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Many white people in the United States claim to have a "drop" of Cherokee in them, and even seem to think this is true. I usually ignore this claim, but lately have been wondering if it is true or not.
The people that claim this are what we would all think of as 100% white people, but they claim that some ancestor was a Cherokee.
Some claim to have heard this from their parents, but most have no hard claim.
I am still convinced it is myth, but I would like to hear from white people who may have actually traced their own ancestry and found a Cherokee person, or those who have not.
I can make that claim. It wasn't common but it wasn't totally unusual for a man to take an Indian wife. Happened in my husband's roots in South Carolina about 4 generations back.
Location: Prescott Valley, Az (unfortunately still here)
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My grandmother was Cherokee (full-blood too). If I could post pics, I would show you.
Even my father looked like it (he was half, because his father was Irish). My grandmother was his mother (my father). Wished I could post pics to show.
Greetings,
If your from the southern states, u do have a very good chance of having Cherokee Blood in you.
All a person has to do is call the Cherokee Indian Tribe Counsel in Tulsa,OK and see if there names are on the rolls. Find what state your ancestors lived in and see what Indians were living there at the time.
Photo's of our ancestors will show familiar trates in there faces, and habits they do today.
And if they are, they will lead the way. It was not a safe or honorable thing to claim your Indian heritage for decades. Indian heritage is all over the U.S. of different tribes. Folks probaly would be shocked what they find if they trace there roots.
Have A Blessed day
This has been beaten to death on other threads but some folks back in the day would convert a black ancestor into a "Cherokee" to avoid the stigma that existed back then, particularly in the South, about what they so delicately called being "tapped by the tip of the tarbrush". I have one in my family tree from NC and haven't been able to determine one way or the other but I suspect she was a black woman from the East Indies rather than the claimed Cherokee.
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?
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?
this is a subject that has always bugged the snot out of me, people claiming to be something they are not- however the cherokees did intermarry with white settlers more so than any other tribe, they thought it would make for good relations between the whites and them. once a man took a native wife or visa versa and if they moved away from cherokee lands they were not recorded on any rolls, also to be a native and live away from your people in a strange town they would put down that they were white on census rolls or mulatto, also the native women were often were given christian names by their husbands, so the name was different and no proof of them being indian exsists except from family members, that could be one reason many claim this, many just might have that family ancestor who was cherokee but can not prove it because of this. i do not understand why they would make it up unless it gives them some kind of connection to some romanticzed harlequin romance native novel they are searching for. I have also heard alot of people claiming sioux and navajo too.
p.s. there is no such thing as a cherokee princess-this term they think came about when the europeans were refering to the daughter of a chief.
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