What is a Jackson White?

Question

Why do they look like aliens?

Answer 1

The Ramapough Mountain Indians (also known as Ramapo Mountain Indians or the Ramapough Lenape Nation) are a group of approximately 5,000 people living around the Ramapo Mountains of northern New Jersey and southern New York. Their tribal office is located in Mahwah, New Jersey on Stag Hill Road.

Until the 1970s, the tribe was frequently referred to as the "Jackson Whites", which, according to legend, was shorthand for "Jacks and Whites". Folk belief was that the Jackson Whites were descendants of runaway and freed slaves ("Jacks" in slang) and whites (including Dutch settlers and Hessian soldiers) who had supported the English during the American Revolution, and were forced to flee to the mountains after the end of the war. In his book The Ramapo Mountain People, Historian David Cohen found that the old stories about these people were legends, not history. He states "it became increasingly obvious that, not only was the legend untrue, it was also the continuing vehicle for the erroneous and derogatory stereotype of the Mountain People."

The "Jackson Whites" name and its associated legends are rejected as pejorative by the members of the Ramapough Lenape Nation, who describe themselves as the descendants of the Lenape and Munsee peoples, with varying degrees of African, Tuscarora, Dutch, and other caucasian ancestry. The Ramapough also claim common ancestry with other Native American tribes in the north and west. The Ramapough claim that their ancestral language was Munsee, but the community was known to have spoken English and Dutch in the past, and speak English today.

Answer 2

Michael Jackson?

Answer 3

descended from a group of West Indian women of African descent who were taken to the Delaware Valley to "entertain" the British Troops during the War of Independence. When the British pulled out, the women and their children were abandoned. Another legend on them is that black free-men with the Dutch surnames from the Dutch plantations interbreeded with the Indians, possible Tuscarora Indians. Some agree that it was a mixture of Munsee, Mattabesic, Pompton and Metoac Indians.