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I don't think she was going for the Cherokee princess in her outfit, she has always glamed up or sexed up most things she wore in public performances. It was most likely her designer Bob Mackie whose idea it was to add all the wild embellishments to her costume. The song half breed was written by someone else and she just preformed it as she did everything – with lots of outlandish style. She also did a song about gypsies and other ballad type of songs with a similar theme, which I think were mostly written by a the same individuals, a songwriting duo. Maybe it has always been the listeners of her song that assumed she was actually a half breed. After googling her it appears as if she has been open about being mostly Armenian from the get go. So I think it was the American public who latched onto the words of the song, assuming it was her own story due to her dark coloring, which is odd since, like I said, she did other songs about different heritages.
For unique and exotic outfits see below: (you will see her in a Eastern Indian outfit here too.)
anyways, I dated an Armenian guy 10 years ago so I got to know all the down and dirty history.
He still hates Turkish people..sigh..
I was not allowed to order Turkish coffee AT ALL. I used to take martial arts classes with my sifu who was Turkish...and the class went out to dinner one night, and we got to invite our friends/boyfriends/girlfriends...
let's just say that the evening ended with my turkish kung fu sifu and armenian boyfriend screaming at each other..
I don't go to kung fu class anymore..and I dumped my armenian boyfriend.
anyways, no cherokee princess in the Kim bloodline..but she is definately an Armenian "princess".
But - there were French backwoodsmen traders living in SC around 1799, and it's known that some of them had Indian wives in the Upcountry and white wives in the Low Country. That may or may not be a
Having tried the obvious sources without much success, it appears that DNA testing would be called for to learn more about G-G-Grandmother Mary's ethnicity. There are six or seven descendents whome I know from the female line who would qualify for such testing - just have to get them interested.
If anyone reading this lengthy account has any helpful ideas about further research into Mary's background, please share them - many thanks.
From my experience mtDNA is not of much value other than for anthropological studies. It goes back 20000 or 30000 years and it tells you we go back 30000 years and find hunters who lived in the alps or something. I found 23andme.com more informational from an ethnic point of view, and you could do that yourself and its cheaper. It will tell you your % of ancestory. which is where you are going, I think. And i have had a lot of contact from 23and me with 3-4 cousins although I am hesitant to share my genome so they can paint the chromosomes to see where we are related. Best outcome for the mtDNA would be if the results from your mother's mother's etc came back a D or a G or whatever haplogroup they say in NA/Asian.
But good luck.[/quote]
Thanks for the recommendations and suggestions - my other ancestors, the vast majority of whom arrived here in America from the early 17th to late 18th centuries, are very well documented, on both sides, so I know I am (in descending order of percentage) English, Scots-Irish, French, German, Channel Islander (Jersey), Scottish, Irish, Welsh, perhaps Dutch (from the New York Colony just after it left Dutch control - the surname may have been anglicized), and perhaps Swiss (or they could have been refugeeing French Huguenots). It's just g-g-grandmother Mary's line which is the mystery...so I'd really like to try the mtDNA. I'm not particularly interested in percentages, just if what we suspect is there or not, as she's really the only candidate.
BTW, a first cousin's young son just had a full DNA test done - so I have some confirmation of my grandparents' lines. I'm not sure which test he had, so am uncertain about the mtDNA, as we are related through male descent - he is the son of my uncle's son, and mtDNA would show his maternal line, which we do not share. No Indian related traits showed up in his test, but it might not have been the right test for this sort of info about this particular ancestor...
First off, I know many professional genealogists and respect the profession.
But I'm curious as to the extreme offense some posters take at someone else for trying to figure out who they are and where they came from. Why do you care if they claim to have any particular ancestry if they aren't in your family and they aren't trying to game the system.
Like anything else, it's deeply personal. We all resonate to different cultures and identities. Do we need "blood" to make it so? I don't think so. Who knows where our psyche picks these things up. I have been told by Hawaiians that I'm more Hawaiian than some who are full-blooded. But I don't claim that. I take that as a compliment. My MIL told me once that she thinks I was Japanese in a past life. That made her happy. I didn't see any reason to get into an argument with her. We see traits that we like and we emulate them. The fact that some people claim native american heritage is a sign that we have come a very very long way from the days when interracial marriage was frowned upon and punished. Which brings up another point -- my genealogist friends have told me the greatest challenge in finding records of interracial marriages is that people's names were changed in the old records to hide their heritage. So we really don't know.
As for the DNA tests, they aren't really 100% yet. If you were to go to 5 different testing agencies, you may very well come back with 5 different results. See article here.
IMHO - just let people be. Everyone is on a journey to find themselves. Don't get yer undies in a twist because their worldview and yours don't match, or because their view of themselves doesn't match your "rules." Really. What business is it of yours? At the end of the day, we are all the same race: HUMAN.
I was raised with the info that I am part Native American. No princess and not enough to claim anything. As I started to research my family, the NA lead kept deadending at slave records. I then read in another thread that a lot of whites claiming Cherokee actually have African American ancestors. People today aren't deliberately lying, its what they've been told because "back in the day" it was more socially acceptable to be N.A. than A.A. I thought that was really interesting! I've recently learned of the 23andme test and will be ordering it to solve the mystery.
When all else fails - do your homework (DNA, ancestry research), add your heart and run with it.
Who really cares what others think?
We are raised in a world of stereotypes and stigmas. Some good, some bad, some accurate, some based Hollywood.
Just follow your own path and toss aside the rest.
My great grandmother on my mothers side was cherokee born in the 1880's but i never held it against her.
That's so nice of you. She couldn't help it that she was born in the 1880s.
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