Perhaps Nancy Hanks, the mother of Abraham Lincoln, was Melungeon. It somehow seems fitting that one of America’s greatest Presidents should be of mixed race and probable Muslim heritage. But who are the Melungeons?
Historical records document that from 1492 through the early 1600s, an estimated 500,000 Jews and Muslims were exiled from Spain and Portugal through a religious witch-hunt known as - the Spanish Inquisition. Hundreds of thousands of Muslim exiles escaped to their ancestral homelands of Morocco, Algeria, Libya, and Tunisia. In fact, the well-known Barbary Coast Pirates (that is, Berber Coast Pirates) of North Africa sprang from this group. They, along with their Turkish compatriots, were renowned for their seagoing exploits as they sought revenge against the Spanish and Portuguese in ferocious Mediterranean sea battles.
Of course, they didn’t always win: those pirates unfortunate enough to lose at sea often ended up as galley slaves beneath the creaking decks of Spanish and Portuguese ships bound for the New World. Ironically, slaves of the Christians once again.
Other Muslims - Berbers in particular - Moricos they were called, made their way to the Canary Islands, India, France and other countries. And interestingly enough, wherever these exiled Berbers went, they identified themselves as “Portuguese,” even if they had originated in Spain. In fact, the term “Portuguese” became almost synonymous for both the Muslims and the Jews who had been exiled during the Inquisition.
Finally, as the Inquisition grew in power and severity, even Christianized Moors and Jews were forced into exile. The “Conversos” - the name given to both Muslim and Jewish converts - were not trusted by either the Church or the government, and probably with good reason, since most had converted to Catholicism only to avoid the death sentence.
The Spanish Inquisition, horrible as it was, accomplished something of great historical value for Islam. Even though Western historians have generally ignored the evidence, there is little doubt that Muslims played an early - perhaps the earliest - role in the permanent settlement of this Nation. And there is little doubt that the Inquisition - with all its agonies - drove Spanish and Portuguese Muslims toward the New World.
While American school children learn of Columbus’s role in the discovery of the New World, they aren’t told the entire story. For example, Columbus employed both Moorish and Spanish sailors, and himself may have been Jewish. On his fourth voyage in 1502, he records two important discoveries:
First, on the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, he discovered an iron pot and an old ship’s mast preserved in an Indian hut. He and his crew determined these artifacts had come from the Canary Islands. The Canaries, a Portuguese possession, had been a favorite dumping ground for Conversos of Muslim Berber origin.
Second, on July 31, 1502, came an even more extraordinary discovery. Off the island of Jamaica, Columbus encountered strange people on a strange ship that western historians have generally considered to be Mayan Indians.
This ship was forty feet long with a diameter of eight feet, and had a shaded pavilion in the center. From a distance, Columbus thought it to be uncannily like the Moorish galleys he had so often seen in the Mediterranean. There were approximately forty men and women on this galley, and unlike the Jamaican Indians, these people wore clothing: sleeveless shirts with showy colors and designs like those Columbus had seen, in his own words, in Muslim Granada.
These so-called Mayan Indians carried a cargo of tools, copper implements, and forges for working copper. But perhaps Columbus’s striking observation was that the women aboard this galley “covered their faces like the women of Granada.” Were these truly Mayan Indians? Or simply one more case of biased historians refusing to accept the fact that Muslims could have reached the New World before Columbus? Columbus certainly considered the possibility.
In 1527, the first land crossing of the United States by a non-Native American most likely was achieved by Azemmouri, a Moroccan Berber - a Muslim. Originally a member of an expedition of 300 Spaniards, only Azemmouri and three of his comrades survived this eleven year, 5,000 mile trek from Florida to the West Coast and back to Texas. He was the first explorer to enter a Pueblo Indian village, and the story of his daring exploits make for fascinating reading. Curiously, Azemmouri is never mentioned in American history books.
The establishment of Jamestown, Virginia in 1607 was indeed an important event in American history. But it was by no means the first European settlement in the New World. The Spanish established the Santa Elena, South Carolina, colony in 1566, forty years before Jamestown. The Colony thrived for more than twenty years, until it was overrun by the English in 1587. But since the English won the battle for this Nation, Santa Elena was conveniently left out of American history books.
What happened to the survivors of Santa Elena, and who were they? Their identity is important to understanding the Melungeon people, and understanding the hidden role played by Islam in the shaping of the American nation. Many of the Santa Elena colonists were converted Muslims and Jews, or Conversos. In Spain, the Muslims were known as Mudajjan, a word probably related to the term Melungeon. Ethnically, many of the Santa Elena colonists were Berber Muslims and Sephardic Jews, recruited by the Portuguese Captain Joao Pardo from the heavily Berber Galician Mountains of nonhern Portugal in 1567 - less than one year before the Inquisition kicked into high gear against the Muslims.
When Santa Elena fell, its inhabitants - including its convened Jews and Muslims - escaped into the hinterlands, making their way to the mountains of North Carolina. And there they survived, intermarrying to some degree with Native Americans, eventually merging with a second group arriving on American shores in, ironically, 1587 - the same year Santa Elena fell.
North African Berbers and Turks captured in the Mediterranean by the Spanish and Portuguese were regularly used as galley slaves in ships crossing the Atlantic. Once in the New World, these Muslim captives were assigned to slave labor on the sugar plantations and in the mining operations of, among other places, Cuba and Brazil.
In 1586, the English pirate, Sir Francis Drake, commanding thirty English ships, made a daring raid against his Spanish and Portuguese enemies on the coast of Brazil. During this raid, Drake liberated some 400 Portuguese and Spanish held prisoners, including an estimated 300 Moorish and Turkish galley slave Muslims captured in Mediterranean sea battles - as well as several dozen South American Indians, a smaller number of West African Muslims, and a few Portuguese soldiers. Drake had planned to arm and release the Turks and Africans on Cuba, to seve as a stronghold against the Spanish - but heavy storms forced him to continue up the coast to North Carolina.
There, on Roanoke Islam, he was besieged by stranded English settlers pleading for a ride home to England. The English colony of Ralph B. Lane had enough of the New World and wanted to go home. To fulfill their wish, Drake had to make room for them on his already crowded ships. According to English records, only 100 Turks were taken back to England where they were ransomed to the “Turkish Dominions.” There’s no further mention of the remaining 200 Moors and Turks, the West Africans, the Portuguese soldiers, and the South American Indians by Drake, and records show that Sir Walter Raleigh, who visited the Island two weeks later, found no trace of them. Where did they go?
Research indicates that Drake left them behind, assuring that he or someone would be back for them. But that was no guarantee of safety from the pursuing Spanish or Portuguese. On Roanoke Island they wre little more than sitting ducks. There is little doubt that they made their way the short distance to the mainland, probably utilizing the small boats left behind by the English, and then traveled steadily inland. Along the way, they too intermarried with Native Americans, mostly Powhatan, Pamunkey, Nansemond, and Hatteras.
Within the next decade or so they encountered the remnants of the Santa Elena colony, many of whom shared their Muslim heritage. And there, thousands of miles from their homelands, these two surviving groups became one people. Christians, Jews, and Muslims - literally, the People of the Book - living and worshiping the God of Abraham together.
In 1654, the English explorers learned from southeastern Indians of a colony of bearded people wearing European clothing, living in cabins, smelting silver, and dropping to their knees to pray many times daily, wherever they might be. A people who did not speak English, but claimed to be “Portyghee.”
In the mid 1600s, there were people living among the Powhatans and related tribes of eastern Virginia and North Carolina who wre described as dark like Indians, but called “Portugals.” A similar people in South Carolina called themselves “Turks.” The early seventeenth-century Powhatan Indian description of Heaven is nearly word for word the description found in **the Holy Qur’an. **