7 ms·

Why so many Americans claim Cherokee ancestry

35 points by samclemens 11y ago

tlb 11y ago
"the number of Americans who self-identify as Cherokee or mixed-race Cherokee has grown substantially over the past two decades." Assuming completely random mating, the ancestor count of a small group inside a large stable population should double every generation. "In 2000, the federal Census reported that 729,533 Americans self-identified as Cherokee. By 2010, that number increased, with the Census Bureau reporting that 819,105 Americans claiming at least one Cherokee ancestor." 12% in 10 years, or 33% in 25 years (a modern generation) is less than would be expected by that first-order theory.
- zck 11y ago
  And that's the percentage! The article is dealing with raw numbers. The US population at large grew 9.7% between 2000 and 2010 (http://www.census.gov/2010census/data/apportionment-pop-text.php http://www.census.gov/2010census/data/apportionment-pop-text...). So it would be expected that a given subset of that population would also increase by about that amount. A further confound is that you can not know that you had Cherokee ancestry in 2000, but discover that in the next ten years. I'd think this would be especially true during the rise of internet-based ancestry research tools.
  - nickff 11y ago
    You would only expect the percentage of people with any specific ancestry to double if they never had children with people of similar extraction, and there was no immigration.
- jessriedel 11y ago
  Yea, this article is weird. Why would a professor lead the piece with a suggestion that a bunch of this students are deluded and then provide essentially zero evidence that this is the case?
  - protomyth 11y ago
    "In the United States alone, the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma estimates there are over 200 fraudulent groups claiming to be Cherokee." The author doesn't go into great detail, but it the estimate is probably correct given the statistics of the situation. The tribes have the tribal roll with the ancestry. You can do further reading on the genetic testing and people's beliefs about their ancestry.
    - jnbiche 11y ago
      Based on my experiences with non-recognized tribes of other affiliations, I'd be willing to best that a lot of those "fraudulent" groups are legitimate Native American tribes, or at the very least organized groups of people with shared Native American ancestry, but ones that are not officially recognized by the US Government. Yes, there are fake tribes that come out of the woodwork hoping to gain casino rights, but many if not most of these non-recognized groups often accused of being fraudulent have verifiable histories going back 100 or more years, and have been studied by historians and anthropologists (with publications to prove it). It's a shame that such groups are denied the recognition they deserve, even after all that has happened in this country.
      - plonh 11y ago
        It is also a shame that casino rights is the form of recognition they seek.
        glesica 11y ago
        It's a shame that casino rights is the only meaningful form of recognition being offered...
        hugh4 11y ago
        And I think it's a shame that anyone thinks they deserve "recognition" based on who their ancestors were.
- Turing_Machine 11y ago
  Googling suggests that DNA evidence shows that about 5% of "white" Americans carry Native American genes (this varies a lot with the region -- for instance, "white" people from Louisiana are more likely to carry Native American (8%) and African American (12%) genes than in some other areas). 200 million "white" Americans x 0.05 = roughly 10 million Americans with some type of NA ancestry. Give that the Cherokee were (and are) quite a large tribe, 700,000-800,000 living descendants doesn't seem at all unreasonable. Edit: corrected to account for only the "white" population rather than the whole population.
  - Niten 11y ago
    > Googling suggests that DNA evidence shows that about 5% of "white" Americans carry Native American genes I'm one of these, at least according to my Genographic Project results. Prior to getting my results, I assumed my father's family's oral tradition of a Cherokee ancestor was fiction. But maybe it's true after all.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
  > "Assuming completely random mating" I'm not sure this is an entirely sound hypothesis given the observable state of this country over basically its entire history.
noahlt 11y ago
My family tells a story about a distant great^n uncle of mine, who married a Cherokee woman. She had grown up without tables and chairs, as you might imagine, and was more comfortable squatting than sitting. Of course, my uncle wanted his wife to be at the dinner table with him. So he built a stool of such height that she could squat on it and be roughly eye level with her European-descendant family members sitting around the table. And they lived happily ever after. I like to tell that story any time someone claims that technology pushes people apart rather than bringing them together.
- jessaustin 11y ago
  When I worked in Singapore, our office building had only western-style toilets rather than the hole-in-the-floor type. So of course many employees had to climb up on them in order to squat.
  - davidw 11y ago
    > western-style The holes in the ground are actually fairly common in Italy.
    - mcv 11y ago
      And rural France.
    - jessaustin 11y ago
      "Western-style" is what everyone called them when it made a difference. (In USA they're called just "toilets"; perhaps Europe is similar?) I've seen the hole-in-the-floor type in a fancy resort in Japan. Is that also the case in Italy? Keep in mind this hole still has standing water and a trap and still flushes. It shouldn't be confused with the vault style you see in more rustic locations, with or without a "toilet" seat.
- plonh 11y ago
  Did Cherokee not sit on the floor?
api 11y ago
I saw a signal for some Cherokee ancestry via 23andme. My family never said anything about it. I've got ancestors from the Appalachian region so it makes some sense, and I'm inclined to trust SNP analysis more than family stories. :)
amttc 11y ago
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?
- waterlesscloud 11y ago
  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 11y ago
    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 11y ago
      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 11y ago
bitwize 11y ago
"Being part Cherokee in Oklahoma is like being a Cubs fan in Chicago." --Sarah Vowell
serpentor 11y ago
God damn it. That guy needs to learn to spell out certain key points, when writing an article. Maybe he'll consider bouncing his material off an editor from time to time. I’ve long ceased questioning students about the specifics of their claims. Their imagined genealogies may simply be a product of family lore, or, as is occasionally the case, a genuine connection to a Cherokee family and community. ... help explain why the Cherokees occupy a prominent place in our collective historical consciousness. ... why so many Americans hope to find a Cherokee in their family tree. He doesn't come right out and say it, for whatever reason, but the thrust of the article is that such claims are dubious, tall tales. He needs to add at least one sentence clarifying that he believes most, if not all such claims to be full of shit, and pants-on-head silly, or just plain college student shenanigans. His article would further benefit from a line or three stating plainly that: 1. The Cherokee possess the most popular of all Native American tribal names. People who are lying tend to craft their lies around well-known popular things, especially when a well-known thing might be THE ONLY thing they can remember in a subject area. 2. The Cherokee nation possesses a sympathetic tale as part of the fabric of their historical background. This benefits liars, because it's more difficult to accuse lies upon a person courting sympathy. You better be sure of your accusation, or you'll seem to be a villain amongst the liar's audience. 3. The Cherokee actually DO have a REAL diaspora of actual credible descendents, larger in size than most other nations. This contributes to a knock-on effect that ties into reason number one, there are more actual Cherokees floating around, thus they are more well-known, and thus remain the go-to Indian name for people who might craft lies to embellish their heritage in casual conversation. These are the main points I'm gathering from the author's article, although he kind of couches his words in oblique assumptions about the reader. Maybe he's worried about catching heat over proposing these sorts of ideas.
- lobster_johnson 11y ago
  Not saying it was a brilliant article, but I got all three points without having to read it multiple times, and I thought it was quite clear. I liked that he didn't spoon feed the reader with predigested conclusions.
  - 11y ago
eugenekolo2 11y ago
I'm a bit surprised that the benefit of claiming to be Cherokee for the sake of college applications isn't brought up. But overall, the author tries heavily to not take a stand, or insult anybody.
- eplanit 11y ago
  A well-known example of this from the recent past: http://elizabethwarrenwiki.org/elizabeth-warren-native-american-cherokee-controversy/ http://elizabethwarrenwiki.org/elizabeth-warren-native-ameri...
  - burkaman 11y ago
    That site looks super biased, I think maybe wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Warren#Native_American_heritage_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Warren#Native_Americ...) or news articles would be better sources.
    - eugenekolo2 11y ago
      I wouldn't trust something specifically named "elizabethwarrenwiki" as trust worthy. But, relying on Wikipedia isn't too much better. Not for politics.
Steko 11y ago
A very interesting article along the same lines: http://thislandpress.com/2014/08/26/among-the-tribe-of-the-wannabes/ http://thislandpress.com/2014/08/26/among-the-tribe-of-the-w...
awqrre 11y ago
Don't you need to be at least 1/4 (or maybe 1/16) Cherokee native American to be able to claim it? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_quantum_laws#Tribes_requiring_1.2F4_degree_blood_quantum_for_membership https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_quantum_laws#Tribes_requ...
jagermo 11y ago
As a German: Could someone explain me, why Americans love to be "1/8th something"? There is a high chance that whenever I talk to someone, they say "Oh, yeah, I am 1/64th German!" - and if I ask them if they know the language or culture (besides Rammstein) or if they visited Germany ever, almost anyone says no. Is it just one of these safe smalltalk topics, like sports or weather? In the future, should I be interested and ask them about it? Or just say "how nice" and move along?
- rspeer 11y ago
  Something that's pretty big in American culture is celebrating whatever your non-American culture is. In many cases, if people couldn't claim to be 1/8 something, they'd feel left out. When people tell you that, they're making small talk about their family. Don't ask them about the culture they're claiming to be from, ask them about their family.
- smcl 11y ago
  I think it's innocent enough, a country with a huge amount of semi-recent (within 2-3 generations) immigrants is bound to have a lot of people with a bit of mixed heritage, a number of which will be doing a bit of searching for some kind of cultural identity. An "oh really?" and maybe a polite question about which part of Germany their family is from, if they are still in contact with their German family etc will probably suffice. However there's little excuse for "You're Scottish? Do you know my cousin Kenneth?" to which the appropriate response is "Ohhh Kenneth ... yeah everyone knows him. He's a real jerk" :)
- pluma 11y ago
  One theory would be race. The US is all about race. Some of it probably has to do with white guilt (white Americans killed the natives, white Americans enslaved black people, white Americans heavily discriminated against black people, brown people and yellow people). Prior to paying attention to American culture I didn't understand that for Americans "latinos" are a race and all black-ish people are "black" and that "white" people are "Caucasian". Another would be that the US has barely any culture or history of its own. You can only go back a little more than two centuries if you want to talk about the US and only a little bit more than that if you want to talk about the Americas. Worse yet, the US is a nation of immigrants so most people's ancestry hasn't even been in the US that long.

35 points by samclemens 11y ago

tlb 11y ago

"the number of Americans who self-identify as Cherokee or mixed-race Cherokee has grown substantially over the past two decades." Assuming completely random mating, the ancestor count of a small group inside a large stable population should double every generation. "In 2000, the federal Census reported that 729,533 Americans self-identified as Cherokee. By 2010, that number increased, with the Census Bureau reporting that 819,105 Americans claiming at least one Cherokee ancestor." 12% in 10 years, or 33% in 25 years (a modern generation) is less than would be expected by that first-order theory.

zck 11y ago
And that's the percentage! The article is dealing with raw numbers. The US population at large grew 9.7% between 2000 and 2010 (http://www.census.gov/2010census/data/apportionment-pop-text.php http://www.census.gov/2010census/data/apportionment-pop-text...). So it would be expected that a given subset of that population would also increase by about that amount. A further confound is that you can not know that you had Cherokee ancestry in 2000, but discover that in the next ten years. I'd think this would be especially true during the rise of internet-based ancestry research tools.
- nickff 11y ago
  You would only expect the percentage of people with any specific ancestry to double if they never had children with people of similar extraction, and there was no immigration.
jessriedel 11y ago
Yea, this article is weird. Why would a professor lead the piece with a suggestion that a bunch of this students are deluded and then provide essentially zero evidence that this is the case?
- protomyth 11y ago
  "In the United States alone, the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma estimates there are over 200 fraudulent groups claiming to be Cherokee." The author doesn't go into great detail, but it the estimate is probably correct given the statistics of the situation. The tribes have the tribal roll with the ancestry. You can do further reading on the genetic testing and people's beliefs about their ancestry.
  - jnbiche 11y ago
    Based on my experiences with non-recognized tribes of other affiliations, I'd be willing to best that a lot of those "fraudulent" groups are legitimate Native American tribes, or at the very least organized groups of people with shared Native American ancestry, but ones that are not officially recognized by the US Government. Yes, there are fake tribes that come out of the woodwork hoping to gain casino rights, but many if not most of these non-recognized groups often accused of being fraudulent have verifiable histories going back 100 or more years, and have been studied by historians and anthropologists (with publications to prove it). It's a shame that such groups are denied the recognition they deserve, even after all that has happened in this country.
    - plonh 11y ago
      It is also a shame that casino rights is the form of recognition they seek.
      - glesica 11y ago
        It's a shame that casino rights is the only meaningful form of recognition being offered...
        hugh4 11y ago
        And I think it's a shame that anyone thinks they deserve "recognition" based on who their ancestors were.
Turing_Machine 11y ago
Googling suggests that DNA evidence shows that about 5% of "white" Americans carry Native American genes (this varies a lot with the region -- for instance, "white" people from Louisiana are more likely to carry Native American (8%) and African American (12%) genes than in some other areas). 200 million "white" Americans x 0.05 = roughly 10 million Americans with some type of NA ancestry. Give that the Cherokee were (and are) quite a large tribe, 700,000-800,000 living descendants doesn't seem at all unreasonable. Edit: corrected to account for only the "white" population rather than the whole population.
- Niten 11y ago
  > Googling suggests that DNA evidence shows that about 5% of "white" Americans carry Native American genes I'm one of these, at least according to my Genographic Project results. Prior to getting my results, I assumed my father's family's oral tradition of a Cherokee ancestor was fiction. But maybe it's true after all.
GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
> "Assuming completely random mating" I'm not sure this is an entirely sound hypothesis given the observable state of this country over basically its entire history.

noahlt 11y ago

My family tells a story about a distant great^n uncle of mine, who married a Cherokee woman. She had grown up without tables and chairs, as you might imagine, and was more comfortable squatting than sitting. Of course, my uncle wanted his wife to be at the dinner table with him. So he built a stool of such height that she could squat on it and be roughly eye level with her European-descendant family members sitting around the table. And they lived happily ever after. I like to tell that story any time someone claims that technology pushes people apart rather than bringing them together.

jessaustin 11y ago
When I worked in Singapore, our office building had only western-style toilets rather than the hole-in-the-floor type. So of course many employees had to climb up on them in order to squat.
- davidw 11y ago
  > western-style The holes in the ground are actually fairly common in Italy.
  - mcv 11y ago
    And rural France.
  - jessaustin 11y ago
    "Western-style" is what everyone called them when it made a difference. (In USA they're called just "toilets"; perhaps Europe is similar?) I've seen the hole-in-the-floor type in a fancy resort in Japan. Is that also the case in Italy? Keep in mind this hole still has standing water and a trap and still flushes. It shouldn't be confused with the vault style you see in more rustic locations, with or without a "toilet" seat.
plonh 11y ago
Did Cherokee not sit on the floor?

api 11y ago

I saw a signal for some Cherokee ancestry via 23andme. My family never said anything about it. I've got ancestors from the Appalachian region so it makes some sense, and I'm inclined to trust SNP analysis more than family stories. :)

amttc 11y ago

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?

waterlesscloud 11y ago
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 11y ago
  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 11y ago
    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 11y ago

bitwize 11y ago

"Being part Cherokee in Oklahoma is like being a Cubs fan in Chicago." --Sarah Vowell

serpentor 11y ago

God damn it. That guy needs to learn to spell out certain key points, when writing an article. Maybe he'll consider bouncing his material off an editor from time to time. I’ve long ceased questioning students about the specifics of their claims. Their imagined genealogies may simply be a product of family lore, or, as is occasionally the case, a genuine connection to a Cherokee family and community. ... help explain why the Cherokees occupy a prominent place in our collective historical consciousness. ... why so many Americans hope to find a Cherokee in their family tree. He doesn't come right out and say it, for whatever reason, but the thrust of the article is that such claims are dubious, tall tales. He needs to add at least one sentence clarifying that he believes most, if not all such claims to be full of shit, and pants-on-head silly, or just plain college student shenanigans. His article would further benefit from a line or three stating plainly that: 1. The Cherokee possess the most popular of all Native American tribal names. People who are lying tend to craft their lies around well-known popular things, especially when a well-known thing might be THE ONLY thing they can remember in a subject area. 2. The Cherokee nation possesses a sympathetic tale as part of the fabric of their historical background. This benefits liars, because it's more difficult to accuse lies upon a person courting sympathy. You better be sure of your accusation, or you'll seem to be a villain amongst the liar's audience. 3. The Cherokee actually DO have a REAL diaspora of actual credible descendents, larger in size than most other nations. This contributes to a knock-on effect that ties into reason number one, there are more actual Cherokees floating around, thus they are more well-known, and thus remain the go-to Indian name for people who might craft lies to embellish their heritage in casual conversation. These are the main points I'm gathering from the author's article, although he kind of couches his words in oblique assumptions about the reader. Maybe he's worried about catching heat over proposing these sorts of ideas.

lobster_johnson 11y ago
Not saying it was a brilliant article, but I got all three points without having to read it multiple times, and I thought it was quite clear. I liked that he didn't spoon feed the reader with predigested conclusions.
- 11y ago

eugenekolo2 11y ago

I'm a bit surprised that the benefit of claiming to be Cherokee for the sake of college applications isn't brought up. But overall, the author tries heavily to not take a stand, or insult anybody.

eplanit 11y ago
A well-known example of this from the recent past: http://elizabethwarrenwiki.org/elizabeth-warren-native-american-cherokee-controversy/ http://elizabethwarrenwiki.org/elizabeth-warren-native-ameri...
- burkaman 11y ago
  That site looks super biased, I think maybe wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Warren#Native_American_heritage_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Warren#Native_Americ...) or news articles would be better sources.
  - eugenekolo2 11y ago
    I wouldn't trust something specifically named "elizabethwarrenwiki" as trust worthy. But, relying on Wikipedia isn't too much better. Not for politics.

Steko 11y ago

A very interesting article along the same lines: http://thislandpress.com/2014/08/26/among-the-tribe-of-the-wannabes/ http://thislandpress.com/2014/08/26/among-the-tribe-of-the-w...

awqrre 11y ago

Don't you need to be at least 1/4 (or maybe 1/16) Cherokee native American to be able to claim it? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_quantum_laws#Tribes_requiring_1.2F4_degree_blood_quantum_for_membership https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_quantum_laws#Tribes_requ...

jagermo 11y ago

As a German: Could someone explain me, why Americans love to be "1/8th something"? There is a high chance that whenever I talk to someone, they say "Oh, yeah, I am 1/64th German!" - and if I ask them if they know the language or culture (besides Rammstein) or if they visited Germany ever, almost anyone says no. Is it just one of these safe smalltalk topics, like sports or weather? In the future, should I be interested and ask them about it? Or just say "how nice" and move along?

rspeer 11y ago
Something that's pretty big in American culture is celebrating whatever your non-American culture is. In many cases, if people couldn't claim to be 1/8 something, they'd feel left out. When people tell you that, they're making small talk about their family. Don't ask them about the culture they're claiming to be from, ask them about their family.
smcl 11y ago
I think it's innocent enough, a country with a huge amount of semi-recent (within 2-3 generations) immigrants is bound to have a lot of people with a bit of mixed heritage, a number of which will be doing a bit of searching for some kind of cultural identity. An "oh really?" and maybe a polite question about which part of Germany their family is from, if they are still in contact with their German family etc will probably suffice. However there's little excuse for "You're Scottish? Do you know my cousin Kenneth?" to which the appropriate response is "Ohhh Kenneth ... yeah everyone knows him. He's a real jerk" :)
pluma 11y ago
One theory would be race. The US is all about race. Some of it probably has to do with white guilt (white Americans killed the natives, white Americans enslaved black people, white Americans heavily discriminated against black people, brown people and yellow people). Prior to paying attention to American culture I didn't understand that for Americans "latinos" are a race and all black-ish people are "black" and that "white" people are "Caucasian". Another would be that the US has barely any culture or history of its own. You can only go back a little more than two centuries if you want to talk about the US and only a little bit more than that if you want to talk about the Americas. Worse yet, the US is a nation of immigrants so most people's ancestry hasn't even been in the US that long.