Editing Melungeon (section)

===Claims and hypotheses===
According to the 1894 [[United States Department of the Interior|Department of Interior]] Report of Indians Taxed and not Taxed within the "Tennessee" report, "The civilized (self-supporting) Indians of Tennessee, counted in the general census numbered 146 (71 males and 75 females) and are distributed as follows: [[Hawkins County, Tennessee|Hawkins county]], 31; [[Monroe County, Tennessee|Monroe county]], 12; [[Polk County, Tennessee|Polk county]], 10; other counties (8 or less in each), 93.  Quoting from the report:<blockquote>The Melungeans or Malungeans, in Hawkins county, claim to be Cherokees of mixed blood (white, Indian, and negro), their white blood being derived, as they assert, from English and Portuguese stock. They trace their descent primarily to 2 Indians (Cherokees) known, one of them as Collins, the other as Gibson, who settled in the mountains of Tennessee, where their descendants are now to be found, about the time of the admission of that state into the Union (1796).</blockquote>

Anthropologist E. Raymond Evans wrote in 1979 regarding Melungeons: "In Graysville, the Melungeons strongly deny their Black heritage and explain their genetic differences by claiming to have had Cherokee grandmothers. Many of the local Whites also claim Cherokee ancestry and appear to accept the Melungeon claim. ..."<ref>Evans, E. Raymond (1979). "The Graysville Melungeons: A Tri-racial People in Lower East Tennessee", ''Tennessee Anthropologist'' IV(1): 1–31.</ref>

[[Jack D. Forbes]] speculated that the Melungeons may have been [[Saponi]]/[[Powhatan]] descendants, although he acknowledges an account from circa 1890 described them as being "free colored" and mulatto people.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Forbes |first1=Jack D. |title=Africans and Native Americans: The Language of Race and the Evolution of Red-Black Peoples |date=1993 |publisher=University of Illinois Press |location=Champaign, IL |isbn=9780252051005 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5D17DwAAQBAJ&dq=%22A+great+many+declare%22+Forbes&pg=PT240}}</ref>

In 1999, historian C. S. Everett hypothesized that John Collins (recorded as a [[Saponi|Sapony]] Indian who was expelled from [[Orange County, Virginia]] about January 1743), might be the same man as the Melungeon ancestor John Collins, who was classified as a "mulatto" in 1755 North Carolina records.<ref>C. S. Everett, "Melungeon History and Myth," ''Appalachian Journal'' (1999)</ref> However, Everett revised that theory after he discovered evidence that these were two different men named John Collins. Only descendants of the latter man, who was identified as mulatto in the 1755 record in North Carolina, have any proven connection to the Melungeon families of eastern Tennessee.<ref>{{cite web | url=http://www.freeafricanamericans.com/Church_Cotanch.htm | title= ''Free African Americans,'' ''op.cit.'', Church and Cotanch Families |publisher=Freeafricanamericans.com |access-date=August 21, 2013}}</ref>{{Promotional source|date=September 2023}}