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Subject:
From:
Douglas Deal <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Discussion of research and writing about Virginia history <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Thu, 15 Feb 2007 20:47:30 -0500
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W. Scott Smith wrote:
>> While researching for my book, I found instances of Free Blacks & Mulattoes
>> (another name for Native),
>>     
>
> I've also heard that "Free Blacks & Mulattoes" can also be secret code words
> to describe free blacks and mulattoes, but that's undocumented.
>
>
> Scott
>
>
>   

Anita may not have been clear enough in her message, but what she's says 
is important. As the late Ned Heite and other scholars have shown, many 
19th-century records (particularly census) use the term "mulatto" 
loosely for people of color who might be African American or Native 
American or both (see, inter alia, 
http://heite.org/Indians/invisibleindians.html). In the upper south, at 
least, the result for some areas is a serious undercount of Native 
Americans (because researchers typically have just added the mulattoes 
to the African American category without thinking twice about it). There 
is still much to be sorted out on this issue of racial designation.

Doug Deal

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