How can I trace my heritage enough to have myself declared a member of the Cherokee tribe? My great-grandmother was full-blooded Cherokee. IIRC, 1/16 is all that’s need to become a member. She died when my mother was an infant. My mother’s mother died eight years ago. I have a name to go on, but no guarantees that it’s 100% accurate. Would I have to have a family tree done through a geneaologist first? What steps would need to be taken to formally change my race from caucasian to Cherokee?
Gee thee to a library and try to find an index to the Dawes Rolls or the Guion Miller Rolls. They were Federal censuses of the Western and Eastern Cherokees respectively.
If you find something in there, then you’re in business. If not, you’ve got a lot of work ahead of you.
Good advice. Now, going on the supposition that there’s nothing in there, what would be the next step?
Superdude, I posted this in the MPSIMS Native American thread, but here ya go,too:
Two places to start are http://www.cherokee.org ,and here.
There are two Cherokee rolls, for Eastern and Western bands, available in book form. If your forbears registered on these rolls, that stands as proof.
Hopefully, you are wanting to claim tribal status out of pride for your heritage. If it’s to claim benefits entitled to Native Americans, please consider that there are those who really deserve and need them.
See Index to the Final Rolls of the Citizens and Freedmen of the Five Civilized Tribes in Indian Territory The same index is available online from the National Archives and Records Administration, but this link is much easier to navigate.
This is not to question you personally, Superdude, just an interesting aside…
A friend of mine is a full-blooded Lakota (which, for those not in the know, is a Cherokee tribe). He once told me that virtually every American he has ever met claimed that they were part Native and that part was Cherokee. He said either they were mistaken or Custer didn’t do a very good job.
From my experience working in a library with a big genealogy question, most people who think they are Native American, usually don’t qualify, at least “officially”.
One patron told me that everybody in the U.S. was related to Native Americans. I replied that I wasn’t and I was quite sure of it. My ancestors seem to stay close to the farm.
I also think the relatively large number of Asian-Americans rarely have any Native American in them.
This is not meant to dissaude the OP, but proving Native American ancestry is often a frustrating task.
Arken: I thought “Lakota” was just a version ( in a slightly different dialect ) of “Dakota”, which is synonomous with “Sioux”. And that the Cherokee were members of the Iroquoian linguistic group, rather than the Siouan.
Are they just sound alikes? Or am I just mistaken altogether ( wouldn’t be the first time 
)?
- Tamerlane
If you mean East Asians, you might say that they’re very distant cousins.
Tamerlane,
Being of mutt European-Jewish extraction, I couldn’t tell you for certain, but it seems to me that he calls himself Lakota and Cherokee interchangably.
Anecdotal evidence: This last week I drove through South Dakota. Several of the building and suck were the Lakota whatever building on the reservations. There was even a Lakota Oglala College that was on a Sioux reservation. So I tend to agree with Tamerlane on this one.
It’s not surprising that many people claim a connection to the Cherokee. Prior to the Trail of Tears, the Cherokee had lived in close proximity to southeastern settlers for about 200 years. Does anyone really doubt that considerable intermarriage/interbreeding occurred during that time? Or that some of the earliest examples are simply lost in the mists of time? Or that there are many “caucasians” walking around today who carry some bits of Cherokee genetic heritage? Just take a drive through the Appalachians, and you’ll find many “caucasians” with vaguely Indian features.
In fact, IIRC, the Cherokee are known for being lighter-skinned than other tribes. I have seen references to their “olive skin.” Seems to me that the lighter skin might also be a relic of early mixing among European settlers and Cherokee natives.
Another point worth mentioning in support of my last post:
The majority of early settlers were men. There being then a surplus of European men in the colonies, and a shortage of European women, we can either believe that the “excess” men were content to live celibate lives, or that they may have taken Indian wives from time to time. After 400 years in the America, the descendants of such early pairings may have forgotten the Indian ancestors in their lineage.
I would like to hear from a geneticist on this. Would it be possible to determine, from a study of the general population, how many “caucasians” have some Indian ancestry? Or would a certain percentage of the ancestry have to be Indian before it would be detectable?
Concerning the Lakotah/Cherokee hijack, IANAE, but these are only a few of the 1st sites to pop up on google and northernlight searches for Lakota. They all indicate that Lakota is either synonymous with or a subset of Sioux, and none of them suggest it is synonomous with Cherokee. In fact, some of them expressly refer to Cherokee as a separate tribe.
And you can reassure your Lakota/Cherokee friend that this Polock doesn’t claim any NA heritage.
http://www.u.arizona.edu/ic/kmartin/School/lakotah.htm
http://www.usd.edu/~gschalli/courses/f99100h/problems/problem2.html
http://www.livgenmi.com/1906loup~chapter~two.htm
http://www.siouxcityjournal.com/living/TravelResources/UncoverSiouxlandOct00/named.html
To change your race, just check the other box. Other than that, after you get your CDIB apply for citizenship. Some of us are lucky and can trace back generations of family members with CDIB’s in more than one tribe. Since I am going to OKlahoma and have to go to the Cherokee council house to get information for my Mom anyway I would be more than pleased to help you out while I am there. If you send me some names I’ll look them up for you. Once you have one name and roll number you can send that into the Bureau of Indian Affairs and they will do the rest of the work for you. Might take awhile but you can get all the benefits of being a Cherokee and no one will be able to say to you, sure you are, prove it 
It also could very well be that I just misremembered and he said Sioux, not Cherokee.
Getting to really important matters now, what is the exact wording of this line from the song:
"And all the beads we made by hand,
Are now __ __ __, in Japan."
My recollection is that the missing words sound something like “a phase made,” which doesn’t seem to make all that much sense. (And we know how sensible all early 70’s pop lyrics were.)
Any ideas? “Injection molded” maybe?
According to numerous sites on Google the missing phrase is nowadays made … in Japan
Ah, many thanks Odieman.
I apologize for my ignorance and sloth.
I posted these links on the MPSIMS thread that elelle mentioned.
**How do you claim membership in an American Indian or African tribe? **
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=60285
In that thread Hazel made an excellent post that sums up my feelings on the subject better than I could.
Cherokee History
http://www.tolatsga.org/Cherokee1.html
(thanks to Sofa King for providing the link in another thread)