UT - Druedain / Second Age Emigrants from Numenor

[Valandil]

The UT section on "The Druedain" contains the information that a remnant of the Druedain sailed with the Atani and lived among the Numenoreans - having lived along with the Folk of Haleth in Beleriand. It also relates that as Numenor began to fall into rebellion - they begged for passage to Middle Earth on the great ships, despite their fear of the water - going one by one or in twos and threes, trying to reach the northwest parts of Middle Earth.

To where in Middle Earth did they go - and did their descendants survive into the end of the Third Age?

We're also told that by the end of the First Age, most of the Druedain lived in the White Mountains - especially the extreme east (near Anorien) and west (the peninsula of Andrast) ends. It was thought that those to the west had died out - until some came from their caves and attacked the survivors of Saruman's forces who fled south.

I suggest that the Numenoreans who gave them passage to Middle Earth might well have dropped off the Druedain they carried in the area of the White Mountains. They were probably able to learn where the other Druedain were known to be (or to have been) - and it would be a convenient stopover on their way to Pelargir, where the Faithful among the Numenorean immigrants would try to settle.

Were these "Numenorean Druedain" able to assimilate into the surviving Druedain tribes, if they found them? Or would they have tried rather to live apart from them - being accustomed to their lives in Numenor? Perhaps those in Andrast WERE the descendants of the ones who came from Numenor?

[Alcuin]

Originally Posted by Valandil

It was thought that those [Drúedain who settled] to the west [of the White Mountains] had died out - until some came from their caves and attacked the survivors of Saruman's forces who fled south.
…
Were these "Numenorean Druedain" able to assimilate into the surviving Druedain tribes, if they found them? Or would they have tried rather to live apart from them - being accustomed to their lives in Numenor? Perhaps those in Andrast WERE the descendants of the ones who came from Numenor?

Thank you! I had forgotten that. The Drúedain were always secretive and wary. Of old they were companions of the Second House of the Edain.

Were not Enedwaith and Minhiriath formerly populated by a people closely related to the Second House of the Edain? And did they not first welcome the Númenóreans until the Númenórean shipbuilders devastated the great forest that formerly grew in that region? I think their survivors were mostly in the forest at the south end of the Blue Mountains near the mouth of the Brandywine? The Dunlendings were also supposed to be folk of this kindred. But there is no mention of the Drúedain returning to any alliance with them.

Hardly any Drúedain survived the First Age. I believe Unfinished Tales says they became uneasy with the rebellion of the Númenórean Kings against the Valar, and beginning in the third millennium of the Second Age, complained that the island felt unsteady beneath their feet, indicating that the volcano, Meneltarma, was no longer dormant as the Dúnedain believed.

According to the Tale of Years, Pelargir and its environs were first settled in 2350 of the Second Age. I think Umbar was settled as early as Second Age 1800, when “the Númenóreans begin to establish dominions on the coasts”; Umbar is described as “a great fortress” in the year 2280, some seventy years before the founding of Pelargir. The Faithful Númenóreans tended to settle in northern Middle-earth, closer to the Elves, and Pelargir eventually became their primary port, while Umbar remained the greatest and most important Númenórean settlement in the Second Age.

It would make sense that the Númenórean Drúedain would be friendliest with the Faithful Dúnedain of Númenor, and for that reason would be more likely to seek passage with them; moreover, they would be again more likely to settle near them back in Middle-earth.

Unfinished Tales also includes the story of “The Faithful Stone”, the “magic” carving by a Drúadan of Beleriand that fought a raiding party of Orcs and stomped out a fire to save the family with whom the Drúadan carver lived. Surely this is a reference to the Púkel-men of Dunharrow who resembled Ghân-buri-Ghân.

So here’s a question: did the returned Númenórean Drúedain carve the Púkel-men, or did other Drúedain of Middle-earth? Were the Púkel-men carved in the Second or Third Age? Were they carved before or after the Dead Men of Dunharrow broke their vow of alliance with Isildur?

[Valandil]

I wonder if the Pukel Men were carved even as far back as the First Age! That's when UT tells us that the Druedain made their way to the White Mountains.

On the other hand - it was the association of the Druedain and the Elves where they learned to use metal tools (just like other Men of Middle Earth), to enhance their stone-carving (and wood carving) capabilities. So... maybe Numenorean Druedain immigrants in the Second Age DID manage to assimilate with those already in that part of the White Mountains - and what they learned allowed for those figures to be carved... probably Second Age, I'd guess, if that's how things went.

[Alcuin]

I wondered if perhaps they’d been carved in the second or third century of the Third Age.

After the Men of the Mountains welshed on their oath to Isildur at Erech, they hid and dwindled until there were no more. Then their spirits paraded through what was later Harrowdale into the Door to the Paths of the Dead. The Dúnedain of Calenardhon couldn’t have enjoyed this experience any more than the Rohirrim did later, even though they might have better understood it, or been less fearful of the specters of the Oathbreakers. At least at the beginning of Gondor, they’d have had a chance of remembering their old alliance with the Drúedain: even though all the Drúedain had left Númenor before it sank, they were still technically subjects of the King; and at least until all memory of old friendships and alliances was lost, I think they might have been willing to carve watch-stones at the turnings of the climbing road. After all, during the Second Age, the Men of the Mountains were still using the Sauronic shrine beneath Dimholt as living men.

If the watch-stones were carved in the First Age, then that shrine must be a very bad place indeed!

Surely the stones are indeed Drúedain watch-stones: after all, Tolkien bothered to discuss them as such. In which case, once the carvers were dead, did they lose their power? And what did the carvers hope to accomplish, other than making the local inhabitants feel better? There can be little doubt they were ancient long before the Rohirrim arrived. So the local inhabitants, other than carvers of the Drúedain or their near relatives with similar skills and habits, were the Dúnedain of Calenardhon, who replaced by Eorl and the Éothéod (i.e., the Rohirrim) five hundred years before the War of the Ring; or the Men of the Mountains (i.e., the Dead Men of Dunharrow), who were replaced by the Dúnedain of Gondor (Calenardhon) around the end of the Second Age. If these Men of the Mountains/Dead Men of Dunharrow were akin to the people of the Second House of the Edain, are they not the original settlers of the place?