Carmel Indians

The Carmel Indians (pronounced Car'-mul) are a group of Melungeons who have lived in Highland County in Ohio. They are descendants and relatives of the Melungeons of Kentucky, also a group of mixed-race ancestry. Anthropologists described both groups as among the "little races" and as tri-racial isolates. The Carmel Indians migrated from Kentucky to Ohio during the 19th century.

The mixed-race Melungeons often called themselves American Indians, as did people outside the group, who tried to explain their physical characteristics. This was one way they could evade some of the racial barriers of antebellum and post-Civil War years. Outsiders called them Indians to explain aspects of the differences between their appearance and that of their mostly European neighbors. They found an adaptive way to evade some of the pressures that intensified in some areas after the Civil War of the binary division of society into black and white races.

As Paul Heinegg (1997) has delineated, the earliest ancestry of eight of the nine common names among the Melungeons in Magoffin County, Kentucky, go back to African Americans free in Virginia before the American Revolution. Most of the free African Americans were children of early unions between white women, indentured servant or free, and African men, indentured servant, free, or slave. Since the mothers were white, their children were free born. Through the years, there may have been some marriages of Native Americans into the group as they migrated to North Carolina, then into Kentucky and Ohio. One family name has been associated with the Saponi of North Carolina.