Fortean Times Message Board :: View topic - Melungeons and Turkish Alabama Indians
Fortean Times Message Board :: View topic - Melungeons and Turkish Alabama Indians: "OK, maybe a bit of a 'notes and queries' thread, but the topic is kind of related to the 'first to discover America' thread so i'll put it here...
I recall reading in FT (maybe 1998/1999?) about the mysterious Melungeons, a group in the American South who included some ancestors of Abe Lincoln, who were obviously not 'white' but had dark skin and Caucasian features, rather like Arabs or Indians (as in Delhi, India). I think they were originally thought to be mixed white/Native American, but the FT article argued that they were descended from both Portuguese and (more unlikely) Turkish or Arabic settlers in America.
These were supposed to have got there (i think) some time between 1400 and 1600 - not sure if it was before Columbus 'officially' discovered America for Catholic Europe (probably later in the case of the Portuguese), but certainly long before the British colonised America.
The article then went on to argue that the language of the Alabama Indians had words in it derived from Turkish, and that oral history in that area described people with a monotheistic religion arriving from the east. I think the word Alabama itself was supposedly derived from 'Allah' (which is of course Arabic not Turkish, but Turks are Muslim) and something meaning 'graveyard'.
Anyone know anything about this? I am particularly intrigued by the idea that Muslim/Ottoman people were in America around the same time as the earliest Europeans, and what their relationships with the Native Americans were (they seem to have integrated themselves with the Alabama to the extent t"
I recall reading in FT (maybe 1998/1999?) about the mysterious Melungeons, a group in the American South who included some ancestors of Abe Lincoln, who were obviously not 'white' but had dark skin and Caucasian features, rather like Arabs or Indians (as in Delhi, India). I think they were originally thought to be mixed white/Native American, but the FT article argued that they were descended from both Portuguese and (more unlikely) Turkish or Arabic settlers in America.
These were supposed to have got there (i think) some time between 1400 and 1600 - not sure if it was before Columbus 'officially' discovered America for Catholic Europe (probably later in the case of the Portuguese), but certainly long before the British colonised America.
The article then went on to argue that the language of the Alabama Indians had words in it derived from Turkish, and that oral history in that area described people with a monotheistic religion arriving from the east. I think the word Alabama itself was supposedly derived from 'Allah' (which is of course Arabic not Turkish, but Turks are Muslim) and something meaning 'graveyard'.
Anyone know anything about this? I am particularly intrigued by the idea that Muslim/Ottoman people were in America around the same time as the earliest Europeans, and what their relationships with the Native Americans were (they seem to have integrated themselves with the Alabama to the extent t"
posted by Helen Campbell @ 7:40 PM
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