The panel held a lively debate before an audience of about 100 at the Third Union Melungeon gathering on the campus of the University of Virginia's College at Wise. A Melungeon is someone who's open to talk about the possibility that they're not just white . . . There are enough people of mixed ancestry to redefine what is white. Decades ago, academics settled on the notion that Melungeons were essentially a mixture of European Caucasians, blacks and native Americans.
More recent research show probable influences from all the peoples of the Mediterranean as well.
Now we're discussing Moors, Basques, even gypsies. Gallegos, a New Mexico native who has written about the Spanish and Portuguese influence on colonial southeast and southwest North America, emphasized the possibility that Melungeons are largely descendants of those groups. But he noted that the Portuguese who came to the coast from Florida to Virginia in the late 1500s were themselves profoundly mixed in origin. The top 10, he said, include many groups who historically settled the Iberian Peninsula and nearby islands - North African Moors and Berber Arabs, Greeks, the various peoples of Italy, Portuguese Celts, Portuguese from the Canary Islands and southern Irish Celts. Interestingly, some of those tested also closely matched Caucasians in Minnesota, he noted.