Portuguese Making of America: Melungeons and Early Settlers of America

by Manuel Mira

Overview

Early American history before the 17th century is rather vague. The 15th and 16th centuries are often called the lost or forgotten centuries in American history.

The author has painstakingly done a lengthy research on the attempts of one particular group to settle in North America since the early 15th century. The Portuguese people are one the oldest European group of settlers, probably the first to arrive in this continent and permanently settle among the natives in a peaceful manner. This book follows their quest for a better life in the New World and of other groups who consider themselves Portuguese, such as the Melungeons of the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780965892711
Publisher:	Portuguese-American Research Foundation, Incorporated
Publication date:	04/01/2001
Pages:	416
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.10(d)

What People are Saying About This

Manuel Luciano da Silva

Manuel Luciano da Silva,M.D. - Physician & Historian
No library on Americana will be complete without this valuable book. It brings together all the Portuguese discoveries and explorations.

Thaddeus C. Guldbrandsen

Thaddeus C. Guldbrandsen University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
This book brings together a great diversity of historical resources and oral accounts of Iberian exploration and settlement since the 1500's of what would become the United States.[and]…provides detailed timelines and numerous citations that will be helpful for future researchers and genealogists. (The Forgotten Portuguese book review, Portuguese Studies Review, ICGP, University of New Hampshire)

Jean Patterson

Manuel has good informal style of his own. The inclusion of many facts about the development of the Portuguese background, with the careful research he has done, and carefully footnoted, adds a good deal to the book, and makes a welcome addition, particularly to those researchers with some background of Melungeon reading, or study, or an interest in European history.
—:(Jean Patterson Bible Historian, researcher, author Dandridge, Tennessee)

Adalino Cabral

Adalino Cabral, Ph.D. Portuguese, Hispanic and American Cultures and Languages Educator Boston area
Portuguese presence in the United States of America has a long history much of which has yet to be unfolded. Unless courageous researchers take the bull by the horns our past will fade into obscurity thereby forever shadowing the untold truth. Fortunately, because of Manuel Mira's remarkable thirst for knowledge coupled with a tremendous appetite for historical revelation, we are now blessed with his English version of The Portuguese Making of America a very important contribution to Appalachia's Melungeon population. The powerful book is not only a tribute to the many whose Portuguese roots have been lost in the annals of time, but equally a historical instrument which serves to trigger further study by researchers at the local, national, and international levels.

Manuel Mira is to be congratulated for finally bringing to fruition The Portuguese Making of America. It is indeed, a most significant entry into the everlasting annals of Portuguese-American and Canadian history.