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I have the legend in my family too and I've always wondered where it came from. We're New Englanders who fought Indians but there could easily have been intermarriage back in the 17th C or even the 18th.
There were plenty of Indian raids of settler stockades here in Massachusetts where people were taken captive and marched up to Canada. It wasn't uncommon either, later on, for Indians to take children who were out playing in the fields. Sometimes the captives remained with the tribe and intermarried and had children. Sometimes they were traded back to their settlement or town.
Their children certainly had "Indian blood." IF they married back to a colonist you would then get a lineage with the Indian blood. I don't know if it would have been noted in the records or if the "Indian" would have taken an English name. (I have traced that side of my family pretty well and have never found one single trace of an Indian.)
Even if the 1/32nd "indian" ancestry was true. I wouldn't even see the reason to point that out.
She does it, because she is proud of who she is, and it makes some people feel she is one of them. Helps get votes from certain levels of her constituents. Some people are ashamed and hide the fact they have some indian blood. Others brag about it.
When you do genealogical research on a person, you often find that they do not have the ancestry that they believe. My maternal grandmother always told everyone that my grandfather was French. Fact: He was Dutch not French when I ran his family tree. She thought she was English as her maiden name had been Post and was a descendant of Stephen Post who came to U.S. in 1632 to be an officer at Ft Saybrook. Fact his grandparents on both sides had moved from Holland to England and Post was not really his family name. Fact: I ran her family tree, and found up to 2 generations back it had been Van der Post, and she was 3/4ths Dutch. Her family had been in the US since 1632, and they had dropped the Van der part of their name when they moved to England.
I used to volunteer at a Family History Center where people went to research their ancestry. I learned a lot of people are not what they think they are when it comes to ancestry. 1/32nd or more American Indian is very, very, common and a lot of people found they had American Indian ancestry back a few generations if their family was long established in this country. My wife is 1/16th Cherokee which she feels is great. Her mother, denied she had any Indian in her, and was 1/8th Cherokee. Her ancestry goes right back to an American Indian wife that Daniel Boone had taken when he was away from home for a period of time.
I know from experience helping people do research, that if your family has been in the country for 3 or 4 generations and more, it is not unusual to have Indian Ancestry. Especially starting in Oklahoma and going further north and towards the North East. A lot of people were real shocked to find who they really were in the blood lines.
I don't know about the myths, but it's easy for me to believe I have Indian heritage; I have an actual Indian in my family. He served as chief of the tribe for many years.
I don't think this is a myth and it is impossible to make a concrete case either way. If your family goes back to a time when there was still a frontier with Native Americans I think it would be more odd to not see any intermixing. I have a photo of my great great great grandmother who is very obviously Sioux in the picture. That is on my father's side. On the other side I am told that I am an Appalachian hell storm of Hatsfield, Cherokee, and (fingers crossed) Dolly Parton. I can't confirm any of that. Tying minority status and to blood and its quantums has always been problematic, though anything else I've heard proposed would be as easily if not more easily exploited.
Before having a DNA test done, I always knew that I was mostly white, followed by sub-Saharan African, and Native American Indian.
Sure enough DNA testing had me at 77% European, 13% African and 5% Native American Indian.
That said, many people who have been tested who believed that they had some Native American Indian blood turned out to not have any at all. For example, the tennis player, Billie Jean King was always told by her family that she had Seminole Indian blood. A DNA test proved her wrong.
Some tribal bloodlines have been really watered down. I remember when the Foxwoods resort opened up on a Mashantucket Pequot reservation (that had 1 person living there), it was decided that if anyone could prove that they were at 1/32 Mashantucket Pequot, they would be allowed to join the tribe. Yet, at the time personal DNA tests weren't available so, I do wonder how anyone could prove this beyond a reasonable doubt
Before having a DNA test done, I always knew that I was mostly white, followed by sub-Saharan African, and Native American Indian.
Sure enough DNA testing had me at 77% European, 13% African and 5% Native American Indian.
That said, many people who have been tested who believed that they had some Native American Indian blood turned out to not have any at all. For example, the tennis player, Billie Jean King was always told by her family that she had Seminole Indian blood. A DNA test proved her wrong.
Some tribal bloodlines have been really watered down. I remember when the Foxwoods resort opened up on a Mashantucket Pequot reservation (that had 1 person living there), it was decided that if anyone could prove that they were at 1/32 Mashantucket Pequot, they would be allowed to join the tribe. Yet, at the time personal DNA tests weren't available so, I do wonder how anyone could prove this beyond a reasonable doubt
Civil things don't require "beyond a reasonable doubt." If your case looks 51% likely that's enough. So a birth certificate, membership of an ancestor on the rolls tribes sometimes had to submit to the federal government, or the like would be enough,
I don't think it's a myth, but alot of people do claim to have those roots. I'm taking a wild guess that not many people that claim have true roots there.
The whole premise of OP's post is that people are positively lying about being Native American, and that this is apparently rampant. I have never heard this "problem" before, so do you care to cite some statistics? Or is this just an excuse to troll about Elizabeth Warren?
"The whole premise of OP's post is that people are positively lying about being Native American, and that this is apparently rampant."
It's not that they are lying; they actually believe it. It's family lore that they have been told all their life, but seldom checks out...and it is rampant.
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