Kingsport Spirit

In 1996 I read a book by Dr. Brent Kennedy about Melungeons, a mysterious, dark-skinned people living in the remote Appalachian Mountains on the edge of Tennessee, Virginia, Kentucky & West Virginia.

In summary, Dr. Kennedy developed a mysterious, life-threatening illness while living in Atlanta. Emory University gave him a diagnosis that it was related to populations of Mediterranean or North African descent.

The diagnosis shook him to the core. He was from Wise County, Virginia in the far southwestern tip where Virginia, Tennessee and Kentucky meet. Like most residents of the area, he was presumed to be of European, Scots-Irish descent. He had bright blue eyes, dark hair, and dark skin. He owed it to his son–who might also suffer from this genetic illness someday–to get to the bottom of this genetic mystery.

He began to research incidents of the illness and plot them on a map. They were concentrated in Appalachia and places where Appalachians moved for economic opportunity (like Cincinnati). But how did a Mediterranean-North African disease become prevalent in the highlands of Appalachia?

In his book he said, “History is written by the victors” (paraphrased), implying that American history has been largely anglicized. I was just a few years out of college and had never contemplated that concept. It was well before DNA testing was common, so it was easier to control the narrative. It was also the first time I’d ever heard anyone say that American history was much more complex than the stories of Jamestown and Plymouth Rock. He said (again paraphrased) that our coasts are vast and who really knows how many encounters were made before the English?

His 1996 book mentioned Santa Elena, a Spanish settlement on the South Carolina coast near present-day Beaufort, but now known as Saint Helena. This caught my attention because we had vacationed at Hunting Island and Fripp Island just a couple of years earlier, both of which have a Saint Helena mailing address.

He said that Spanish explorers fanned-out from Santa Elena to explore inland and made it all the way into the Appalachian Mountains.

If what he said was true, I had just traversed the same route from Northeast Tennessee to the South Carolina coast on I-26, which was eerily similar to the route used by Spanish explorers in the late 1500s well before Jamestown!

Dr. Kennedy went on a regional speaking circuit to share his findings. They were usually standing room only. He was criticized for lack of evidence and the academics seemed to want to silence him. He had a debilitating stroke in 2005 which pre-empted his speaking engagements and public appearances. He passed away in 2020.

His work left an indelible impression on me.

Through the years, many of the things he said in 1996 have been corroborated in one way or another.

Sometime in the mid-2010s, I stumbled upon a UNC TV documentary about the discovery of Spanish artifacts in Western North Carolina. In 2013, archaeologists confirmed that the Berry Site is also the site of the Spanish Fort San Juan, established by Juan Pardo in 1567. Fort San Juan was the first European settlement established in the interior of what is now the United States, predating Roanoke Island by nearly 20 years and Jamestown by 40 years. In 1566, Captain Juan Pardo and his army departed Santa Elena (on modern-day Parris Island, South Carolina) to claim the interior of southeastern North America for Spain. Spanish soldiers lived at Fort San Juan from January, 1567, until the Spring of 1568. In June, relations between the Spaniards and the native peoples of Joara ended tumultuously, and the fort was burned and destroyed.

But I first heard it from Dr. Brent Kennedy in 1996.

Then in 2018, I saw a documentary on East Tennessee PBS called “Secrets of the Nolichucky River”. It delved into recent Spanish artifacts found by East Tennessee State University’s archaeology program. Spanish artifacts? In East Tennessee?

Again, I heard it first from Dr. Brent Kennedy in 1996.

Then a colleague recommended that I read “The Juan Pardo Expeditions” (2005). I’m working on it now. But in the first chapter it mentions the route from Fort San Juan (the Berry Site mentioned above) to Fort San Pedro on Zimmerman’s Island (which is now under Douglas Lake in Dandridge, Tennessee). Both of these Spanish forts were collocated alongside existing Native American villages. Pardo was ordered to baptize the natives and find a route to the gold mines in New Spain (Mexico). The Spaniards knew it was west of the mountains, but presumed the Smokies and Rockies were the same range.

The author speculates that Pardo’s first encounter with natives (the Chisca or Chiska tribe) in what is now Tennessee took place along the Nolichucky River at Embreeville (on the flats between Erwin and Jonesborough). The Chiscas were known to mine a ‘yellow’ ore. So, it’s not a stretch that Embreeville Mines are located near the point of first encounter. Although there was no gold, there was a substantial deposit of manganese and iron. (Embree also had interests in what would become Kingsport at the Pactolus Iron Works).

The Chiscas were a subset of the Yuchi people, who predated the Cherokee. The Yuchi referred to themselves as “children of the sun”, which leads some to a Mayan connection.

In 2019, I visited a new museum called the Santa Elena Coastal Discovery Museum. Its purpose is to showcase the pre-English history–a story of national significance. Santa Elena was supposed to be the capital of Spanish America (known as La Florida). It was built on an earlier French settlement called Charlesfort, not to be confused with Charleston (English). There were numerous iterations of French and Spanish forts in between, basically in the same vicinity. All of this is documented on at a National Register site on Parris Island, the United States Marine Recruit Depot.

All of this is to say that, as Dr. Kennedy speculated in 1996, our history has been Anglicized. We’re told that Spanish interests were limited to Florida and the French were concentrated along the Mississippi River and Great Lakes. We’re also told that the English discovered the Holston River and floods of German and Scots-Irish settlers populated the area west of the mountains under the English flag. We’re also told that the Cherokee are the original tribe, but we now know the Yuchi were earlier.

So far, the concepts I learned in Dr. Kennedy’s 1996 book are proving to be true. As archaeology and DNA catch up, I can’t wait to see what we’ll learn in the future. I just wish he was here to see it.

We’re not just Cherokee, Scots-Irish, English, or Northwestern European. We’re a big melting pot of DNA from around the world–much more diverse than we’ve been taught. And I’m glad we now live in a world that embraces that fact rather than sorting people by skin tones.