First off a disclaimer: None of the information in this post is presented with the intention of helping people to earn enrollment to any of the tribes currently recognized by the United States. Also, if you found this blog because you're looking for your Cherokee Princess™ ancestor you should probably read this first. And now that I've rained on your parade let's get on with the actual post.
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| Conquistador and tyrant Juan Onate's graffiti over a Native carving in New Mexico |
For anyone wanting to prove a story of Native ancestry without first taking a DNA test...things are going to be difficult for you. Researching the history of an area your ancestor was born or lived in before and after European contact will help you to understand the circumstances under which your African (and likely European) ancestors may have come into contact with Native groups and give you a good idea of what records exist and clues for what to look for in them. The Powhatan tribes of Virginia, the Choctaw of Alabama, and the Cherokee of Georgia all have well documented instances of intermarriage and mixing between the Natives, Africans, and Europeans and can be traced to specific family names. Sometimes people note those things in their family trees (but not always in the most racially sensitive way unfortunately) and sometimes they don't. This is a touchy subject for some people who would rather gloss over the not so nice historical context of how they came to be related to Native or mixed race people or because they've bought into the "one drop rule". Your best bet is to do your own research rather than take someone else's tree as fact (unless they are a certified genealogist with plenty of cited sources and even then you may be aware of information/clues in the form of oral history that they aren't). Even if you know exactly where to look and who to look for you will not be able to pick out who is Native or mixed race from names alone. (Please read the Cherokee princess link at the top of the page if you skipped it for reasons why.) The census specifically can be confusing when it comes to a person race or more accurately their perceived race since the race column was up to the discretion of the enumerator or the neighbor giving the information to them for someone who wasn't home at the time. I have seen within my own family research people go from being white on one census, to mulatto on the next, or from being mulatto on one to black on another. Keeping all of that in mind, a good place to start after you've researched an area and it's original population is the Dawes Rolls for that state.
For those who have taken a DNA test your first step is going to be transferring that data to DNA.land (or Gedmatch.com) where you'll be able to get more detailed information about your ethnic ancestry than what you may have gotten from a DNA testing service due to a more well rounded data set. (In my opinion Ancestry.com in particular tries to distract from a overly European data set by catering to what they think users of African descent want to see. Rather than giving information on individual African or Native groups a user matches with or admitting that their data set is lacking in samples from those groups they instead highlight what they call migrations within the United States and downplay unidentifiable ancestry as "noise" to be dismissed when in reality it's simply what's missing from their data set.) Kits from all of the major testing companies will work on DNA.land and are easy to upload. Results are presented in a simple color coded chart format with a map. DNA.land recently sent out emails to it's users and posted an article to Medium.com stating that the site's original use as a research project operated by Colombia University and the New York Genome Project has ended and it will be relaunched unaffiliated with either group. Additionally all currently uploaded kits on the site will be deleted and will need to be reuploaded after the relaunch. So you might want to hold off on uploading to the site until after the September 30th relaunch to save time but keep in mind that it's unclear whether or not the new version will still be free...
Continue reading after the jump
You can also get ethnicity breakdowns with Gedmatch but DNA.land is much more user friendly in my opinion. I use both but prefer DNA.land for viewing ethnicity percentages and mostly use Gedmatch for comparing my DNA kits against other people who have tested with different companies. To be fair though Gedmatch's ethnicity breakdowns are more specific once you learn how to use all of the tools on their site but a lot of people are not patient enough to. There is a how to guide on the website but Kitty Cooper's slide show presentation on how to use Gedmatch's admixture tools here is simple and easy to follow.
As for my own DNA.land results...
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| Click image to enlarge |
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| Click image to enlarge |
As you can see my own Native ancestry is estimated at a paltry 1.5% (If I don't count that ambiguous 1.6% that is) but within that tiny number is a surprisingly long list of Native North and South American groups. A lot of which probably traces back to my maternal 5th great grandmother Julia who was enslaved on a plantation in St. Augustine in the 1780s when it was known as Spanish East Florida. Julia's daughter Maria Rosa, whose father was British, lived her life as a free person and had a son with a Spanish settler from the Sanchez family. The Sanchez', originally from Spain, were among the first settlers of St. Augustine. When Britain briefly gained control of Florida as part of the Treaty of Paris most of the Sanchez family and their slaves (along with Spanish colonists who were from other European countries) left for Cuba or Mexico but returned 10 years later when Spain was once again in control of the area. Naturally over that 10 year period there was some mixing between groups in those places which resulted in introducing some South American ancestry into the population of Florida. And as expected when I began to research each group in my results what they all had in common was contact with the Spanish.
Once you have your ethnicity results research each Native American group so that you have at least a basic understanding of where they lived and their history. See the resource links at the bottom of this post if you're unsure of where to start. Wikipedia can also be a good starting point but shouldn't be relied on since it's edited constantly and is often missing citations. In my experience Wikipedia in Spanish tends to have much more information than the English version when it comes to topics related to the Spanish colonies and it's major players which makes sense as most of the surviving records are in Spanish and owned by Spain. To use this to your advantage go to the Wikipedia main page and click "Espanol" instead of English. The site format will be exactly the same as the English version with the search bar at the upper right and "Buscar en Wikipedia" inside it. Use it as you normally would and then click translate on your web browser. In Chrome you will find the translate option inside the search bar. Learn how to configure Chrome to do this automatically here. Use this online Spanish dictionary to translate search terms that might not work in English.
The images below are a comparison of the Wikipedia articles for St. Augustine, Florida in Spanish (translated) and English. Notice while both articles cover the city's history the Spanish version goes into detail about it's role as a sanctuary for runaway slaves while the English version stresses the city's role as a haven for British Loyalists instead. (Slavery in Spanish Florida will be covered in a future post.)
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| Spanish to English translation of article click image enlarge |
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| English version of article Click image to enlarge |
Once you've got some historical context follow the same steps as you would for researching enslaved ancestors but broaden your search to include documents and resources relevant to the Native American groups you've matched with.
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Related Links
Huff Post Article: Mexico finally recognizes African Mestizos
NY Times Article: Who decides Who Counts as Native American?
The Conquest of New Spain by Bernal Diaz del Castillo (First hand account of what really happened when the Spanish landed in Mexico looking for gold.)
Information on conquistador Juan Onate
The Washington Post Article: How Ancestry.com Has Failed African American Customers
Mashable Article: What you should do if a DNA test suggests you're Native American
The Washington Post Article: How Ancestry.com Has Failed African American Customers
Mashable Article: What you should do if a DNA test suggests you're Native American
I'm not affiliated with or sponsored by any of the genealogy services or sites mentioned.
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