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Archiver > GEN-MEDIEVAL > 1996-11 > 0847836046


From: "Todd A. Farmerie" <>
Subject: Re: The Principal work of the Vikings
Date: Tue, 12 Nov 1996 17:00:46 -0500


Peter Gooding wrote:
> "Todd A. Farmerie" <> wrote:
> >Angie Telepenko wrote:
> >>
> >> Although it appeared that the Norse settlements were either abandoned or
> >> died out, there was a tribe of Indians in the 1600's that was
> >> "discovered" by the English and some of them were fair-haired and
> >> blue-eyed. Sorry, can't remember where I read this or the name of the
> >> tribe. I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong.
> >
> >There are numerous traditions of such "blue-eyed" tribes, and they are
> >linked to the vikings, the lost colony of Roanoke, Portuguese traders,
> >and just about any other group of Europeans that sounded exotic. To
> >directly link these with the vikings is to ignore the 100 years of
> >interaction between more recent Europeans and natives prior to the first
> >successful settlements, as well as the possible role of simple genetic
> >drift.
>
> Angie's description says fair-haired *and* blue-eyed, and "some" of them.

Yes, it did, and this makes the claim more dubious. Still, I was using
the phrase "blue-eyed" indians to collectively refer to the various
"tribes" which have at various times been described in various records
to have had various members sharing various caucasian characteristics,
and claimed by various people to descend from various previous european
settlers. I cannot address the specific "tribe" to which she refered,
since she neither could name it, nor provide any geographical location
for it, nor provide any source for the information. (This is the stuff
from which urban legends are made.)

> I dont think these characteristics are as prevalent in Portugese traders.

No, but that has not prevented several "tribes" living in the mountains
of Tennessee and Kentucky from being provided with this (bogus) origin.
This should tell you the degree of logical/scientific evaluation which
has gone into the generation of such claimed derivations.

> Your claim that to directly link such people with the Vikings is ignorant of
later
> contacts is not neccessarily correct, since this and other evidence may have
> already been taken into account.

I speak from a position of familiarity with such claims. There are
dozens of groups which are classed as Tri-Racial Isolates (TRI). These
TRI consist of the mixed-race descendants of frontier whites,
"civilized" indians, and escaped and free blacks which arose,
particularly (but not exclusively) in the south, along the edges of
settlement. They developed (largely by adopting claims which civilized
society made to explain their origins) traditions about them
representing nearly any group of whites you could think of EXCEPT there
true origins, as simply fringe members of the same white society. (In
some cases, this is well documented, and existing genealogical sources
can be used to trace them straight back to their white settler
ancestors.) This is where the Portuguese traders, Roanoke settlers, and
in more recent times (in terms of when the legends probably arose)
vikings come into play. There is no way that the later european
contacts could have been taken into account, or else the conclusion that
they descended from vikings never could have been made.

> Of course, we do need the full details to
> conclude anything about their origin.

Unfortunately, such details would not enable a positive conclusion to be
reached. The problem is that, wherever there were white colonists, they
were preceeded, often by several generations, by explorers, fisherman,
and traders (even at Plymouth, often looked to as a milestone
settlement, the land that they settled was vacant because the native
population had died out of disease contracted from prior contact).
Thus, it is nothing more than whim (or wish) to say that all of this
more recent contact is irrelevant, and the caucasian characteristics are
instead due to the much earlier contact. There is absolutely no way to
eliminate the more recent contact from consideration, since no one asked
the indians themselves to account for these unusual characteristics
until long after their traditions were contaminated by extensive contact
with the white culture, its expectations and explanations (often more
than a century after colonial contact).

We have caucasian characteristics being observed in locations where
there is known to have been caucasians within a generation or two
prior. How can we say that this immediate contact is immaterial and
instead claim that the characteristics are due to a much earlier
possible contact with a caucasian people not known to have been in that
area. (Vikings can only be proven to have been in Labrador, which is
not a place where there was significant colonial activity, and hence not
likely to be the origin of Angie's reports. While the vikings clearly
went south of there, we cannot identify where this might have been to
correlate such settlement with the later appearance in the area of
light-haired, blue-eyed indians. Most reports of such tribes that I
have seen come from the American south, far removed from any area for
which viking settlement has been claimed, even by most Kensingtonites.)

> However, since the Vikings actually had
> a settlement in N America for an extensive time, and due to the reported
> early time frame of the encounter, suggesting the *possibility* of a direct
> Viking descendency is less ignorant than conclusively claiming all
descendants
> of the Viking settlers died out, without evidence for either.

The ignorance of "conclusively claiming all descendants of the Viking
settlers died out" is a straw man. No one in this thread has suggested
that was the case, and furthermore, the foolhardy nature of any such
claim in no way promotes the alternative (this is like saying that the
claim that Cleveland (currently under 3 feet of snow) is warm is more
likely to be true, since the claim that the North Pole is warm is more
ignorant - the obvious false nature of one statement does not improve
the other).

In this case, suggesting "the possibility of a direct Viking
descendancy" is not at all ignorant. It is, in my opinion, likely (with
the caveat that they did not bring small pox with them, which would
significantly reduce the probability of such descent, but I do not think
this likely).

However, suggesting that light-haired AND blue-eyed natives that
colonists ran into owe their fairness to such a descent is a different
story all together. Based on what accounts survive from the viking
side, it is safe to conclude that what contacts there were were usually
antagonistic (there is no saga equivalent to Pocahontas or Squanto,
while there are accounts of battles fought). This means that genetic
interchange was probably limited. That being the case, the genetic
contribution of the vikings in the population of the tribe would have
been minimal. Thus, the probability that light hair AND blue eyes (as
in Angie's case) would show up in any one descendant, (let alone "some")
after 8-10 generations, is extremely slim. (Take the Lumbee (TRI)
"tribe" of North Carolina, for example. While they are 60% white, 30%
black, and 10% indian based on analysis of (supposedly) race specific
genetic markers, they look like they are indians. The recessive
caucasian characteristics only rarely demonstrate themselves. And this
is with 60% caucasian contribution rather than the (probably) less than
5% in the viking/indian case.) However, when the father or grandfather
of a particular indian is white, then the probability of sharing any two
characteristics is significantly higher. This argument can be turned on
its head to say that when an indian demonstrates multiple caucasian
characteristics, it is much more likely that they came from a caucasian
father or grandfather (mother of grandmother) than that they came from a
white great- great- great- great- great- great- grandfather, whose
descendants lived in the complete absence of whites during the interim.

This is not to say that it is impossible that the caucasian
characteristics of these indians derived from vikings, only that this is
(much much) less likely than the alternative, and we must then turn to
Occam. If there were descendants of the vikings in North America at the
time of colonial settlement, the vast majority of them were unlikely to
have been noticably different (in the eyes of the colonists) from their
pure-blooded neighbors.

So, are there descendants of the vikings in North America? Probably,
but not definitely. Are the light-haired and blue-eyed indians
described by colonists descendants of the vikings? Probably not (or at
least they probably do not owe these characteristics to such a
descent). Are the colonial reports of caucasian characteristics among
indians due to interaction in the immediately prior generations? Very
probably. Are these questions that we can ever hope to answer
definitively? No!

[This is getting a bit afield of medieval genealogy, so perhaps we could
continue the discussion elsewhere.]

ta

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