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Some of the most prominent in the 19th century were "mixed-blood" or mixed-race descendants of fur traders and Native American women along the northern frontier. The fur traders tended to be men of social standing and they often married or had relationships with daughters of Native American chiefs, consolidating social standing on both sides.
Some Native American women bought African slaves but, unknown to European sellers, the women freed the African men and married them into their respective tribes. [90] If an African-American man had children by a Native American woman, their children were free because of the status of the mother. [90]
During the 18th century, some Native American women turned to freed or runaway African men due to a major decline in the male population in Native American villages. At the same time, the early slave population in America was disproportionately male. Records show that some Native American women bought African men as slaves.
Many Americans today are multi-racial without knowing it. According to the Census Bureau, as of 2002, 75% of all African Americans had mixed ancestries, usually European and Native American. [52] In 2010, the number of Americans who checked both "black" and "white" on their census forms was 134 percent higher than it had been a decade earlier. [53]
Melungeon (/ m ə ˈ l ʌ n dʒ ən / mə-LUN-jən) (sometimes also spelled Malungean, Melangean, Melungean, Melungin [3]) was a slur [4] historically applied to individuals and families of mixed-race ancestry with roots in colonial Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina primarily descended from free people of color and white settlers.
Certain Native American tribes of the Inocoplo family in Texas referred to themselves as "mulatto". [123] At one time, Florida's laws declared that a person from any number of mixed ancestries would be legally defined as a mulatto, including White/Hispanic, Black/Native American, and just about any other mix as well. [124]
A Gallup poll on interracial dating in June 2006 found 75% of Americans approving of a white man dating a black woman, and 71% approving of a black man dating a white woman. Among people between the ages of 18 and 29, the poll found that 95% approved of blacks and whites dating, and about 60% said they had dated someone of a different race.
Historically, mixed-race European-Native American and sometimes full blood Native American families of the South adopted the term "Black Dutch" for their own use, and to a lesser extent, "Black Irish," first in Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee. As the researcher Paul Heinegg noted, the frontier was also the area of settlement of mixed ...