The History Of Ethnic Qarsherskiyan People

The history of the Ethnic Qarsherskiyan Tribe begins over 400 years ago when the British began settling Jamestown on the Virginia Peninsula in Southeastern Virginia. Some of the first Black people from Africa to be brought to America for slavery would be brought to the Virginia Peninsula. The peninsula was also home to much of the territory of the Powhatan Confederacy, a large empire of united Native American tribes with a network of trade routes. These 3 different races and the ways they interacted set the stage for Ethnic Qarsherskiyan people to come into existence, and so, Ethnic Qarsherskiyan people trace their history back 500 years to Europeans first contact with the Indigenous People of the Chesapeake Bay Area. When Black people, usually men, were given their freedom after working hard as slaves, or when they managed to successfully escape, many joined maroon communities to avoid recapture. They intermarried into Native American populations and with White indentured servants. This isolation, living in a paralell society separate from the British colonies, combined with being mixed race, caused these early communities to form their own unique identities and cultures. Some travelled West to Appalachia to escape persecution and went on to become the Melungeon tribe which exists today. Elvis Presley was a Melungeon. Others stayed behind. One famous example is of the Great Dismal Swamp Maroons, who stayed in the swamps of coastal Virginia and North Carolina until after the civil war. Some remained even longer. Many lived in died in the swamps, having never seen a White man who wasn't the descendant of an indentured servant. There was less issues like racism in these isolated communities. A grouping of mixed race communities exists today called the Sweetgum Kriyul tribes. Melungeons and Lumbee are two of the most famous Sweetgum Kriyul tribes. The Ethnic Qarsherskiyan tribe is lesser known.
Ethnic Qarsherskiyan people often blended in, identifying with whatever race they most looked like, or just calling themselves mixed or multiracial. Many ended up completely assimilating to American culture. However, during the Jim Crow Era in the South, many Ethnic Qarsherskiyans didn't want to send their kids to underprivileged Black schools but were not White enough to go to White schools. In the 1960s, more tolerant attitudes towards interracial marriage allowed Ethnic Qarsherskiyan people to make a comeback, but the process of finding one another and reconnecting and rebuilding a community that had nearly been lost proved to be a daunting task. In the cities of London, Ohio and Lorain, Ohio and Vermillion, Ohio and Huron, Ohio and Sandusky, Ohio, many Ethnic Qarsherskiyan people from the Napper, White, Whitelow, Dewbre, Davenport, and Whiteglow clans/families still had their culture in tact in the 1990s. The same could be said about Ethnic Qarsherskiyan people in Keyser, West Virginia and in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia and North Carolina, including especially on the Virginia Peninsula in the cities of Newport News and Yorktown. DNA testing websites would soon become a thing and people began to reconnect with their families and share their stories. Since the late 1980s or early 1990s, many began identifying as Qarsherskiyan, a name which comes from the legend of Qarcer, and organized themselves as one of the Sweetgum Kriyul tribes similar to Melungeons and Lumbees and other Sweetgum Kriyul tribes. The community finally had a name to be able to tell it apart from other triracial isolates. Many began to resent the term "Mulatto" for various reasons and identity with their centuries old rediscovered Ethnic Qarsherskiyan identity. A few had never lost their culture and traditions and began tribal leaders, teaching their ways to the rest of the tribe as new people began discovering they descended from Ethnic Qarsherskiyan people and filtering into the tribal membership. The Ethnic Qarsherskiyans are triracial and the US federal government doesn't recognize them as a Native American tribe due to blood quantum laws. Most Ethnic Qarsherskiyan people identify as a tribe of Creoles or Triracial people, relating to similar groups like Melungeons and Lumbees and Louisiana's Redbones, and collectivly refer to these groups as the 13 Main Sweetgum Kriyul Tribes. By 2007, the Ethnic Qarsherskiyan community had grown to make up nearly half the population of all Sweetgum Kriyul people, and has stayed this way ever since. There are between 400000 and 1000000 Ethnic Qarsherskiyan people in the Eastern United States. There are 1 to 2 million Sweetgum Kriyul people in total. Still, Melungeons and Lumbees and other groups gain more recognition online due to wild conspiracy theories and folk legends and influence from substanciated claims that Elvis Presley and JD Vance are Melungeon. Ethnic Qarsherskiyan people have, as of 2024, had a less successful cultural renaissance when compared to the Melungeons, and face trouble in their resurgence due to ignorant people on the internet spreading misinformation and fake news in an attempt to delegitimize Ethnic Qarsherskiyan people, pointing out a lack of historical records due to the newer name for a previously unnamed people group.