Os Portugueses e a Formação da América

[Atlantic Islander]

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Portugal construiu desde cedo uma das mais altas taxas de migração da Europa, e os primeiros portugueses a chegarem à América parecem ter sido judeus fugidos à Inquisição – em "Os Portugueses e a Formação da América" (2001), Manuel Mira defende a tese do pioneirismo dos melungos, uma aparente mistura de etnias que se terá formado em Portugal e começou a chegar à América ainda no século XV, instalando-se nos Estados à volta dos Montes Apalaches.

Mas só mais tarde, com a indústria da caça à baleia, se estabeleceram padrões de emigração. No século XIX a maioria dos imigrantes, quase todos agricultores ou pescadores, não vinha do Continente mas dos arquipélagos da Madeira, de Cabo Verde e (sobretudo) dos Açores, que ficavam no limite das rotas efectuadas pelos navios baleeiros, fundeados à procura de provisões e novos tripulantes – muitos navios apenas chegavam a meio do Atlântico, tornando o fenómeno ainda mais evidente nas ilhas ocidentais dos Açores: Corvo, Flores, Faial, Pico e São Jorge.

Noventa e nove por cento da imigração portuguesa na América vinha das ilhas, dizem alguns compêndios – e, se isso é um exagero, o facto é que a Califórnia é muitas vezes chamada “a décima ilha dos Açores”.

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Influência portuguesa nos EUA

A obra, com 424 paginas, 119 ilustrações e mais de 700 nomes e suas origens, mostra a presença e a influência portuguesa nos E.U.A. nas mais variadas áreas como o folclore, a gastronomia ou mesmo a Língua, levando o leitor a mergulhar por vezes num baú de inéditos e de histórias só agora vindas a lume.

Um desses exemplos relatados no livro revela a existência de, pelo menos, 38 palavras inglesas derivadas da Língua Portuguesa como é o caso dos vocábulos firm (firma), typhoon (tufão) ou tank (tanque).

Também na área da gastronomia, o autor foi desencantar algumas das comidas mais populares do sudoeste dos EUA e que fazem parte dos hábitos alimentares dos portugueses, descobrindo que uma cadeia de restaurantes na Carolina do Norte serve nabiças com presunto e salada de feijão frade, dois pratos tipicamente lusitanos.

source (http://portugal-mundo.blogspot.com/)

[Atlantic Islander]

Google Translate:

The Portuguese and the Formation of America

Portugal built early on one of the highest rates of migration in Europe, and the first Portuguese to arrive in America seem to have been Jews fleeing the Inquisition - from "The Portuguese and the Formation of America" ​​(2001), Manuel Mira defends the thesis of pioneering melungos of an apparent mixture of ethnic groups that have formed in Portugal and began to reach America even in the fifteenth century, settling in the back of the Appalachian Mountains.

But only later, with the whaling industry, settled patterns of emigration. In the nineteenth century the majority of migrants, almost all farmers or fishermen, not coming from the Continent but the archipelagos of Madeira, Cape Verde and (especially) the Azores, which were at the limit of the routes taken by whaling ships, anchored in search of provisions and new crew - many ships just arrived in the middle of the Atlantic, making the problem even more evident in the western islands of the Azores: Corvo, Flores, Faial, Pico and São Jorge.

Ninety-nine percent of Portuguese immigration in America came from the islands, some say textbooks - and if this is an exaggeration, the fact is that California is often called "the tenth island of the Azores."

Portuguese influence in the U.S.

The book, with 424 pages, 119 illustrations and more than 700 names and their origins, shows the presence and Portuguese influence in the U.S. in various areas such as folklore, gastronomy or even language, taking the reader to dive sometimes a trunk of unpublished stories and only now coming to light.

One example reported in the book reveals the existence of at least 38 English words derived from Portuguese as is the case of the words firm (firm), typhoon (Typhoon) or tank (tank).

Also in the field of gastronomy, the author was disenchant some of the most popular foods in the southwestern United States that are part of the eating habits of the Portuguese, finding that a chain of restaurants in North Carolina serves turnip salad with ham and black-eyed beans, two dishes typically Lusitanian.

[Gaijin]

The Melungeons have been exposed for what they are.
They are NOT Portuguese and there's nothing Portuguese about them.


Revealed: Ancient Appalachian people who boasted of Portuguese ancestry to avoid slavery were actually descended from African men and white women

Varied and sometimes wild claims have been made about the origins of a group of dark-skinned Appalachian residents once known derisively as the Melungeons.
Some speculated they were descended from Portuguese explorers, or perhaps from Turkish slaves or Gypsies.
Now a new DNA study in the Journal of Genetic Genealogy attempts to separate truth from oral tradition and wishful thinking.

The study found the truth to be somewhat less exotic: Genetic evidence shows that the families historically called Melungeons are the offspring of sub-Saharan African men and white women of northern or central European origin.
And that report, which was published in April in the peer-reviewed journal, doesn't sit comfortably with some people who claim Melungeon ancestry.
'There were a whole lot of people upset by this study,' lead researcher Roberta Estes said, noting that many preferred their assumed origins.

'They just knew they were Portuguese, or Native American.'
Beginning in the early 1800s, or possibly before, the term Melungeon (meh-LUN'-jun) was applied as a slur to a group of about 40 families along the Tennessee-Virginia border. But it has since become a catch-all phrase for a number of groups of mysterious mixed-race ancestry.
In recent decades, interest in the origin of the Melungeons has risen dramatically with advances both in DNA research and in the advent of Internet resources that allow individuals to trace their ancestry without digging through dusty archives.

G. Reginald Daniel, a sociologist at the University of California-Santa Barbara who's spent more than 30 years examining multiracial people in the U.S. and wasn't part of this research, said the study is more evidence that race-mixing in the U.S. isn't a new phenomenon.
'All of us are multiracial,' he said. 'It is recapturing a more authentic U.S. history.'
Ms Estes and her fellow researchers theorize that the various Melungeon lines may have sprung from the unions of black and white indentured servants living in Virginia in the mid-1600s, before slavery.
They conclude that as laws were put in place to penalize the mixing of races, the various family groups could only intermarry with each other, even migrating together from Virginia through the Carolinas before settling primarily in the mountains of East Tennessee.
Claims of Portuguese ancestry likely were a ruse they used in order to remain free and retain other privileges that came with being considered white, according to the study's authors.

The study quotes from an 1874 court case in Tennessee in which a Melungeon woman's inheritance was challenged.
In that instance, if the defendant Martha Simmerman were found to have African blood, she would lose the inheritance.
Her attorney, Lewis Shepherd, argued successfully that the Simmerman's family was descended from ancient Phoenicians who eventually migrated to Portugal and then to North America.
Writing about his argument in a memoir published years later, Shepherd stated, 'Our Southern high-bred people will never tolerate on equal terms any person who is even remotely tainted with negro blood, but they do not make the same objection to other brown or dark-skinned people, like the Spanish, the Cubans, the Italians, etc.'
In another lawsuit in 1855, Jacob Perkins, who is described as 'an East Tennessean of a Melungeon family,' sued a man who had accused him of having 'negro blood.'
In a note to his attorney, Mr Perkins wrote why he felt the accusation was damaging.

Writing in the era of slavery ahead of the Civil War, Mr Perkins noted the racial discrimination of the age: '1st the words imply that we are liable to be indicted (equals) liable to be whipped (equals) liable to be fined ... '
Later generations came to believe some of the tales their ancestors wove out of necessity.
Jack Goins, who has researched Melungeon history for about 40 years and was the driving force behind the DNA study, said his distant relatives were listed as Portuguese on an 1880 census. Yet he was taken aback when he first had his DNA tested around 2000. Swabs taken from his cheeks collected the genetic material from saliva or skin cells and the sample was sent to a laboratory for identification.
'It surprised me so much when mine came up African that I had it done again,' he said. 'I had to have a second opinion. But it came back the same way. I had three done. They were all the same.'
In order to conduct the larger DNA study, Mr Goins and his fellow researchers - who are genealogists but not academics - had to define who was a Melungeon.
In recent years, it has become a catchall term for people of mixed-race ancestry and has been applied to about 200 communities in the eastern U.S. - from New York to Louisiana.
Among them were the Montauks, the Mantinecocks, Van Guilders, the Clappers, the Shinnecocks and others in New York.

Pennsylvania had the Pools. North Carolina the Lumbees, Waccamaws and Haliwas and South Carolina the Redbones, Buckheads, Yellowhammers, Creels and others.
In Louisiana, which somewhat resembled a Latin American nation with its racial mixing, there were Creoles of the Cane River region and the Redbones of western Louisiana, among others.
The latest DNA study limited participants to those whose families were called Melungeon in the historical records of the 1800s and early 1900s in and around Tennessee's Hawkins and Hancock Counties, on the Virginia border some 200 miles northeast of Nashville.
The study does not rule out the possibility of other races or ethnicities forming part of the Melungeon heritage, but none were detected among the 69 male lines and 8 female lines that were tested. Also, the study did not look for later racial mixing that might have occurred, for instance with Native Americans.
Mr Goins estimates there must be several thousand descendants of the historical Melungeons alive today, but the study only examined unbroken male and female lines.
The origin of the word Melungeon is unknown, but there is no doubt it was considered a slur by white residents in Appalachia who suspected the families of being mixed race.
'It's sometimes embarrassing to see the lengths your ancestors went to hide their African heritage, but look at the consequences' said Wayne Winkler, past president of the Melungeon Heritage Association.
'They suffered anyway because of the suspicion.'
The DNA study is ongoing as researchers continue to locate additional Melungeon descendants.

Source:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2149658/Melungeons-DNA-study-seeks-origin-Ancient-Appalachian-people.html

Nothing boils me more than liars who claim other peoples ancestry, for personal benefit.

The Melungeons are perhaps one of the reasons why the Portuguese have become a prime target for accusations and misinterpretations, enrolled in American encyclopedias.

Not only did they injury the racial identity of the Portuguese overseas, with their ribald fables. They also refused to abandon it once they were unsheltered, because they did not have anything else to relate to, after years of false allegations by their Nordic mothers and Black fathers.

The Luso-American Organization should unveil these people.
Ergo, the Melungeons should be forced to apologize for their verbal crimes committed against the Portuguese and Portuguese-Americans. But above all, to be striped from Portuguese identity.

[Atlantic Islander]

The Melungeons have been exposed for what they are.
They are NOT Portuguese and there's nothing Portuguese about them.



Nothing boils me more than liars who claim other peoples ancestry, for personal benefit.

The Melungeons are perhaps one of the reasons why the Portuguese have become a prime target for accusations and misinterpretations, enrolled in American encyclopedias.

Not only did they injury the racial identity of the Portuguese overseas, with their ribald fables. They also refused to abandon it once they were unsheltered, because they did not have anything else to relate to, after years of false allegations by their Nordic mothers and Black fathers.

The Luso-American Organization should unveil these people.
Ergo, the Melungeons should be forced to apologize for their verbal crimes committed against the Portuguese and Portuguese-Americans. But above all, to be striped from Portuguese identity.

Yes, that's true - but I wanted to post the entire article for the second book.

Genetics have proven that Melungeons were lying about their origins.

[HispaniaSagrada]

I think this is the author?


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xgv3OOYqhX4

But is it possible they had some sort of contact with Portuguese people?

I saw a video once of a melungeon saying it's not true. If I can find it I'll post it.

[Lusos]

"Revealed: Ancient Appalachian people who boasted of Portuguese ancestry to avoid slavery were actually descended from African men and white women"

Haaa. Couldn't possibly be of Portuguese ancestry ,or they would be 100% Black.