ADDENDUM #8

TO
IMAZIGHEN – AMERICANS:
THE HIDDEN IMMIGRANTS

By: Edgar A. Howard

Copyright and all rights reserved
Christiansburg, Virginia
July 2017

TOPICS DISCUSSED

PROTOBERBER, OLD SPANISH DOCUMENTS, DNA OF CHEROKEE, LUMBEE PIDGIN, ‘EL’ & ‘AL’
PREFIX IN NAMES, JACK TALES, SAPONI AND PORTUGUESE PLACE NAMES IN APPALACHIANS

It has been half a dozen years since the foundation document concerning
Berber Americans (the dominant tribe in Africa call themselves Imazighen) of what
turned out to be a series, was written. Since then, seven addenda have followed,
with the latest of these having been published three years ago. Since then a flood of
new data continues to become available, coming from various academic disciplines,
such as archeology, mass DNA analysis, newly published oral traditions of
subgroups of people, Spanish period documents, and documents of Berber history
from the Berber perspective. This newly available data enriches the discussion
about Imazighen – Americans, and adds a much more diversity of possibilities of its
history, as well as its antiquity. In this addendum the newly available information
will be reviewed, and its interpretative significance blended in with that previously
presented.

We are becoming aware that one of the most ancient races of mankind at the
very cutting edge of recorded history inhabited the coastal areas of the
Mediterranean Sea, coastal France, Great Britain, and Scandinavia. Genetically they
varied little all the way from the Levant to Lapland. They shared DNA with the
Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons. They traded tin ore from Wales and Cornwall (6)
with their brothers in Iberia, and with their cousins, the bronze makers of the
Middle East. They were genetically indistinguishable from the “Sea Peoples” of the
Aegean Sea, and the pharaohs of Egypt. This new level of understanding of ancient
history is so new that the experts in the field have not yet given a name to this
individual. He is very similar to, and ancestral to the modern Berber and Basque. In
order to discuss him, the name ‘Protoberber’, as in ‘prototype’, will be used in this
essay.

He may have been around for a very long time. Recent anthropologic
excavations in Morocco have unearthed a well preserved skeleton on a 300,000 year
old human, and which is not connected to other early humans originating in sub-
Saharan East Africa. He may be the ‘proto Protoberber’.

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 There is more and more evidence and documentation of the pervasive nature
of the Spanish penetration of the southeastern United States. It has been discussed
that these ‘Spanish’ peoples were largely of Berber origin, even the Sephardic Jews.
Their colonization up the Pee Dee and Yadkin River Valleys, extending to the Little
Tennessee, has been discussed. The colony of Armenian bell worshipers along the
North Carolina / South Carolina border, as well as Sephardic Jews having made an
inscription on a rock in Hooper’s Bald on the trail to Chota, Tennessee have been
presented. Now we are presented with documentation of the presence of Sephardic
Jews in Florida, and of Berber names on the upper reaches of the Cape Fear River of
North Carolina. The massive numbers of abandoned Portuguese Berbers in the
Southeastern United States is becoming evident. They are like the tip of an iceberg.
The fact that the Spanish Colony of Florida extended to the southern border of
Virginia, and that these Europeans were well settled there for about half a century
before the first permanent English settlement at Jamestown, Virginia has escaped
the notice of American historians.

Previous addenda have explained how this “Spanish” settlement in the

Southeast occurred, and how its racial mix was determined by the ethnic history of
the Roman / Phoenician colony of Mauretania. How these peoples largely replaced
the Native American population in the Cherokee and other regional Indian tribes by
means of smallpox has been presented. This reality has now been formalized by a
scientific DNA analysis of the people of the Qualla Cherokee Reservation of North
Carolina. Individual DNA results among the population of “white” people in the
mountains of East Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia, and Kentucky preceding this
study, and previously published in these addenda and verbally presented at public
conferences are confirmed by this study.

“DNA Consultants, Inc. initiated comprehensive DNA testing of the

Cherokees living on the Qualla Reservation in western North Caro-
lina. The North Carolina Cherokees were chosen because after 180
years in the west, Oklahoma Cherokees are so thoroughly mixed
with other ethnic groups, that any DNA test marker obtained
would be meaningless. The laboratory immediately stumbled into
a scientific hornet’s nest. That Cherokee princess in someone’s
genealogy was most likely a Jewish or North African princess. Its
scientists have labeled the Cherokees not as Native Americans,
but as a Middle Eastern-North African population. Cherokees
have high levels of test markers associated with the Berbers,
Native Egyptians, Turks, Lebanese, Hebrews and Mesopotamians.
Genetically, they are more Jewish than the typical American Jew
of European ancestry. So-called “full-blooded” Cherokees have high
levels of European DNA and a trace of Asiatic (Native American)
DNA.” (1)

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 None of this DNA data is to deny that these Berber adoptees into the
Cherokee and other Indian nations were not culturally Cherokee. The Indian tribes
were always on the verge of being wiped out by their neighbors if their numbers fell
too low. For this reason they rebuilt their population numbers by kidnapping
women and children of other peoples, and of adopting promising warrior males.
Witness Daniel Boones’ formal adoption process into the Shawnee tribe.

The dialect of ‘English’ spoken by the descendants of the early inhabitants of

Robison County, North Carolina has been the subject of repeated professional study.
This ‘dialect’, usually called Lumbee, was originally a pidgin of different peoples who
came together there. It was discussed in an earlier addendum. It is a pidgin of
various British, Indian, and African languages. Its roots are ancient, but the mix was
new. By what process, evolution, and bastardization did it occur? It is a profoundly
interesting circumstance. English uses Celtic grammatical word order i.e.. the
subject, the verb, and then the predicate; the adjectives and adverbs come first. It
uses German and Latin words, but has dropped the word endings, and uses the
Celtic grammar of word placement within the sentence to replace the word
endings. In German the verb comes last. So, there is a precedent of a language using
grammar from one language, and a vocabulary of another. Such is Lumbee.

The grammar is Choctaw. They lived on the South Carolina Coast at the
mouth of the Peedee River, the estuary of the Yadkin. It is an odd and primitive
language, and thus is an excellent structure for a pidgin. It has no verb-to-be. The
grammar consisted of a subject and a verb, followed by a word that affirms that the
statement is so. For example, "It is cold today" would come out "cold today it is so",
or "I am hungry" comes out as "I hungry it is so". The Choctaw word for "it is so" is
"okay". Therefore, "I am hungry - okay". The Yankees have other stories to spin, but
this is the real origin of the term "okay". It is in almost all languages now, though
the meaning has shifted a little so that it is no longer a verb-to-be substitute, but
means either "is that not so?, is that alright with you?, do you understand?"

We have Andrew Jackson to thank for its introduction in to the English

language. He had great experience with the Choctaw. Later in life, he developed the
habit of signing off on official documents by writing 'OK' on them, or "It is accurate",
or "It is acceptable", or "I agree".

The Lumbee did what the English did after the Norman invasion. They
combined Anglo-Saxon words with the synonym in French to make sure everyone
understood, such as "last will and testament". The Lumbee duplicated the verb-to-
be, first using the English form "I am" or the older "I be" in the Choctaw terminal
position where the "okay" was supposed to be, and came up with the sentence with
the redundant verb to be, as in "I am hungry, I be".

A fascinating aspect of the Robison County dialect is that small enclaves of its
usage exist in the Appalachia Mountains. One such area is near Duffield, Virginia.(2)

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 Further documentation of Berbers in the Southern United States provided by
Andalusia records shows more Sephardic Jews in Georgia.

“In 1644, Menasseh met Antonio de Montezinos, a Portuguese

traveler and Marrano Sephardic Jew who had been in the New
World. Montezinos convinced him of his conclusion that the indig-
enous peoples of South America Andes' Indians were the descend-
ants of the lost ten tribes of Israel. This purported discovery
gave a new impulse to Menasseh's Messianic hopes, as the settle-
ment of Jews throughout the world was supposed to be a sign
that the Messiah would come. Filled with this idea, he turned
his attention to England, whence the Jews had been expelled
since 1290.” (4)

Further dispersion of Berber culture into the former Spanish or Portuguese

empires is demonstrated by the Berber female first names addressed in the original
essay in this series. In summary, these names are common in the Southeastern
United States, and in other regions where these people settled. It has similarly been
demonstrated since that essay was published, that these Berber female first names
are to be found in Brazil and in the Philippines. (3)
Concerning these names, the author points out that many begin with either
the letters ‘Al’ or ‘El’, which are the Arabic and old Hebrew designations for God, or
Allah. Examples are Elitia, Alca, Alzodenia, Almida, Elvira, Algina, Almira, Elzera,
Almedia, Elenira, Elvertia, and Albina. Even Elvis, a male version of Elvira, is one of
this group. These names are still in use in the Appalachian region of the United
States, Brazil, and the Philippines.
A growing understanding of the extent and nature of the slavery of Berbers
shows that it preceded the Spanish Inquisition. The English, the Portuguese, and the
Spanish for centuries had captured Berbers for the slave trade, and the Berbers had
reciprocated by capturing English and Irish for slaves of their own. Recently
translated Spanish records say:

“In Malaga, Spain, there is much cheap slave labor present.

Soon the trading of slaves will be an important activity. In the last
years of the sixteenth century it will be at the same level as in Lisbon
and Seville. In about 1580 a census of the number of slaves will be
made. At the present they are, without a doubt, clearly greater than
10% of the total population. This is much higher than in the rest of
Western Europe. In this year of 1580 this is at least true of adult male
slaves, of which there are about 600 composed of sixty six Berber
and Moorish slaves, to which it was necessary to add black slaves.
The slave population of Malaga is known to us because King Phillip II,
except for the Black slaves, ordered their expulsion. The city as a
block protested this measure, and first among the arguments was the

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 need to maintain the port activities. In effect, the owners of the slaves
advertised the services of these slaves in the newspaper for use in
loading and unloading ships.”(5 & 7)

It is widely believed that the peoples of the Appalachian Mountains are

mostly Scots-Irish. There is nothing dearer to the traditional ethnologist that the
mountaineer’s custom of telling ‘Jack Tales’. The best know prototype perhaps is
“Jack and the Bean Stalk”. Wikipedia says that these stories come from Cornwall,
whom we have identified as ‘Protoberber’. Wikipedia adds that these people are the
most ancient people in Britain, and today are an ethnic minority. The Jack Tales are
said to be over 5,000 years old. (8)

It is not surprising that modern Berbers in Morocco and Algeria today still
tell Jack stories. Of course, the protagonist’s name is not Jack, but he is portrayed as
the same mischievous simpleton who is always getting in and out of trouble. Is this
information not a cultural DNA, just as informative as a buccal swab?

Other cultural remnants of Berber culture present in the Appalachians and

not described is previous addenda are equally informative. Roda, a community on
Black Mountain in Wise County, Virginia is located in a deep recess in the mountain,
with four hollows radiating from it like spokes from a wagon wheel hub. The name
means ‘wheel’ in Portuguese.

The Berbers migrated up the various branches of the Yadkin River, and
parallel rivers such as the Roanoke River, which heads up in Southwest Virginia. In
passing out of North Carolina and into Virginia it passes through Brunswick County,
the past and present home of the Saponi Indians, also known as the Occaneechi.
They have also historically been called the Achonechy, Aconechos, Akenatzy,
Akenatzy's, Hockinechy, Occaneches, Occaanechy, Occhonechee, Occonacheans,
Occoneechee, Ockanechees, Ockanigee, Okenechee, Acconeechy, Occaneeches,
Ochineeches, and Ockinagee.[9]

Another variant of that name is Occoonita, which is also a place name in Lee
County Virginia just north of Ben Hur. It is located in Back Valley, and is up against
Stone Mountain and the state line with Kentucky. The web page of the Saponi lists
many of their surnames. That list is nearly identical to lists of Melungeon surnames.
(10)

BIBLIOOGRAPHY

1 – Cherokee DNA – Thornton, Richard

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DNA%20scientists%20claim%20that%20Cherokees%20are%20from%20the%20
Middle%20East%20%7C%20Examiner.com.webarchive

2 – Fleenor, Lawrence J. Jr. – communication to the author

3 – additional research by the author

4 – Thornton, Richard – “Hebrew Speaking Indians in the Southern Appalachians”

https://peopleofonefire.com/hebrew-speaking-indians-in-the-southern-
appalachian-mountains.html

5 – Gongora, Mario – Los grupos de conguistadores in Tierra Firme (1509-1530):

Fisonomia historico-social de un tipo Conquista

6 – Cornish DNA
http://www.khazaria.com/genetics/cornish.html

7 – Perotin, Anne – The Wars of Granada

8 – Jack Tales and their ethnic origins

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_(hero)

9 – Saponi Indians
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sappony