Hi Diana and all. In this short space, the subject of mixed marriages - White/Native American or (and) White/African - and the legal consequences can not be investigated. By 1702 the VA Legislature had strictly forbidden Black/White marriages, yet did not so act as to "Indian"/White relationships. Because the white men so outnumbered the women through most of the 17th century, both Blacks and native women served in the stead of white women. So, while intermarriage by White/Indian folks was not illegal, the parties, especially the white men, were looked upon with disdain in the more "civilized" eastern counties, with less scorn in the new counties west and south of Surry, IofW, Chas. City, Nansemond, etc., etc., and were simply ignored on the frontier still further west and into the mountain counties. Similarly, the parish priests and powers that were looked with whatever disdain was appropriate in the views of their own parishioners, lest they be "defrocked." All the while, White/Black interrelationships were scorned, illegal, and held in great contempt, legal and social. While I have frequently seen offspring of Black/White relationships labeled as "Mulato," I rather think that such was more likely a matter of finding a brand appropriate for the offspring of those relationships than were those determinations of precise genetics or lineage. Then too, we MUST be aware that the women who appeared to be of Native American blood, though actually were part Black or part BOTH Black and Native, and the men who "married" those same women, both hoped that some measure of social stigma might be avoided if she (or he, of course) could pass as part-Native American. Finally, after but a couple of generations, the descendants of such unions, through intermarriage with the more seemingly fashionable Whites, became indistinguishable from others of that more dominent lineage. So it was that, while one might have had a great-grandparent of another race, that fact might have become quite forgotten and no longer atall discernable in the appearances. It was such "quarteroons" or those of 1/8th or 1/16th Native or Black blood who, upon arrival in a "new" area of settlement, fresh from a move westwardly, were declared to be and surely appeared as "white" as did any others who might meet them. Crude and socially unacceptable as such words now would be, it then was often said, "After three or four generations, who can tell a good suntan from a half-breed?" I look forward to other comments re this very interesting subject. For all, I would suggest for further reading, LC69-18577, Ed., William Loren Katz, "The Negro In Virginia" (Arno Press and the New York Times, NY, 1969)