With all the possible combinations and permutations of inter-marriage, is it still possible to determine the tribal origins of African Americans by their physical appearance and/or attributes?
If you think of how a family tree branches backward into time, there are probably many tribes mixed in. Most would originally be from west African though, I would guess: Ghana, Ivory Coast, Benin, etc.
No.
One may be able with further data to determine regional origins (likely to be multiple) but specific ethnic(*) labels are likely to be ahistorical insofar as modern ethnic groups should not be expected to match ethnic groups 400 years ago.
In terms of gross origins, see Phillip Curtin’s works in re major sources of slaves.
(*: as noted in the past, groups like Yoruba, Ibo, etc. are not tribes in any accurate sense, but languages.)
It should be possible to ascertain that some of one’s ancestors come from a particular place. A recent history program on the BBC showed evidence that a local teacher in Somerset was related by maternal DNA to an Iron Age skeleton (IIRC) found in Cheddar Gorge. Thus, origin could be shown over 2000 years. However, this was dependent on the existence of a confirmed and datable skeleton being available. If there were burial practices in Africa leading to human remains which were datable, then it would be possible to link to particular areas.
However, assuming that we are talking of, say, eight generations- 256 ancestors, the liklihood of all of these coming from a single area is impossible.
As a wild guess, given the social condition of slaves before and after 1865, I would say that Modern African Americans would show maternal DNA from most parts of Africa that were raided for slaves, plus maternal DNA from most parts of Britain, plus maternal DNA from other non-African sources.
Of course, if first and second generation slave’s skeletons were exhumed, clear evidence of place of origin would be attainable. Perhaps we don’t need to go there!
Consider the case of European-Americans. Often, you can guess that one is Irish, Jewish, etc, just by looking at them. A lot of the time you will be wrong.
Of course, you need to decide what you mean by “tribal.”
Interesting that people don’t describe the activities in the Balkans as “tribal conflict.”
Finally, it might be the case that American blacks are in large part descendant from the residents of a smaller region in Africa than the corresponding regions for whites. If this is so, it I imagine it would make your task harder.
I grew up in Hawaii and I can almost always tell the Japanese from the Korean from the Chinese. But for the descendants of slaves there was probably way to much intermarriage between slaves of differing groups to maintain any sense of ‘purity.’
An option they can pursue that I know works is to trace DNA. Follow the Y for your father’s line, and the mitochondrial DNA for your mother’s. I saw a fascinating PBS show about the Af-Am man who wanted to find his paternal homeland. Although to his surprise it turned out to be the Netherlands so that just goes to show you that you might find answers you didn’t want to find.
It shouldn’t be too hard to identify origins by appearance for some with African ancestry. There should be people alive today that are only 3 or 4 generations removed from the slave trade (which ended before slavery itself did). The families of some of these people must be entirely or mostly limited to certain regions of origin.
But there’d be a wide range of successes if many African-ancestry people tried this, because there would be others with, say, 8 generations of New World ancestors mixing things up.