In the Thi
rd Age of Arda, historians and philosophers of the Dúnedain seem to have developed an odd classification scheme for Mannish peoples. It was derived from their political view but often used to defend nationalistic or racist claims that had been prevalent even among the ‘Free Peoples’ of Middle-earth.

The Dúnedain who were Third-Age descendants of Westernesse or Númenor, the island that sunk in the late Second Age, obviously placed themselves at the top of the list. They thought of themselves as Elf-Friends or High Men of the West, which was intended to suggest cultural as well as genetic superiority. Below them were the Middle Men arranged, the descendants of those peoples that had never lived in Númenor yet were considered distant relatives of the Edain, though often dismissed as ‘wild’. They included, among others, the Éothéod and Rohirrim, the Pre-Númenóreans of Eriador and Gondor and sometimes even the Drúedain, whose history is told in
TD
and shall not be repeated here. The third and lowest class is comprised of the Men of Darkness, most often simply called ‘Enemies’.

A troop of pre-Haladin on the march

N
OMENCLATURE

Ethnographic terminology in the sources is often confusing. According to
S
, the Quenya term
Atani
was a generic word fo
r Men (already applied to them in Valinor,
WPP
) while the Sindarin equivalent
Edain
was more or less limited to the Three Houses who had first entered Beleriand, or
Elendili
(Elf-friends).

‘
But when the Eldar became aware of other kinds of Men … they distinguished the Elendili as Núnatani, Dúnedain (pl. of Dúnadan) “western men”. … Other men were called Hrónatani, rhúnedain;’
- that is: Easterlings, Eastrons -,
‘but more commonly Hrávani (S Rhovain) “Wild-men, Savages”
’ (
WPP
) This latter expression is of course pejorative and should be avoided in serious discussions.

The Three Houses, or tribes, were subsequently most often referred to by the names of their most renown leaders: Bëorians or Bëorrim, Hadorians (though their original leader had been a certain Marach) and Haladin, who were sometimes renamed Haladin or Haladin. But though the eponymic heroes Bëor, Hador and Haleth had all lived in Beleriand, the same epithets are often indiscriminatingly applied to their ancestors from the times before they had reached the West of Middle-earth.

The matter is further blurred by
LP
referring to ‘Atani’ as the native tongue of Edain though it was only spoken by Hadorians and Bëorians while the language of the Haladin was entirely distinct. Another epithet is ‘the Lesser Folk’, as
PR
refers to the first Bëorians from the time when they became distinct from the Hadorians. (
Lesser
seems to refer to number here, not to quality.) Hence, we may infer a Greater Folk of Hadorian origin, though this is nowhere stated.

To simplify the further discussion, it may help standardise the nomenclature in the following, non-canonical, manner:

Northern Atani
: the common ancestors of Bëorians and Hadorians.
Southern Atani
: the Haladin. This distinction is based on their migratory pattern.
pre-Bëorrim, pre-Marachrim, pre-Haladin
: the ancestors of the three Edainic peoples, canonically also known as
Atanatári
or Fathers of Men, before they entered Beleriand, including their kinsmen who separated from them before they crossed the Ered Luin mountain range. Marach’s name is preferred here because he preceded Hador as the leader of his tribe.
Bëorians, Hadorians, Haladin (Halethrim)
: Canonical terms for Dúnedain in Beleriand and their later descendants, including scattered groups who left Beleriand during the First Age.
Bórrim
: Rhúnedain, the Swarthy Men, led by Bór, who settled in Eriador and Beleriand, originally unrelated to the Atani but merging with them and absorbed by them.
Middle Men
: Canonical term officially referring to the Second Age descendants of the Northern Atani in Eriador, including Edain who had left Beleriand and did not relocate to Númenor in the early Second Age. In the Third Age, this term described all Men who were not Dúnedain but generally on good terms with them, including the Northmen and particularly the Rohirrim.
pre-Númenóreans
: Second and Third Age descendants of the Southern Atani who were scattered from southern Eriador to Umbar, including the Dunlendings and the Men of Bree.

Few data on the indigenous Mannish peoples have survived the First Age
. The Elves of Beleriand did not look beyond the Ered Luin while early Men possessed no written records. It can be deduced that they immigrated into the north-west of Middle-earth on at least two distinct paths, one leading them through the far North, the other through the South. The latter road was taken earlier, and not by Atani.

‘
Historians in Gondor believed that the first Men to cross the Anduin were indeed the Drúedain. They came (it was believed) from lands south of Mordor, but before they reached the coasts of Haradwaith they turned north into Ithilien, and eventually finding a way across the Anduin (probably near Cair Andros) settled in the vales of the White Mountains and the wooded lands at their northern feet. ”They were a secretive people, suspicious of other kinds of Men by whom they had been harried and persecuted as long as they could remember, and they wandered west seeking a land where they could be hidden and have peace.”
’
(
TD
)
Hence, the Drúedain or ‘
”Pukel-Men” occupied the White Mountains (on both sides) in the First Age.
’
(
TD
)

The next ethnic group to arrive was the Southern Atani, to be precise: the pre-Haladin. We may have to imagine them like remote ancestors of the Bree-folk, ‘
brown-haired, broad, and rather short, cheerful and independent.
’
(
FR
)
They settled as well in the valleys of the White Mountains and stayed on rather friendly terms with the Drú-folk. Therefore, when the main part of these pre-Haladin was forced by outer circumstances to wander on, ‘
an emigrant branch of the Drúedain accompanied
[them]
at the end of the First Age … but most had remained in the White Mountains, in spite of their persecution by later-arrived Men, who had relapsed into the service of the Dark
.’
(
TD
)
^[1]

^[1] The maps in
Fig. 2
et seq. are derived from those in
HoMe
; Beleriand has been attached according to the relative positions of the islands of Himling (= Himring) and Tol Fuin (= Taur-nu-Fuin). Note that in the First Age, Arda was a flat world which should have significantly distorted the topographical features of Middle-earth east of the Ered Luin.