House-by-house view of Valley Head and Pea
Ridge on Sand Mountain, DeKalb/Jackson
Co., Ala., with part of Wills Valley and Fraction
Township from a 1953 map (The Bear Went over the
Mountain).
Very recent efforts spearheaded by Alan Lerwick of
Salt Lake City, Utah, have traced the Sizemores back
to a Michael Sizemore, a London merchant who died in
1685. Lerwick has also mapped two distinct DNA lines
in Virginia and North Carolina, one continuing the
original R1b gene type and the other an American
Indian Q haplotype. He believes – and I agree with
him – that Indian descent entered the Sizemore
family with Henry Sizemore, born about 1698. The
descendants of Henry’s older brother Ephraim are
R1b.
Conclusion
So it is time to summarize what we know about Sand
Mountain Melungeons. Our rather random listing
contains: 24 untimely deaths, 6 murders, 2
hangings, 1 rape, 4 divorces, 4 instances of
congenital deafness or blindness, an average
migration rate of 4.2 moves per lifetime during the
period of Indian removal, 6 cases of lost treasure,
and uncounted examples – whether aimed at
individuals or groups – of theft, assault,
imprisonment, legal sanctions, denial of Federal
benefits and basic rights, law suits, and
disinheritance. Families were split down the middle,
with many members simply disappearing. A high number
of sons and daughters chose never to marry to
produce future generations. The average lifespan for
a female in my mother’s direct line, which goes back
to a Cherokee woman born about 1790, is 32. Elders
were often unwilling to even speak of their losses.
In the face of systematic and relentless prejudice,
they maintained what they could of their
intellectual heritage, culture and religious
practices, often in a secretive fashion.
A
Biblical injunction warns us against trying to make
bricks without straw. The Five Civilized Tribes
built an amazing legacy, one that endures to this
day as strong as ever. After the 2000 Census, the
Cherokee constituted the largest Indian group in the
U.S., with nearly 500,000 recognized and
unrecognized members. Through genocide, military
conquest, plague, starvation, captivity,
dispossession, betrayal and endless government
maneuvers, they and the other major Southeastern
tribes fought back with cunning and conviction.
These were the first Indian nations to have
constitutions, courts of law, a press, police forces
and schools. Euchella v. Welsh (1824) and the
Cherokee case before the U.S. Supreme Court in the
1830s marked their arrival in the circle of nations.
The ensuing public sympathy stirred up by converted
Jews like John Howard Payne secured a place in
legend for them similar to that of the Founding
Fathers of America and David Crockett. The Browns,
McDonalds, Adairs, Rosses, Coopers, Keyses, Rogerses
and Vanns mingled their bloodlines with the strength
of natives in the eighteenth century and before.
Were it not for that “leaven” the Cherokee,
Chickasaw, Creek and Choctaw could never have
survived as political entities. Southern Sephardic
Jews were that straw in a stubborn and enduring
product.
There are some three hundred Indian reservations in
the United States, covering 52.4 million acres of
land in twenty-seven states (Pevar 1992). Many
states, however, such as Virginia, with the oldest
record of Indian affairs, going back to British
treaties signed by its colonial governors, do not
have federally recognized Indian tribes.
Neither Kentucky nor Tennessee, the original
homelands, respectively, of the Shawnee and
Cherokee, has ever legitimized any Indian groups
within their boundaries. Moreover, during a period
known as Termination (1953-1968), Congress voted to
end federal services and benefits to Indians “at the
earliest possible time.” Over a hundred tribes were
“terminated.” Recently, under Republican
administrations, as tribes were struggling to regain
their standing, and while an estimated 300 Indian
groups sought recognition for the first time, more
rights were struck down by the courts and more
nations were “terminated.” The century-long scandal
of the Individual Indian Money Accounts continued,
with billions of dollars owed to the descendants of
Indians cheated during the days of the Dawes Act of
1887, which broke up tribal governments, abolished
Indian reservations and forced Indians to assimilate
into white society.
The rights of Indians and Indian tribes constitute a
labyrinthine body of U.S. Federal law and public
policy, not to mention the ever-changing social and
historical factors or human rights underlying them.
In general, federal recognition of a tribe and its
members (always based on treaties signed before
1867) confers: 1) a special status as protected
wards of the federal government (thereby immune to
the power of states, counties and municipalities and
exempt from certain taxes), 2) limited sovereignty
as “a nation within a nation,” 3) citizenship in one
particular Indian nation, 4) occasional jurisdiction
in tribal courts under the concept of Indian
Country, and 5) a host of erratic privileges ranging
from Indian health services and educational
assistance to the right to label arts and crafts as
“Native American” and a share in tribal income,
treaty annuities, and mineral rights on reservation
land (Felix Cohen, Handbook of Federal Indian Law,
1982).
In 1990 it was noted that American Indians
represented 1 percent of the U.S. population but 50%
of its diversity.[1]
Between the 1990 and 2000 census, the Indian
population doubled, from nearly 2 million Americans
to 4.1 million people. Most of this increase was
attributable to altered categories of reporting and
new ways race and ethnicity were tallied, with
persons claiming “American Indian and Alaska Native
in combination with another race” henceforth
included together with those identifying as Indian
alone. The Pan American Indian Association maintains
that even these figures are low and that there are
more than 15 million U.S. citizens of some degree of
Indian ancestry.[2]
If Melungeons should attempt Federal recognition,
nearly everybody and everything would be arrayed
against them, including historical precedent,
current political climate, and other Indian and
minority groups, always reluctant to “slice the pie”
even thinner. Still, there are tangible benefits to
be gained from even the slightest legislative or
administrative victory. This is demonstrated by the
400,000 member Lumbee tribe winning conditional
Federal recognition in the 1990s, the various
Virginia tribes’ long but persistent petition for
their rights, and, most recently, the small Waccamaw
tribe receiving state recognition from South
Carolina, allowing members to organize meetings
without interference from authorities, preserve
their culture, and sell arts and crafts labeled
“Native American.”
Notice the third right listed above, “citizenship in
one particular Indian nation.” Many Melungeon names
appear on the rolls of the IIM mentioned above
(Sizemore is an example). One cannot claim
membership in two discrete Indian nations. On this
point, even non-recognized tribes are recognized,
and Washington has a long memory. Thus, enrollment
or the attempt to enroll on one registry invalidates
all others, for there can be no dual citizenship in
Indian Country. Most tribal law suits before the
Bureau of Indian Affairs founder on a requirement
demanding proof of continuous sovereign organization
and unequivocal leadership. Multiple and confused
attempts to establish a tribe like the Sizemores’
White Top Laurel Tribe of Indians are the kiss of
death.
[1]
Hodgkinson, H.L., J.H. Outtz & A.M. Obarakpor
(1990) The Demographics of American Indians:
One percent of the people: Fifty percent
of the Diversity. Report prepared for the
Institute for Educational Leadership, Inc. and
Center for Demographic Policy. Washington, D.C.:
U.S. Government Printing Office.
[2]
Barry T. Klein, ed (2003) Reference
Encyclopedia of the American Indian 10th
ed. (Nyack, N.Y.: Todd Publications)
s.v. ‘Pan American Indian Association.’
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