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If you are 1/364th African, descended from a slave generations ago, but were raised and look caucasian, do you suddenly start thinking of yourself as black when you find out about that ancestor? Why not? I'll tell you why not, because it's absurd. Yet anyone with a native american ancestor, no matter how far removed, seems to feel some sort of "affinity", "spiritual connection" or something. What nonsense.
My wife is 4/4 blood quantum enrolled in the Hopi Tribe of Arizona and my son is 2/4, also enrolled. They're indians. They speak their language and know their extant culture. If I found out tomorrow my great to the sixth power grandfather was Cherokee, even if I could prove it with the required paper trail and enroll, IMO it wouldn't make me Cherokee.
Good grief.
Actually I think people are partly motivated to making these claims because it is an additional connection to the land. For many there is that need to have a concrete connection to First Nations people because they recognize their connection to the habitat of woods, waters , and lands that they grew up in. In new England nearly every place name has an Abenaki or Narragansett language name, sometimes bastardized through the years. When you give directions around here it sometimes sounds like you are bringing back the old tongues. Many methods of working the land, seasonal harvesting, lumbering , and traditional crafts, involve Native American technology. It's as if the victims of genocide and assimilation have been internalized into the present day population.
I am a native New Englander of African descent but my family tree is varied with Scots-Irish and possibly some Cherokee or Choctaw. My parents grew up in Texas. Both Mom and Dad had stories of "Native" older relatives with long dark hair or other First Nations' features. My father told me of his grandfather that was cared for in in last years on some reservation in Oklahoma, but I haven't the time or resources yet to confirm it. Dad's aunt, who raised him, was a practical nurse in TX and some of her "remedies" involved poultices of native plants and blowing tobacco smoke over patients, very reminiscent of Native tobacco blessings.
My older sister is a real "wannabe", telling people she is Cherokee and trying to incorporate Native inspired craft into her decor, attire, and writings. Despite the over-emphasis I won't deny her her obsession because somewhere along the way there is a real connection---be it by blood or by ideology.
........... looking in the mirror and seeing a Native American looking phenotype................
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And just exactly what is a Native American phenotype? I've seen Native Americans with broad flat faces, and some with narrow faces, high cheek bones, and aquiline noses. Skin color is all the way from very dark to pale. Height is from really short to extremely tall. Body types from lean to plump. Eyes from almond to oval to oriental. Foreheads from high to low. Long legs, short legs, wide shoulders, narrow shoulders.
I've seen 100% citizens of East India that I would have sworn were Native Americans and plenty of Native Americans who get mistaken for citizens of Mexico. I've seen purebred native Welsh who could pass as Native Americans. Ditto for some of the people from the Russian Steppes and from Mongolia.
If you want to bring it up, I've seen all those differing phenotypes in very old photos, so it's no use to claim that the different looks are from mixed race.
I found out within the past year that I'm part Taino, but I've never met anyone from that culture. I'd like to learn more about it.
Puerto Ricans have large percentages of Taino blood in them, but I don't know how it survived compared to Dominicans who are very ignorant of their Taino blood, as well as Cubans.
My maternal great-great grandmother was half-white and half Shawnee. Her name was Ollie Standifer.
i bet if you ask 100 people if they have indian in them, 99 would say yes but only about ten would actual. everybody wants to be indian, black, or viking.
I'm not native American but we had one of those family stories on my mother's side about Indian blood way back. This would have had to be way back when Native Americans still existed in New England--so waaaaaaaaaaay back.
I've gone though my entire ancestry and I can't find anybody who would qualify. Everybody has English names and their ancestries are traced back to 1630 or earlier. So who's the Indian? Yet 23andMe did say 99.9% northern European and in speculative mode, 0.1% Asian. I wonder if Asian=native American. Could there have been children by a Native American who were were raised by my ancestors as their own.
I don't go much by appearances but there is an early photograph of a very beautiful woman with straight black coarse hair--she looks like she could have Indian blood. She came from the segment of the family who were against the American Revolution and had fought in the French and Indian War. My mother's uncles in Canada didn't look like the rest of the red haired, light skinned family. Maybe they were throwbacks to the Indian blood. I will never know.
Found out through a relative that I had not had contact with our family since I was very little. She had a professional genealogist research the family tree. Never suspected that I had a strong Mohawk bloodline running in the family tree. No, it did not change my life. I did not go out and "join the tribe".
I'm not native American but we had one of those family stories on my mother's side about Indian blood way back. This would have had to be way back when Native Americans still existed in New England--so waaaaaaaaaaay back.
I've gone though my entire ancestry and I can't find anybody who would qualify. Everybody has English names and their ancestries are traced back to 1630 or earlier. So who's the Indian? Yet 23andMe did say 99.9% northern European and in speculative mode, 0.1% Asian. I wonder if Asian=native American. Could there have been children by a Native American who were were raised by my ancestors as their own.
I don't go much by appearances but there is an early photograph of a very beautiful woman with straight black coarse hair--she looks like she could have Indian blood. She came from the segment of the family who were against the American Revolution and had fought in the French and Indian War. My mother's uncles in Canada didn't look like the rest of the red haired, light skinned family. Maybe they were throwbacks to the Indian blood. I will never know.
Just to let you know there are still thousands of Native Americans in New England. Maine, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts still maintain "reservation" lands for some tribal groups, while other groups in all the New England states have a more informal relationship with government rolls. In southern New England many Native peoples tend to look more Anglo or African-American due to years of intermarriage, but several tribes in Maine and Vermont are clearly Native with their own respective language groups. Some still have ties to Canadian tribes like Micmac as well. My own family members were very active with some of the Schaghitcoke and Wampanoag events in the area. You might want to check with some of the records keepers.
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