Despite the DNA test, could this still be? (Native Americans, find, skin)

[Sheepie2000]

My grandmother's grandmother was native American according to my mother who knew her when she was a child. This would be my mother's mother's father's mother. My mother's 23andme results do not show any native American. Is it because of the male (her grandfather) that the test didn't catch it? Would a different test be more accurate? Or is it more likely that someone's child was not really a blood relative? Thanks.

[froglipz]

DNA is truer than stories passed down over time.

[chadgates]

While there is some merit to the above post, especially considering the vast amount of Native American ancestry myths perpetuated through family lore, let's not forget that the breakdown by generation is:

Parents - 50%
Grandparents - 25%
Gr Grand - 12.5%
2G Grand - 6.25%

Now this is assuming a perfectly even split at every generation, which is very rare, and very improbable for 4 generations. So IF this improbable event were to happen you would see, on average, 6.25% NA.

But even that parental 50% can vary widely, where you may be more like 75-25% one way or the other and the probability is that everyone falls somewhere between 25-75%. I would imagine there are also outliers that are even more skewed than 25/75.

Extrapolate that out four generations and you could very well show no NA ancestry even though it was present.

It seems unlikely at this point if they didn't find even small trace amounts, but if you had other relatives tested and still didn't find any NA ancestry, then it would be safe to assume it isn't present.

[lenora]

If you go to "Ancestry Composition" and click on the question mark next to your "speculative" results, there is a link that will take you to a page that explains how 23andme estimates your admixture.

23andMe did not pick up my NA ancestors even though I have written documentation (via Census records) that supports the NA ancestry AND my sister's results picked up some of the NA. And yes, we have the same biological parents.

So, to make a long story short , you can absolutely have NA ancestry and not have it show up in your results.

ETA: Now that I think about it, I will provide 23andMe with my recorded ancestry. My sister and I share a significant amount of large segments not assigned an ancestry. Since the company keeps asking me for my ancestry, I guess it can't hurt.

[PA2UK]

Originally Posted by Sheepie2000

My grandmother's grandmother was native American according to my mother who knew her when she was a child. This would be my mother's mother's father's mother. My mother's 23andme results do not show any native American. Is it because of the male (her grandfather) that the test didn't catch it? Would a different test be more accurate? Or is it more likely that someone's child was not really a blood relative? Thanks.

It has nothing to do with gender. Autosomal DNA recombines randomly and is not based on gender. There's a few possibilities here.

1. The story is a myth. Lots of Americans have legends of Native Americans in their tree - almost always a female ancestor - and it often turns out to be just a myth.

2. The sample groups for Native Americans are small and mostly from Latin America so if your Native American ancestor was from the USA/Canada, it might not match the Native American DNA category. I believe 23andMe have some from North America though, they seem to be more reliable in picking up Native American heritage from North America, but this is still a possibility.

3. It's possible your 2nd great grandmother wasn't fully Native American, so it's possible your most recent full blooded ancestor was from too far back for your mother to inherit any DNA from them.

[Alandros]

Originally Posted by PA2UK

It has nothing to do with gender. Autosomal DNA recombines randomly and is not based on gender. There's a few possibilities here.

1. The story is a myth. Lots of Americans have legends of Native Americans in their tree - almost always a female ancestor - and it often turns out to be just a myth.

2. The sample groups for Native Americans are small and mostly from Latin America so if your Native American ancestor was from the USA/Canada, it might not match the Native American DNA category. I believe 23andMe have some from North America though, they seem to be more reliable in picking up Native American heritage from North America, but this is still a possibility.

3. It's possible your 2nd great grandmother wasn't fully Native American, so it's possible your most recent full blooded ancestor was from too far back for your mother to inherit any DNA from them.

Well summarized.

I'll add that I'd suggest it's either #1, that it's a myth completely. I have found many of these stories in my ancestry to have no merit at all. Or #3, I have found small but legitimate segments of NA DNA in my grandmother and have triangulated matches on this segment so know roughly what ancestry it comes from (a line that leads through Northern Georgia and probably South Carolina, both of which correlate to areas where I've found multiple interconnected or neighboring families that descend from some Native American ancestry, often on specific lines like Downing, Emory/Hembree, Welch, etc... descendants of white traders who had intermixed children... and then the area of South Carolina I think my line ties to is known to be tri-racial and some of the families are tied to the Melungeons and "Lumbee" whereDNA has shown European, African, and Native American DNA amongst different branches)...

Now this ancestry is much further back than any story I had and I had no stories of this line... so some stories have a kernel of truth, maybe there's NA ancestry much further back. Or maybe no truth at all. Keep in mind if you talk to family members about this, some may stick to their guns no matter how much DNA you mention to them (that at least your 2nd great grandmother wasn't full Native American), some people are very attached to their stories and family lore and have little interest in finding the truth.

[brownbagg]

another thing, some native american can have white dna. what i mean is they split from the same ancestry as the common white people did 10,000 years ago. They claim some came across the ice bridge of Siberian and carry the common R1a dna.

They is also another claim that they is just not enough native american tested in the database to ID all the native dna.

[emm74]

Elizabeth Warren, is that you??

Sorry, I couldn't resist. I'm a big EW fan but it just goes to show how common these stories of Native American ancestry are, and of course people continue to believe them when they are told generation after generation.

[PA2UK]

Originally Posted by brownbagg

another thing, some native american can have white dna. what i mean is they split from the same ancestry as the common white people did 10,000 years ago. They claim some came across the ice bridge of Siberian and carry the common R1a dna.

Autosomal DNA doesn't go that far back and has nothing to do with haplogroups.

They is also another claim that they is just not enough native american tested in the database to ID all the native dna.

This is what I mentioned previously, but 23andMe seem to have a bigger sample group and are more likely to identify it than other computers.

[Alandros]

Originally Posted by emm74

Elizabeth Warren, is that you??

Sorry, I couldn't resist. I'm a big EW fan but it just goes to show how common these stories of Native American ancestry are, and of course people continue to believe them when they are told generation after generation.

I think the only American I've talked with that either didn't mention a Native American story when talking about genealogy or that didn't mention it once I brought the topic up is my wife and her family, but that's because she's Mormon from Utah and nearly all of her ancestors immigrated in and moved straight to Utah in the mid 1800s.