One of a mixed white and Indian people living in parts of Tennessee and the Carolinas. They are descendants of early intermixtures of white settlers with natives. In North Carolina the Croatan Indians, regarded as descended from Raleigh's lost colony of Croatan, formerly classed with negroes, are now legally recognized as distinct.

A race, or family, of people who lived between the ridges of the East Tennessee mountains long before the long hunters arrived, and whose origin is disputed.

Melungeon is a term traditionally applied to one of a number of so-called "tri-racial isolate" groups of the Southeastern United States, found mainly in the Cumberland Gap area of central Appalachia: eastern Tennessee, southwestern Virginia, and eastern Kentucky. "Tri-racial" refers to populations of mixed European, sub-Saharan African, and Native American ancestry, and "isolate" refers to "genetic isolate," that is, a group that has maintained to some degree a distinct ethnic identity, though is not necessarily isolated in a geographic or cultural sense. Although there is no consensus on how many such groups exist, estimates range as high as 200. http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/Inn/1024/carmel1/Carmel1.htm Some self-identifying Melungeons dislike the term "tri-racial isolate", believing that it has pejorative connotations, although the term "Melungeon" itself was considered pejorative until the late 20th century.