European Americans With Possible Native American Ancestors

As I do genealogical research for myself and for my friends, I am often told that family lore is that one particular ancestor was a Native American. I've given this answer so many times that I could almost repeat it in my sleep, so I thought I'd take this rainy afternoon to write it all out once and for all.

Finding proof of Native American ancestry is extremely hard for a number of reasons that I'll go into in just a second. First though, I thought I might address the reason why a number of people are looking for proof: to be able to qualify for US Federal Government grants such as scholarships that are available to Native Americans.

If you think you are part of a Native American Tribe, your first stop is to call your local Bureau of Indian Affairs. You can find that information (and more) at the Department of Interior website: www.doi.gov/tribes/esablishancestr.cfm

I'm afraid that this part of the equation is not very good news for most people. What I have heard from a number of people who have ventured down this road is that unless the person requesting aid is a full-blooded Native American and most likely living on a Federal Reservation, then the chance of getting any aid is very small. But, who knows? Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right? The only cost in trying is your time.

The other side of the ancestor question is equally important to many: simply finding more about their heritage and whether it includes the riches of Native American ancestry.

Unfortunately, thanks to the Euro-centric natures of our other ancestors, this too is a difficult road. To explain, I need to go into a little history.

We all know that stories of the European explorers who came to America, bringing with them new, strange customs, religions and names. Contrary to what we learned in our social studies books as children, many Native Americans embraced a European lifestyle. (Many Europeans also embraced the Native American tribal lifestyle as well, never to be seen again in their settlements.) The Native Americans who chose to live as the European settlers became baptized as Christians, changed their names to European names, lived in European-style homes, built and successfully ran European style businesses and farms. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/five_civilized_tribes)

Beginning in 1830, the Federal government began a series of Indian Removal Acts. The "reason" (and by reason I mean prejudice, irrationality, hatred) behind the acts was that the civilized tribes had successful pieces of land and the whites wanted them. Imagine any of your neighbors who live the same as you do, their kids go to the same school as yours -- they even go to your same church, but just because their great-grandparents were of a different race, they are forced to march a thousand miles to a barren prairie to completely start over from scratch. The Federal government at one time even barred missionaries from going into Indian lands in Georgia for fear that converted Native Americans would have a case for not being forcefully removed.

Of course, being neighbors with European settlers meant that many of the Native American and Europeans had intermarried. In general, when the head of the family (male) was a Native American, the family was removed to the west. If the head of the family was a European settler, then he and his Native American wife wouldn't be forced to move west, but scared of a forced removal later, many of these particular families moved into Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, and even into Arkansas and Missouri. This one situation is why you will hear a lot of European descendants today speak of a Native American grandmother rather than grandfather.

So, when you have a complete name change (Pocahontas to Rebecca Rolfe) as well as a location change, you suddenly have an ancestor show up in your family tree who seems to just "appear" suddenly. Because they have a European name, there is almost no way of telling if they really were of European descent of if they were of Native American descent.

I know this isn't very helpful, but I'm hoping for you in your search that the stars will all align so that you can find your true heritage.