I’d say that probably a lot of the whites who claim Cherokee mix are probably telling the truth. I’m something like an eight Creek. I’m pretty blamed light-skinned, with my hair being blond the first 10 years of my life. My face looks exactly like my two brothers’, but, one’s hair is black, the other dark brown, both more darkly complected than me. My father looked at least 1/2 Creek, his brother at least full-blooded, lol. ( Super strong Indian/Creek features.)
Whole point being, the Irish apparently overcomes the American Indian in our family genes, but, there is plenty of evidence that the AmIndian blood is there, and that just because somebody is very white, doesn’t mean that they don’t have some dark skinned ancestors.
Well, this is all very interesting to me. Growing up in Upper Appalachia (from out around Wheeling/WV/OH area), I heard stories of my mother’s family about her father being 1/2 American Indian-1/2 Jewish. Sounded unlikely to me.
What’s the story behind the NA/Jewish unions mentioned here?
Well, Native Americans practiced head-flattening and facial scarification and hanging themselves in the sun by their pectorals, so when they met circumsiced guys, they thought “OK, here’s white people who do get it.”
In my case, my GGM was a (I guess we’d call it “sex-positive” today) wild kid bored with growing up in the Wisconsin woods. She’d hook up with the men who came up from Chicago, some of whom had the allure of danger. She said she’d spent a weekend in bed with one of them, shooting flies on the walls with his revolver.
I had a contractor trying to convince me he should be considered an 8(a) contractor because his mother told him he was 1/256th Ponca. I told him she probably said “Honky” and he misunderstood.
I married an Indian (card carrying, reservation growing up on, cultural Indian) and her family always laughs about people who are “supposed to be 1/16 Indian” because they are nearly always 0/16 Indian.
So, what are mailmen, chopped liver?
Depends on the age. Before about the 1960s, Americans who were part Indian did not brag about it. If anybody says that they had ancestors before then who said they were Native Americans THEN, they were probably telling the truth. Times were very different then, when Indian kids automatically got beat up and there were no Casino revenue distributions.
Back in Texas, I knew several people who claimed to have this or that Indian blood in their background. Without exception, these were total fuck-ups who would get drunk and rowdy, and they would blame it on their Indian blood, saying their behavior was completely out of their hands. I was always suspicious of their claims, figuring they were just making up a convenient excuse for acting like drunken Texas rednecks.
I work with 2 white-looking people who are tribally-enrolled Chikasaw, and one who’s Diné.
The census rolls will list your ancestor as non white if they were Indian even as late as 1910. If you have a lot of ancestors going back 200 years here then the chances are more likely than not you have native blood by now. The tree branches spread pretty far by that time. Cherokees intermarried a lot. Rather than doubt most claims go and dig the Indian out of your own woodpile with geneology. Chickasaw and Cherokee here but I favor the Scots and my name is English. My wife has Cherokee and looks it but with a German maiden name. Face it, all your ancestors were sluts.
My great great grandmother was full-blooded Cherokee. Her daughter, my great-grandmother, lived to 92, and I knew her. She had a lot of Native American features, including the beaked nose and darker skin. Her hair was black until she was in her 50s, then became salt and peppered.
My grandmother recently died at the age of 84, and she looked remarkably like her mother, especially as she got older. My mother has also morphed into my great grandmother through the years. I can definitely see the markers, especially the high cheekbones and darker skin.
Me? I don’t look like I have any NA blood in me, my daughters even less so, so it appears that those prominent genetic features have finally been whitewashed (pardon the pun). But it took 4 generations.
I think there were a lot of Cherokees that survived, and many integrated into society, both before the Trail of Tears and after.
