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Wow !!!....I am 25% Native American and I find very offensive your post.
I guess you forgot the GENOCIDE of Native Americans in North America: The Trail of Tears, the Sand Creek Massacre, and many, many other.
Don't feel bad - just about anyone with British Isles ancestry has Viking and/or Celtic ancestry - can't get much more brutal than that history.
Ok, why does everyone think it's cool to have Native American ancestors? Why not some other kind of ancestor? I dunno, maybe a King or President or a Scotch-Irish fighter or horse thieves? How about a Japanese Princess? A famous singer? A french man who wrote poetry? A silversmith in Boston? A colonist who fought to bring our country to fruition? Why only Native Americans, some of whom were violent and brutal? I'm really curious.
I'm not sure someone saying they would find it interesting is the same as them saying only Native Americans.
Also every single other group you mentioned also had "some of whom were violent and brutal."
Lots of people love finding royal ancestors, ancestors who fought in wars, ancestors who did significant things or were related to those who did, etc. Why is it surprising that people living in America might find it interesting to descend from the indigenous people of America.
Part of the reason I was hoping to have the story confirmed (it wasn't if anyone is just jumping in,) was to see if my grandfather's family are "reliable witnesses" in terms of the oral history of our family. People take genealogy and heritage differently.
For instance, my paternal grandmother was the brickwall destroyer. She remembered everything with near encyclopedic detail. We have broken down brick walls in OTHER branches of the family because someone recalled a tidbit of her old wisdom like,
"Your grandfather's (her husband) grandmother was related to Folks of Frostburg."-----------Yup, turns out she sure was, and that nugget unlocked his entire family tree back to the 18th century in Allegany County.
"That Welsh fellow lived where the college is now, was a miner, and lived with a bunch of spinster sisters"-----Yup again, and I never would have found him if not but my grandmother's memory.
I can't say the same about my maternal grandfather. Looking back, I think he was just joking around with us "Yeah, my grandmother was a Crow Indian! (no, her last name was Crow.) Hahahah, yeah we're French, French-Canadian! (no evidence of that, looks more like New York/New Jersey Huguenots.) He was a great guy, but like most people, was more concerned with the here and now than the distant past. The "rememberers" like my grandmother are very rare.
I hear it wasn't uncommon for marriages to happen between someone who was white and the other being Native American. Obviously not every white person married a Native American, but it's always possible they married someone who was a 1/4 Native American for example. How likely are you to have even a tiny bit of Native American blood if you are descended from colonists?
I have a tiny bit. I'm 99% European and 1% Native American. Ancestors on one side go back to colonial America. There was a vague oral family history about it but I had assumed that it probably wasn't true since those stories almost never pan out. So yeah, I was surprised it showed up in my DNA.
I have a tiny bit. I'm 99% European and 1% Native American. Ancestors on one side go back to colonial America. There was a vague oral family history about it but I had assumed that it probably wasn't true since those stories almost never pan out. So yeah, I was surprised it showed up in my DNA.
So you actually do have the proof! That's good--better than just the vague stories and always wondering.
I have the same colonial background with vague stories of "Indian blood." I've read that if it was more than four generations ago, it won't show up on the DNA tests though. Don't know how true this is.
And I always wonder what those weddings would have been like. Our colonial ancestors were usually strict Puritans, always attending their rigid church. Also, they were often at war with the native Americans. Native Americans kidnapped their children and walked them through the snow to Canada and the colonists would offer bribes to get them back from the "savages." I can't imagine one of these strict Puritans dragging an unkempt "savage" into church and marrying them. People would talk, lol.
That leaves me to assume that these marriages to "Indians" took place later on. This is where I start to wonder what it was like--we know that many Native Americans in New England had been killed off by then or else driven west. Sometimes I read in the old town histories, accounts that mention an "Indian" who lived in town--usually went by a name like "Old Jim" or some other nickname. Sounds as though they had turned into lost souls by that time. Their culture had been destroyed and tribes were disbanded and scattered to the winds. Maybe the few that were left just drifted into the towns and some intermarried with the settlers, now Americans, not colonists. So these marriages would probably have taken place in the 19th C and probably the Native American spouse had an Anglo-style name.
Looking at my family tree, I don't see any names or other indication that anyone was Native American. I have connected by DNA to a few people who have the Native American legend too though and we all have one family surname in common. But it remains a mystery.
So you actually do have the proof! That's good--better than just the vague stories and always wondering.
I have the same colonial background with vague stories of "Indian blood." I've read that if it was more than four generations ago, it won't show up on the DNA tests though. Don't know how true this is.
And I always wonder what those weddings would have been like. Our colonial ancestors were usually strict Puritans, always attending their rigid church. Also, they were often at war with the native Americans. Native Americans kidnapped their children and walked them through the snow to Canada and the colonists would offer bribes to get them back from the "savages." I can't imagine one of these strict Puritans dragging an unkempt "savage" into church and marrying them. People would talk, lol.
That leaves me to assume that these marriages to "Indians" took place later on. This is where I start to wonder what it was like--we know that many Native Americans in New England had been killed off by then or else driven west. Sometimes I read in the old town histories, accounts that mention an "Indian" who lived in town--usually went by a name like "Old Jim" or some other nickname. Sounds as though they had turned into lost souls by that time. Their culture had been destroyed and tribes were disbanded and scattered to the winds. Maybe the few that were left just drifted into the towns and some intermarried with the settlers, now Americans, not colonists. So these marriages would probably have taken place in the 19th C and probably the Native American spouse had an Anglo-style name.
Looking at my family tree, I don't see any names or other indication that anyone was Native American. I have connected by DNA to a few people who have the Native American legend too though and we all have one family surname in common. But it remains a mystery.
You can have detectable blocks of DNA going back 10 generations, so I'm told, but not everyone does. I don't think any of my ancestors were Puritan. Most of my colonial ancestors settled in Maryland, Virginia and the Carolinas. I have several reasons to believe that my NA ancestor came from one of the southeastern tribes. More research is needed.
I have a tiny bit. I'm 99% European and 1% Native American. Ancestors on one side go back to colonial America. There was a vague oral family history about it but I had assumed that it probably wasn't true since those stories almost never pan out. So yeah, I was surprised it showed up in my DNA.
Since the DNA test results were only 1% Native American, can you be sure that you really are a tiny bit NA or can that just be test noise?
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