, I think he is a good guy.
http://knol.google.com/k/frank-w-sweet/melungeons-redbones-and-other-us/k16kl3c2f2au/22#Gabe "Mishiho" Gabehart is a enrolled member of the Chickasaw Nation. Gabe is good guy who is Native American through and through. I have met Gabe as well.
For Gabe, being a Redbone or Native American is not so much a color issue as it is a culture issue. Gabe's motto is "Indians hung out with Indians" and that is true. Gabe, as well, has received negative responses for his views as well.
http://redbone-red-bone.blogspot.com/It would appear that both men are at odds with each other on this issue but they are not. In fact both men are 100% correct.
How can this be?
Florida Seminoles
Because the Eastern tribes absorbed vast amounts of both Northern European and Sub Saharan African ancestry, some, more than others. But that is not the issue as this is as much about culture as it is about ancestry.
The Cherokee, Creek, Seminole, Lumbee and other little known tribes absorbed Sub Saharan African run away populations which became part of their tribe.
Many did not join the African American population and for all intents and purposes considered themselves members of the Native American tribe.
Indeed, Native Americans did not have a prejudice against Africans, the whites had to teach them that view. Native Americans considered that once you joined and were accepted into the tribe you were, regardless of color, Native American.
Many families still do this to this day. Others do not.
There were four groups which were as much about social status and culture as much as they were about ethnic ancestry.
1. The European White population. (No matter the ancestry. The Pendarvis family was a "White" family of partial African ancestry. For all intents they were considered "White" because they were privileged in the community. There were hundreds of such families. The Red Rolfe's who descend from Pocahontas are also such a family)
2. The Black Slave population, later African American community. (No matter the ancestry, if your mother was a slave you were a slave unless given freedom. Hundreds of these families had significant White ancestry and not all of it was due to the public myth. There were hundreds of white European slaves as well. The Jim Crowe laws decided who was Black, or Colored, not the people)
3. The Native American tribes. All of the Southeastern United States tribes absorbed a vast amount of Sub Saharan African. Some, more than others, like the Seminole tribe of Florida or the Pamunkey tribe of Virginia but all became mixed in early American history.
4. The Mestee Maroon Communities. The Melungeons, Redbones, Brass Ankle people also absorbed Sub Saharan African as well as Native American. There is also Mediterranean is some of these groups as well as French Huguenot and Middle Eastern. Such as the Joseph Benhaley family (actually Yosef Bin Ali) of the Maroon group known as "The Turks" in North Carolina.
Some do not acknowledge that part of their ancestry as well.
Abram, a Black Florida Seminole So in conclusion, as you see, it was not so much the ancestry than it was the culture that you grew up in and the identity of that culture.
Is the DBB in the Maroon communities? Yes, Americans are a vast mixture of ethnic populations and it continues today, in all the various groups, there is not one full blood Anglo, Native American or African American in the United States, but there are members of each ethnic community.
Culture and Identity are complex.
Ancestry is not.......it is just facts......
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Creeks_in_Oklahoma.png#file
Creeks in Oklahoma, l to r, Lochar Harjo, unidentifed man, John McGilvry, and Silas Jefferson (aka. Hotulkomiko). Silas Jefferson, a Black Creek Indian on the Creek Tribal Council 1877
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