>Didn't the word mulatto originally referr to American Indian and white mix?



Not originally and, later, not exclusively. At various points in time, Virginia's changing laws included half-Indians in that definition; but most grouped its residents into three categories: White, Indian, and "Negro or mulatto." As with all issues of race, this one is immensely complex. For example:

- The 1662 law spoke of "mulattoes" only in the context of children of white fathers and enslaved Negro mothers. 

- The 1705 law that barred Negroes, Indians, mulattoes, and criminals from holding office defined "mulatto" as "the child of an Indian, or the child, grandchild, or great grandchild of a Negro." However, that definition applied only to officeholding and the courts interpreted "mulatto" status differently in non-officeholding cases.  

- The 1785 statue titled "An Act declaring what persons shall be deemed mulattoes," stated: "[E]very person whose grandfathers or grandmothers any one is, or shall have been a negro, although all his other progenitors, except that descending from the negro, shall have been white persons, shall be deemed a mulatto; and so every person who shall have one-fourth part or more of negro blood, shall, in like manner, be deemed a mulatto."


Two excellent studies in which you might be interested are

- A. Leon Higginbotham Jr. and Barbara K. Kopytoff, "Racial Purity and Interracial Sex in the Law of Colonial and Antebellum Virginia," _Georgetown Law Journal_ 77 (August 1989). Available online at LexisNexis.

- Winthrop D. Jordan, "American Chiaroscuro: The Status and Definition of Mulattoes in the British Colonies," _The William and Mary Quarterly,_Third Series 19 (April 1962). Available online at JSTOR




Elizabeth Shown Mills, CG, CGL, FASG
Tennessee

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