My Cherokee Princess

[dragonfly]

Ha! I've always been just a bit scornful of the common myth that people have Native American in their family trees. We know that it's usually spurious -- as a general rule, European immigrants didn't "mix" with Native Americans. Yes, it's probably unprovable in my family, as well, but, well, here's what happened.

I was talking to my uncle about the things I've learned about our ancestors. I said something to him like, "You know what your father told me?" I was talking about the supposed Irish origin of our family (our name does not look Irish), but he said, "He told you he was 1/32 Indian?"

What TF?

Uh, no. I don't remember him saying that. Yeah, my uncle told me, his father -- my grandfather -- said he was 1/32 Native American, probably on his mother's side, since we can trace his father's side straight back to Ireland on almost all lines. We discussed it and decided that most likely one of my grandfather's maternal uncles told him they were 1/16th NA. So I calculated back from that generation, and I swear -- no joke -- I hit a generation where I don't know their parents. I just have nothing.

::hangs head:: so my family has the Native American ancestry legend, too. Of course, my DNA showed absolutely no Native American, so there's that.

Comments

[jaxita]

When my Ancestry dna came back showing 0% Native dna, I thought the same.. until my birthmom's dna showed that she does have Native dna. All kids inherit a different collection of dna from their parents (we blame my jerk of a birthfather for watering mine down lol), so take heart.. the fact that it doesn't show up in yours doesn't mean that it was never there. :)

As an aside, Mom and I are giving my sister (technically half sister.. different dads) a test for her birthday, so I'll be super-interested to see what turns up in her ethnicity.