[amttc]

I'm from the South and hear this all the time. I have no idea how many people are actually descended from the Cherokee (they were one of the larger groups in the South). I have a different crackpot theory. Historically, admitting you were less than 100% white was a dicey proposition. Sometimes I wonder if there aren't actually a larger than obvious percentage of people who have Native ancestors, but since they were assimilated, their descendants are only dimly aware of it and use "Cherokee" as a catch-all for saying they have some Native American blood in them. I'm sure some people are getting confused or just retelling tales passed down, but the South did have a lot of Native Americans in it. Has anyone researched this?

[cossatot]

My father (who is nominally 1/8th Cherokee; his well-remembered grandfather was half) has been working on our family's genealogy for decades. He believes that many of our ancestors not directly tied to his grandfather were partially Cherokee, and consistently under-reported. There were penalizations for various degrees of Indian blood, not just a binary thing, so this was quite common.

There were also apparently a lot of mixed-blood Cherokee/Scot or Irish ca. 1800 in southern Appalachia before Removal, and some of them were very successful. One of our ancestors, Chief Vann [1], became very wealthy though he was allegedly quite the drunken terror. He lead a sort of clan or tribe of Cherokees, mixed-bloods and some slaves that were associated with a Moravian mission/school (who took civil records that my dad has found on ancestry.com). Apparently there was a fair amount of mixing, as well as a lot if first-cousin marriages and possibly closer interbreeding that may have been a bloodline-perpetuation thing or may have been due to geographical or cultural isolation. I think the setup might actually be similar to modern small chiefdoms in Afghanistan. Vann was incidentally killed because of his bad behavior, in a way that reminds me of the fate of western Florida's Edgar J Watson [2] that Peter Matthiessen wrote so masterfully about[3].

But that's digressing a little bit...

By now, though, there has been enough dilution in my family that I don't think I would be any more than 1/8th; I think I'm probably more around 1.5/16ths. My mother's family, though having been in the Ozarks since the 1840s or so, has no indication of non-European blood.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Vann [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chokoloskee,_Florida [3]: https://www.nytimes.com/books/97/11/23/home/matthiessen-wats...

[waterlesscloud]

Yeah, I'm from the south and was always told some ancestor was Cherokee. Never really believed it, since it really is the sort of thing most families say. But then 23andme confirmed Native American dna as a small percentage for me. Go figure. It might all be more true than most people think.

[ScottBurson]

Well, I have the opposite story. I was always told I was 1/256 Cherokee, but according to 23andme, I have no Native American ancestry -- however, I'm about .4% African. .4% is pretty close to 1/256, so I think the race of one of my ancestors was, um, edited.

I think amttc is on the right track, but needs to take it a little farther.

[Jtsummers]

I have a friend with North African ancestry (mother is Spanish) and neither of her sisters show the same (all with 23andme).

At that distance, it's entirely possible you have the ancestry claimed and the ancestry discovered, but the DNA which would show it is absent for your Native American ancestry.

[ScottBurson]

Good point. You're right -- it's possible. I don't think any of my other family members have gotten analyzed. That would shed more light on the situation.

Edited to add: well, look at it this way. If one were part African in Alabama in the 19th century, one would be well advised to claim to be part Cherokee, if one's coloration and features were such that one could get away with it. Given that, I think Occam's razor inclines me toward the possibility I suggested.

[SwellJoe]

I'm just one data point, but I'm from South Carolina, and one side of my family had a Cherokee ancestor myth when I was growing up. And, after having my DNA tested by 23andme, I found it was exactly that: A myth. I have no Cherokee (or otherwise Native American) ancestors, despite there being a belief in my family that there was a Cherokee ancestor.

I always suspected it was bogus; I actually kinda figured it was racist white folks' way to explain away dark skin and broad noses in our family tree without acknowledging black relatives. (But, it turns out my theory was also bogus. My family tree is Scottish, Irish, English, and Dutch.)