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Yo Rocks4, this is a white person who obviously has traced her background back. There are several people like me I am sure. Visit Oklahoma and you will find some registered people who appear all white. So yeah it is not a myth.
Some people on here aren't really thinking this through, and just being offensive. There are several people who probably lie about their heritage, but there are also many people who look white, but actually have native american blood. Firstly, I am not that much Native American. Out of the eight great grandparents everyone has, two of the eight were full blood registered cherokee women that actually look like what people think they look like (duh because they were full blood). Anyways, the other six great grandparents of mine are different anglosaxon heritage with blonde hair and blue eyes. Even though that is not my main background, I knew both my great grandmas and spent time with them and loved theme (and still have 1/4). So, its offensive when someone tries to act like I am lying and it doesnt count, even though they are my relatives that I was close to. Like I cannot be proud of the women who I share blood with who I share many features with?? Thats why its offensive. Its also a bad assumption saying that a person who appears white cannot be cherokee because their phenotype.
I received the blonde wavy hair and blue eyes from my other grandparents, but I received several cherokee traits that my other grandparents do not have and that people overlook because they cannot see them from far away. It just happened with my genetics that I look all white from far away (which I almost am). My cousins look more cherokee than me with hair and eyes. However, I have the high distinctive cheekbones, tall and slender body, eye shape, brow bone, tan skin all year round (not as tan as my great grandmas though), course hair, and probably other features. I have pretty full lips too, but I have no idea where that came from. Anyways, you shouldnt judge people just because they may have received a strange gene mixture. I have a cool face and I am proud of it. When people compliment my bone structure and ask about my background, I feel like I have a right to say Scottish and a little cherokee. so yeah my two sense. I love the cherokee culture, values, and look. I respect them.
The reason why there are so many cherokee descendants is because there were seven good sized tribes. Also, out of all the tribes, cherokees accepted the english settlers culture and ways of life the most. They got along very well and it was popular for them to intermarry. The other tribes dwindled more because illness, wars, or kept to themselves without intermarrying as much. Thats what I've heard from history classes and online research. So that can help answer whoever asked why its always cherokee (Rocks4) . They are just a large tribe who intermarried often. We should not judge people based on purely looks anyways, cherokee or any race. Shout out to native americans in Oklahoma!!
The amount of people claiming Native American is just statistically not feasible. A lot of celebrities claim to have Native American but when their genealogy is checked they have none. I'm sure this is the same for the general population as well.
My mother swore she was NA or possibly some percentage Asian. She was close adopted so she thought it gave her free reign to claim whatever. I thought it was nonsense simply because of the location and time of her birth and the only fact we knew about her birth mother was she was a college student. I don't think there were that many minority college students flying around rural colleges in the 1950s.
I got tired of listening to it and I took a DNA test about 10 years ago to prove her wrong. Yep, not a drop of NA or Asian blood in me. Recently she took a test to I guess verify my result and it did.
When I first started my genealogy search many years ago, my paternal grandpa refused to talk about it so I went to his daughter-in-law who always lived nearby, thinking, maybe, she had heard him talking some family stuff, but soon found that about all she wanted to talk abut was our "Indian blood" including one story about a female ancestor was the daughter of an "Indian Chief". I finally I got tired of listening to that and one day I said; "Jane, I really believe the story that our ancestor was the daughter of an Indian Chief because I don't think our female family ancestor would have d a plain old Indian brave! " She never brought up the subject again
There's no such thing as a blond hair blue eyed "Native American".
SMH.
I know right? That's about as odious, racist, and oxymoronic as the term of "light skinned black". There is absolutely no such thing as a light skinned black.
I received the blonde wavy hair and blue eyes from my other grandparents, but I received several cherokee traits that my other grandparents do not have and that people overlook because they cannot see them from far away. It just happened with my genetics that I look all white from far away (which I almost am). My cousins look more cherokee than me with hair and eyes. However, I have the high distinctive cheekbones, tall and slender body, eye shape, brow bone, tan skin all year round (not as tan as my great grandmas though), course hair, and probably other features. I have pretty full lips too, but I have no idea where that came from. !!
All I know is that there are some people on 23andme that are just persistent to the point of nutty and unfortunately it comes to the point where you can't take them seriously as a poster or contributor any more
there a tribe of choctaw close to where I'm from that trying to get recognize by the government, so they came in and did dna testing on everybody. there was a couple that had like .05 % indian and all the rest being afician american. in fact the chief was 99.99% africian american. nobody on the reservation had any indian dna
That's interesting. Despite what some people on here claim, some of us "white people" do have some NDN blood. My great grandmother was full blooded Choctaw. Anything I see about Choctaw is interesting.....are you in OK?
What's even more interesting to me is that it took researching my genealogy to find this information. Nobody in the family wanted to tell me about it until after I found out. Then suddenly it was, "yah, we have some..." Anyway, ever since I moved to where I am now, I've had a lot of people asking me if I'm "part Indian". Well, I never thought I looked NDN, so I, completely incredulous, ask them why they would think that. They point out some facial features. When I look at photos of my great G, I can see that we DO have the same facial features that people point out. Why I find this strange is that no one has ever asked me before, until I moved here. And do you know who is doing the asking? Indians.
There's another thread on this subject that has many comments. I guess this is a popular subject.
If you want to trace you ancestry to the Dawes Rolls and think you are Cherokee contact the Cherokee Nation Tribal Rolls Department. They might call it Tribal enrollment. I can only speak for my tribe, which is Muscogee, but many tribes have an excellent library and they have records on enrollment and geneology. It's worth a shot.
I have a question for everyone. It doesn't matter whether you believe you have Cherokee ancestry or not to answer with your opinion.
Will someone explain to me why in nearly every case of a non-Native claiming to be Native that the tribe is Cherokee? I've heard people make this claim my entire life, (when they can't trace it to the Dawes Rolls) and it's always Cherokee. Never Kiowa, Cheyenne, Nez Perce, Osage Muscogee, Seminole, Walla Walla, Yakima, Picuris, Santa Ana, Taos, or any of the 564 federally recognized tribes other than Cherokee. It's always Cherokee.
It may sound like I'm being condenscending; I'm not trying to be, honestly. It's just that I've had so many people tell me this throughout my life. Some I believe, but not nearly as many as that have told me they are part Cherokee. Often this tale also included a great-great-grandmother who had been an Indian princess. (not so much these days, but when I was a kid the tale almost always included the g-g-grandmother princess)
It makes me curious why they always claim Cherokee and not some other tribe. What are the odds?
Ecovike, I had to smile at your question: Why is it always Cherokee? A lot of answers to that but I only want to share a comment I heard long ago. I was traveling in the west and went to a lecture by a native American gentlemen. I do not even remember what tribe now. He commented on so many white people wanting to be part Indian. He went on to say "but always descended from a princess, never a chief who made war on the white invaders."
All right. Cherokee. A cousin whose grandmother was said to be Cherokee wanted proof. I wrote a letter for her to the North Carolina Cherokee nation. They do have excellent records. If a person is at least 1/8 Cherokee, chances are very good that they'll find your ancestor. We knew the grandmother's father's name. The office searched and wrote back that they have no record of such a person. Later, years later, I did find my cousin's great grandfather. He was from Wales.
Now, as someone said, this could be a case of a white man taking an Indian woman as wife. This was often done without benefit of marriage and thus no record was made of it. Family lore is all we have in such cases.
My dad told me all his life that we "were part Cherokee" and I never really believed him. My grandmother and my aunt studied the family history and had documents to prove that our people came from France, England, Ireland and Germany. There was a great-grandfather who married a Cherokee woman but we are not descended from that line.
I recently started researching my maternal line, however, and have discovered that my great-great-great grandmother was a full-blooded Cherokee woman. She, her siblings, and her parents and one grandmother (all of whom I have family photos and documents for, such as marriage certificates and scanned images of bible pages) are listed on the Dawes rolls as "full" Cherokee by blood. She married a man who was of French descent and had my great-great grandfather. He would have been half, right?
So now I am trying to figure out what this means for me and my kids. Anything at all? I don't really know how the math plays out.
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d a plain old Indian brave! 
" She never brought up the subject again 
