SURVIVING INDIAN GROUPS—GILBERT 
groups who do hunting, fishing, lum- 
bering, turpentine extraction, and col- 
lecting of herbs and roots. Basketry 
and beadwork still survive among these 
groups. Others more advanced are 
cultivators, truck and dairy farmers. 
Still other groups have gone farther 
along the road to adjustment to mod- 
ern civilization. This group is com- 
posed of migrants to cities or industrial 
areas who labor as miners, domestic 
servants, oyster shuckers, cigar makers, 
cotton samplers, artisans, petty trades- 
men, junkmen, repairmen, cannery 
workers, iron and steel workers, and 
the like. 
The history of the eastern Indians 
subsequent to the Colonial Period is 
to a great extent unknown. It was 
not until the latter part of the nine- 
teenth century that an interest in the 
mixed-blood Indian groups began to 
reawaken; especially with the first 
census of the United States Indian 
population in 1890. The group known 
as the Croatans, for example, were 
known as far back as the Civil War 
period, but it was only when the in- 
vestigations of Hamilton Macmillan 
about 1885 led to the formulation of 
the “Lost Colony” theory that the 
groups became generally known. 
About the same time (1889 and 1891) 
Swan M. Burnett and Miss Drom- 
goole called attention to the hitherto 
unnoticed Melungeons in eastern Ten- 
nessee, and Babcock described the 
Nanticoke Indians of Indian River, 
Delaware (1889). 
In 1889, also, James Mooney, an- 
thropologist of the Smithsonian In- 
stitution, sent out a set of questions on 
Indian survivals to local physicians in 
certain counties of Maryland, Vir- 
ginia, Delaware, and North Carolina. 
One of the questions read as follows: 
‘Please give the names and addresses 
of any individuals of pure or mixed 
Indian blood in your vicinity, and 
state to what tribes they belong. If 
any considerable number live in one 
settlement please give the names of 
one or two who may be able to afford 
429 
information.” The replies to this 
circular letter may still be seen in the 
archives of the Bureau of American 
Ethnology. From these documents it 
is apparent that a great number of 
local groups of Indian extraction were 
in existence at that time in the four 
States mentioned. Although no pub- 
lication resulted from this study it is 
quite evident that both Mooney and 
William H. Holmes, the latter then 
Chief of the Bureau of American 
Ethnology, continued an interest in 
the eastern Indian survivals because 
we have the report that in 1912 
Mooney, in addition to his work 
with the eastern Cherokees, made a 
trip to southern Maryland to investi- 
gate the Wesorts. 
It was shortly after the first Indian 
census that George P. Fisher, in 1895, 
published the first account of the 
Moors of Delaware, close neighbors 
of the Nanticoke who had been first 
noticed a few years previously. 
The date of the second major census 
of Indians in 1910 was marked by the 
discovery of still more mixed-blood 
groups of Indian descent in the East. 
These groups were: (1) the Jackson 
Whites (described by Frank Speck in 
1911); (2) the Issues of Amherst 
County, Va. (described by Rev. A. 
P. Gray in 1908); and (3) the Wesorts 
(existence first noted under that name 
by Mooney in 1912, as has been indi- 
cated above). In 1912 Paul Converse 
published his excellent report on the 
Melungeons, adding numerous data 
to the material first collected by 
Dromgoole. 
The third major census of Indians 
in 1930 was the occasion for the 
“discovery” of two more Indian 
mixed groups, (1) the Brass Ankles of 
South Carolina and their relatives 
of the same State (later studied in 
detail by Brewton Berry in 1944), and 
(2) the Cajans and Creoles of Ala- 
bama, described in the same year by 
Horace Bond and Car! Carmer (1931). 
If a major study of Indians is made a 
part of the coming census of 1950 it 
