Bob Hope used to joke about how the hyper-exclusive Cypress Point Golf Club on the Monterey Peninsula ("the Sistine Chapel of Golf") had just completed a successful membership drive, driving 40 members out.
Cherokee Nation Ousts Slaves' Descendants
Members Vote To Revoke Tribal Citizenship Of Freed Slaves' Descendants
(AP) OKLAHOMA CITY Cherokee Nation members have voted to revoke the tribal citizenship of an estimated 2,800 descendants of the people the Cherokee Indians once owned as slaves.
Ever since Congress allowed Indian nations to each own one casino back in the late 1980s, many tribes have been expelling marginal members to increase the slice of the pie for the remainder.
That's because the main benefit of belonging to a tribe -- the rake-off from a single casino -- is finite. In contrast, black and Hispanic organizations have backed broad, inclusive definitions of who is black or Hispanic because the rake-off from being black or Hispanic -- affirmative action quotas -- are indefinite in magnitude. The larger the percentage of the population, the larger the quota, and the larger the number of voters who are beneficiaries. (Of course, in this zero sum game, the greater the black and Hispanic rake-off, the more pain is inflicted upon whites, but the more white political opposition the more minority ethnic activist groups seem necessary to their constituents, so, for their leaders, what's not to like?)
Back in the 1820s, the farming Cherokees of Georgia were the most advanced tribe, enthusiastically adopting the white man's ways, such as literacy and slavery. They had their own newspaper and owned black slaves. While the hunting tribes were not much of a demographic threat to whites, the Cherokees looked like they could achieve rapid population growth. And if their hybrid ways spread to other tribes, whites would face serious competition for land. Not surprisingly, Andy Jackson ethnically cleansed the Cherokees from Georgia to Oklahoma on the Trail of Tears.
It's common for African-Americans to claim to be part American Indian, although DNA admixture tests have seldom verified those beliefs. (However, admixture tests are still crude enough that the possibility exists that they may be getting this wrong.)
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
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34 comments:
It's common for African-Americans to claim to be part American Indian..
Yes, many a time I've heard a black man say he's got a big chopper.
"It's common for African-Americans to claim to be part American Indian, although DNA admixture tests have seldom verified those beliefs."
Every other white person, actually it's more, in the Deep South claims to have Cherokee ancestry and I have no reason to doubt them. I don't know what's the story with the blacks, but I don't think they intermarried with the Indians nearly to the degree that the whites did. In Gone with the Wind, there is a slave character who is part Cherokee; being a Southerner seems to go with being of some Cherokee heritage.
My own husband who is blue eyed, is on the dark side and has a distinct Indian nose and cheek bones. My step-sister and half sister have "rings" around their eyes. I've seen this some in other women of Cherokee descent. I met a very white blond blue-eyed Southerner with high cheek bones the other day. She owed those to her Scots-Irish and Cherokee ancestry, of course.
Steve, the other day you had a commenter on one of the threads complain about the white women who were plain, thin lipped, and without rear ends. He added they were usually Scots-Irish. I laughed and wondered what Scots-Irish women has he met?! Just about all Scots-Irish are part Indian and usually have at least something that makes them stand out. No, he wanted to come across as smart.
I was the commenter noted by anonymous above. I stand by my statement. I wasn't trying to be smart. I was trying to make a valid observation. I have lived in the south and have known many a scot-irish, and most clearly do not have cherokee blood. Those who do may look like Rita Coolidge. On the other hand, the predominate pure-blood scot-irish are thin-lipped with no butt, unless they have a "drop or two" of African in them.
Bruno,
I don't know how common Cherokee (or other Indian) ancestry is among white southerners. Many whites in the south have the typical "Cherokee princess" legends in their families. These obviously can't be quite right. Cherokees didn't have any sort of hereditary nobility and clearly there couldn't have been that many princesses even if they did. (As a side note, I've often heard people with some Cherokee ancestry speak about their "purity" based off how much of their ancestry is traceable to the Dawes Rolls, but the Dawes Rolls aren't a good indication of purity among the Cherokees. The Cherokees had already been living side-by-side with whites for a very long time. Many of them already had a good deal of admixture before the Dawes Rolls were created.)
Furthermore, where Indian ancestry may exist in a family, it seems it's often the case that "Cherokee" becomes a byword for any tribal ancestry tracing from the southern states. Many little-known and long extinct tribes from the Carolinas, Virginia, Georgia, Alabama and Florida once existed that had a long, and not always hostile, relationship with white settlers.
My own mother's ancestry is mostly from the Oklahoma and Arkansas region (and further back, Virginia and Tennessee). She swears there is Indian, in particular Cherokee, ancestry in the family. I'm not entirely certain about the veracity of such claims. I can find no clear evidence of direct Indian ancestry genealogically, though many indirect ancestors do have documented Cherokee ancestry. Then again, the ancestry of the family is very murky in large areas. My mother certainly looks white enough in terms of skin tone and eye and hair color. The stereotypical "Indian nose" and other uncharacteristic facial features vaguely reminiscent of Indians do run in the family (and I ended up with many of them: strange nose and eye shape, full lips, the cheekbones, etc.) and, judging by old photographs, my mother's father looks like he might have had some Indian ancestry, but that is hardly incontrovertible proof. The most intriguing evidence favoring my mother's claim comes from dentists. I've had several dentists over the years say that they can tell I have Indian blood in my family based off dental morphology. Apparently, there are a host of dental characteristics that are common in Native Americans (and Asians) that don't occur in Europeans.
One interesting and bizarre note about families with the "Cherokee princess" legends: I've found that a number of families (and my own, as well) who have such legends often have a strange genetic trait running in their families. Inexplicably, they are often carriers of the beta-thalassemia gene which ordinarily occurs in Mediterranean and Near Eastern populations and generally isn't present among either northern Europeans or Native Americans. This is in spite of the fact that they have no known Mediterranean ancestry in their families and many of such families have ancestry that is entirely from the rural southeastern US. Perhaps it's a novel mutation, but it's odd that it could be so frequent given the fact that thalassemia's only selective advantage is protection against malaria. Possibly, I've heard it suggested, it could be a relic from early Spanish or Portuguese explorers. That seems fanciful, but who knows? To the best of my knowledge, nobody has ever attempted to investigate the prevalence of beta-thalassemia trait among southerners or people with reputed southern Indian ancestry, though I think it would be something worth investigating.
The south would have been a richer place if Andy Jackson didn't drive the Indians to reservations in Oklahoma, provided that they would have assimilated like the Cherokee did. Thats probably the most shameful thing, other than slavery, this nation ever done.
Here are some very brief narratives from former slaves held by the Cherokees:
http://hometown.aol.com/angelaw859/estelust.html
There used to be a better resource on the internet, with much more lengthy and detailed narratives. Unfortunately, I cannot seem to locate it. I'll keep looking and post it here if I can find it. I once spent several hours reading them. I thought they were very interesting.
Needless to say, I think the decision to disenfranchise descendants of ex-slaves is a pretty low blow by the Cherokees. They ought to be ashamed. If they were going to throw somebody overboard, they would have been better off dumping those who have minimal day-to-day involvement in tribal life or who live nowhere near the former trust lands.
It is sometimes said that most French-Canadians have some native blood in them. From my own perfunctory observations, I'd have to say this might be true.
There was a lot more integration and intermarriage between the natives and the French Canadians, than between them and the British Canadians, who mostly came in after the American revolution. The fur trading French, and the Jesuits who followed them, were generally more friendly and accomodating than land hungry English-speaking farmers.
You might want to take a look yourselves. Here is film director Denys Arcand and here is former Quebec premier Jacques Parizeau.
I once heard a (possibly, even probably, apocryphal) story that the cover of the Jimi Hendrix Experience's album Axis: Bold as Love, on which Hendrix and his bandmates are depicted as Hindu gods, was a misundertanding by the British album cover designer of a request by Hendrix that the album cover should have an "Indian" (i.e., Native American) motif because Hendrix claimed Indian ancestry.
Hendrix was from Seattle, but the existence of a Hendrix College in Arkansas (the only other example I know of the name spelled "Hendrix" instead of "Hendricks"), makes me suspect his original ancestors could have been from the Arkansas/Oklahoma/Texas area.
Arkansas native Johnny Cash also claimed Cherokee ancestry at one point in his career but later admitted he had no evidence for that. Bill Clinton's mother once made a similar claim.
The willingness of paper-white, turquoise- or agate-eyed Irish, English, or Scottish girls to volunteer out of left field a claim that they are "Part Indian" is a measure of how much whiteness is looked down upon as "uncool," unpopular, or even as evil, in their environment.
Why should they want to be identified as White (or as any White ethnicity exclusively) when everywhere around them it is claimed that Whites have no culture, no rhythm, no fairness, no right to exist, and, most importantly, no bubble lips and steatopygous buttocks (see comments above).
According to the below-mentioned accomplished scholar, there is no such thing as White culture. Even a bushman has culture to be respected and emulated. But a White man? Of course not. Unless he's Jewish, in which case he's not identified as White ("it's only a skin color") but as Jewish instead.
Google charlatan.ca loreto and click on the top result.
Heavy anti-White propaganda causes many White kids to feel that they would rather die than be considered White. Hence, "I'm a Cherokee princess!" "I'm a descendant of saintly victims, and I resist The Man." "I'm a cool minority, too!"
Just part of the suicide of the White West.
I saw this ad in a magazine recently:
http://www.vanderbilt.edu/AnS/Anthro/fischer/SellingIdentities/Americ4.jpg
Who knew that a Real Indian so closely resembles a white person.
Bill Clinton is part Indian, but of the Hindustan variety. His biological father, William Blythe, came from the famous Blythe clan of Scottish Gypsies. So Toni Morrison was onto something after all, she just had him pegged as the wrong minority. Bill Clinton, our first Roma-American president!
"The willingness of paper-white, turquoise- or agate-eyed Irish, English, or Scottish girls to volunteer out of left field a claim that they are "Part Indian" is a measure of how much whiteness is looked down upon as "uncool," unpopular, or even as evil, in their environment."
Whites are evil, don't you know? Whites kill baby seals. Whites are responsible for global warming. Whites created AIDS. Whites killed off the dinosaurs. Whites are the devil.
The Cherokee (a distant offshoot of Iroquois linguistically) weren't the only tribe affected by Jackson's ethnic cleansing.
Along with the Muskoghean speaking groups the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek and Seminole they formed the 5 civilized tribes who adapted lots of european technology for their own ends.
The best explanation I've heard for the trail of tears was that it was a land grab pure and simple.
Herbert Hoover's Vice-President Charles Curtis was famously part-Indian. In fact, he'd spent several years as a child on an Indian reservation and spoke an Indian language before he spoke English. Winston Churchill claimed to be 1/16th American Indian, although that's been disputed by genealogists. In general, being a little bit American Indians was fashionable even long before the 1960s.
The DNAPrint test has been unreliable for American Indian admixture. It's pretty common that Jews who know positively that all four of their grandparents immigrated from Eastern Europe register as a few percent American Indian. As DNA sequencing gets cheaper, these admixture tests should get more accurate because they'll be able to consider more genes for a given price.
Another point, the Muskogee (Creek) confederation was probably the bigger threat to whites as (much more than any other Indian nation in the area) was a proto-state with a history of assimilating smaller groups who were largely left to run their own affairs as they saw fit as long as they didn't clash with larger confederation structures.
It doesn't take much imagination to imagine that they could begin to assimilate small groups of white settlers.
Heavy anti-White propaganda causes many White kids to feel that they would rather die than be considered White. Hence, "I'm a Cherokee princess!" "I'm a descendant of saintly victims, and I resist The Man." "I'm a cool minority, too!"
The "Indian princess" legends date back generations. They are nothing new. However, I do think you are right in that they are being played up more than ever before. Partly it is for economic reasons. More significantly, it's because of a combination of anti-white multiculturalism and "Indian chic." In part, I blame movies like Dances with Wolves for that. Instead of demonizing Indians, today's movies idealize them to the point of absurdity. Never has the noble savage been more noble than in modern Hollywood. Film-makers on Indians today are said to "understand" Indians better. In reality, they just misunderstand them in positive ways.
My favorite book ever written on the subject of Indians is T.E. Fehrenbach's book "Comanches." This book should be mandatory reading for multiculturalists.
The book doesn't attempt to glorify Indians. Nor does it vilify them. It is a realistic, and often grim, account of the Comanches that doesn't underplay their brutality (and they are incredibly brutal, women included) but still manages to leave you, at the end of book, feeling sympathetic to their fate. Fehrenbach doesn't pretend that westward expansion was anything but inevitable. He also doesn't pretend that the warlike nomads could have ever been reasonably expected to adopt a life of sedentary farming as many whites had hoped. The Comanches' entire worldview was contrary to such an existence. As is always the case, the boy must do what it takes to get the girl and growing maize wasn't going to cut it with the Comanches.
Fehrenbach also doesn't ceaselessly attack the military as do many pro-Indian books. In fact, the Army turns out to be the only place where you can find men who truly understand and sympathize with the predicament the Indians face. A handful of military officers turn out to be the only whites who can glean any sort of an understanding of the Comanches and their motivations. They are the true heroes of the book. The military is given the impossible task of trying to arbitrate between encroaching settlers and the Indians as best they can. Unfortunately, it becomes increasingly difficult to defend the Comanches' interests against those of the settlers and the politicians who support them.
Most importantly, the book portrays just how alien a culture can be from the one we recognize. The Comanches aren't like us. In some ways they aren't even like other Indian tribes. Most Indians, including Plains Indians, tend to emphasize respect for elders. Not the Comanches. They view the elderly as weak and as useless and the tribe's senior citizens have little control over the younger warriors. The young men don't even make token efforts at being courteous to the old.
Some of the most darkly humorous scenes in the book involve liberal-minded missionaries who attempt to win the Comanches over through Christian virtue and charity. The missionaries don't understand that their Christian morality isn't innate. The Comanches don't comprehend it at all. They don't feel guilt where a Christian might expect them to. The moral sensibilities of a Comanche don't simply differ from that of a Christian in terms of which virtues are emphasized or in the determination of whether a particular action is right or wrong; instead, the Comanches possess no sense of morality at all as a Christian might perceive it. The Comanches make judgments based on strengths and weaknesses rather than according to rights and wrongs. This leads to misunderstandings where the missionaries think they've won the Comanches over by way of gifts and acts of kindness. The Comanches instead interpret the gifts as tribute and the acts of mercy or forgiveness as signs of weakness. This only makes the Comanches more surly and dangerous as time passes.
The missionaries very much remind me of today's liberals and neoconservatives who have no idea that cultural differences are often more significant than relatively superficial matters of language, dress, cuisine, or the name of the local deity. We don't all fundamentally want the same things.
Does anyone know if the strikingly gorgeous Pam Grier has American Indian ancestry? She's obviously not 100% black and it looks to me as if she might be part Indian, but I have no information on this (Wikipedia was no help, claiming both parents were "African-American").
Basketball player Scottie Pippen, who is from Arkansas, looks rather American Indian, as did the LA mayor Tom Bradley.
In Virginia, claiming descent from Pocohantas and John Rolfe was long fashionable. Woodrow Wilson's second wife, Edith Galt, was (or claimed to be) such a descendant. Virginia's anti-miscegnation laws applied strict one-drop to blacks and Asians but allowed those with a small percentage of Indian blood to marry whites because real and alleged Pocohantas descendants were so common among Virginia's leading families.
Calvin Coolidge, of all people, once claimed to have Indian blood, but as with Bill Clinton, such claims have not been verified.
Does anyone know if the strikingly gorgeous Pam Grier has American Indian ancestry?
I've never heard any claim made to Indian ancestry from Grier.
Here is a list of mostly non-Indian celebrities that I'm aware of who have some Indian ancestry, or make claims to Indian ancestry, or reportedly have made claims of Indian ancestry in the past:
Hunter Tylo, Cameron Diaz, Kim Basinger, Quentin Tarantino, Angelina Jolie, Jessica Biel, Billy Bob Thornton, Cher, Shannon Elizabeth, Anthony Kiedis, Molly Culver, Ava Gardner, Billy Wirth, Carmen Electra, Heather Locklear, Val Kilmer, Noah Hathaway, Johnny Depp, Kathy Lee Gifford, and Chuck Norris. There are many others I can't think of off the top of my head. I guess we are all Indians now!
Most of these people, of course, claim Cherokee, Choctaw, or some other southern tribe.
Hunter Tylo would appear to be a good example of why the Dawes Rolls are not a reliable way of determining actual blood among Cherokees. If you believe the Dawes Rolls, Tylo, who you would think was entirely white if you were not informed otherwise, is reportedly nearly half-Indian. Then again, I should say that I do know an attractive girl who's father is 3/4 Ojibwa (and who looks like he could pass for a full-blood easily) and who's mother is a blond Italian. Her white great-grandfather on her father's side was likely blonde also because, sure enough, she ended up a light-skinned, dirty blonde just like her mother. You can clearly see the resemblance of the father and daughter if you compare photographs but taken alone you would never guess she was nearly half-Indian. Mestizos can sometimes surprise you.
I suppose the reason Mexican mestizos are darker is probably because Mexican and Central American Indians tend to be much darker than those from the eastern and northern US and Canada and because northern Europeans have lighter features than Spaniards.
Basketball player Scottie Pippen, who is from Arkansas, looks rather American Indian, as did the LA mayor Tom Bradley.
Bradley appears to have very narrow eyes and very round head. Even more so than most Indians actually have. He actually reminds me of the more distinctly Mongoloid Indians of the Pacific Northwest. Another possibility might be that he just has some Khoisan ancestry in addition to standard West African and white.
The entire cast of Pippen's face is vaguely Indian in appearance and he even appears to have a bit of the stereotypical nose also.
Sorry, the last post was mine. I don't know why the comment system defaults to anonymous.
tommy,
I knew a guy who got the same line frome dentists - supposedly the enamel, or something, is a clear signal to dentists.
He also had stories of Indian ancestry on one side (Cherokee, I think), and last I heard that appears to have been backed up, but not firmly confirmed, by geneological records.
The side with the Indian stories is is also from the South (a direct ancestor of his was actually a Colonel on that side in the civil war), and is Scots-Irish.
So the trend you're discussing seems fairly common; at least, you're not the only one I've heard that from.
On this:
"Inexplicably, they are often carriers of the beta-thalassemia gene which ordinarily occurs in Mediterranean and Near Eastern populations and generally isn't present among either northern Europeans or Native Americans."
I'm wondering if genes from the Barbary pirates might have somehow gotten involved? Early in America, they were a pretty big problem, but I don't know enough about the history to determine whether or not it is plausible that they left behind genetic material in Southern populations. Even a little bit might have spread surprisingly well if selection for malaria was important in the south.
There's also a theory that some Indian groups from the Eastern US originated from Europe or the Middle East and not from Asia. I knew a guy of NE American-Indian background who was really interested in his family background, and he claimed that there were some genetic markers in his group that were only also found in significant numbers in Middle Eastern populations (and maybe also in the Canary Islands or something; dunno). I can't vouch for this but it would be interesting to look into.
Well, I must be the whitest person alive. I make an albino look bronzed.
"The willingness of paper-white, turquoise- or agate-eyed Irish, English, or Scottish girls to volunteer out of left field a claim that they are "Part Indian" is a measure of how much whiteness is looked down upon as "uncool," unpopular, or even as evil, in their environment."
If it is coming out of left field, it is sad that they feel they have to prove their cultural worth by pointing to something other than English or Scottish history and culture (and especially anything Celtic, like Scottish, but I'm a bit biased there). I believe you that this happens often, and it is sad.
At the same time, I'd bet a lot of people who are cool with their primary heritage, but very interested in their geneology, will bring this up when the subject of geneology comes up (and as this is a major American hobby, it probably comes up with some people fairly frequently).
In this context, I really don't have a problem with people being interested in the details of their geneology, including family stories that they are "part Indian", and I don't believe that the fact that a person is fair and light blue or green eyed means that these quirks don't exist.
They may be just family stories at this point, but the genetic tools are developing to test them, even for those whose teeth aren't a give-away.
Tommy and others who are curious about the presence of Thalassemia in certain southerners may want to check out some of the sites devoted to the "melungeons."
Black mixture seems to jump out to Americans, but White people don't seem to have a good eye for detecting Cherokee/Indian mixture. It seems to get confused with "exotic" European looks, because color isn't a reliable marker.
There are plenty of Scotch and Irish who look a little "exotic" to the eye. In the northeast, they say they are Black Irish descended from Spanish or Moors. In the south, they say they are part Cherokee.
Adam Beach looks very Native. Wide face, brown/coppery skin, wispy slanted eyebrows, hooded eyes, wide and high cheekbones, black hair and eyes.
The proverbial "Cherokee Schnoz" is more myth than reality. Sure, Cherokee and other (especially men) had a straight nose, a little wider than a typical white nose. And maybe more straight and long than some snub-nosed Irish. But this has been distorted by Hollywood "Indians" played by Italians or Jack Palance in dark makeup.
Johnny Depp looks like part Cherokee, the real deal. Most of these other celebs do not, not even close. Those Canadians look like any other French.
Ditto for Africans. Plenty of pure Black Africans have high cheekbones, almond eyes, straight noses, etc. Somehow it is cooler in pop culture to be raped by a Cherokee slave owner than a Scots-Irish slave owner. Pam Grier might well have a little Indian, but she also could just look like a Fulani. Her body shape is very African.
Franz Boas, later famous for his vocal refutation of physical anthropology, spent the first decade of his career documenting the actual physical traits of Indians and mixed breeds. He looked at things like shape of the face (wide and flat), hair and eye color, and so on - things that Americans trained to distinguish skin color don't really look at closely.
Nowadays it's much easier to see real Indians. They speak Spanish.
It is clear some of you do not know history, let alone African American/Black history. If so, remarks like Blacks did not intermarry or mingle with Native Americans to the degree Blacks call themselves mixed with Indian, would not be made. There is a great degree of Native American and Black mixture in the U.S., most specifically in the southern States and Indian Territory in Oklahoma. Do not fall for the okey doke that the Cherokee Nation is putting out. Many, many Blacks did not make it on the Dawes Rolls, nevertheless, oral history is very strong and these people know who they are. It is not a matter of trying to be other than black, it is simply about acknowledging all of oneself. Black is not diluted, just enhanced by knowing ones heritage. As a genealogist who has strong oral history of Native American blood, my recent admixture test proved this was true. Does that make me any less Black and proud, hell no.
Pam Grier is of Native American descent as well as Black and Scots-Irish. Her grandmother on her father's side was a full-blood Cherokee/Catawba from Winston-Salem, NC. How do I know that? Not from wikipedia....from my father, who happened to be her first cousin. Wiki don't know it all, folks. (And no, my great-grandma was not a princess to my knowledge but if she was, I'd like my crown with nice shiny diamonds please).
hi im irish (from and living in the westcoast of ireand) and i am amazed and astounded by the complete ignorance of bruno (describing irish woman as thin lipped with no butt) i dont know what you think irish women are...but you have obviously NEVER been to ireland. check them out here..you deluded madman!
irish people and those from other celtic nations share our genetic heritage with indians...thats India the country...its mad that people in america are still referring to native americans as indians..they've been there for thosands of years... lol
theres a pretty big difference genetically between irish and scottish people, as theres a lot of viking (germanic) and anglo saxon (also germanic) bloodlines in scotland accounting for as much of or more of the genetic inheritance of scottish people than those of celtic descent.
diarmaid
learn the difference before you talk through ur ass bruno!
Tom Bradley was probably descended from an African-American/Chinese American mix. He was born in Calvert, TX (Robertson County). See
http://www.austincc.edu/itang/sample_chapters/
Chapter_One.html for an account.
I am Cheerokee, Fox, Wyndotte, Irish, and scott.
I have blue eyes blondish hair and very thin lips, high cheek bones. and deep small eyes, and am built like many indian women.
My ancestors meet in the appalacian mountains, very common amoung irish, or scott, cheerokee ancetry because the irish and scott loved the appalation due to the similarities of thier homeland. The cheerokee resided here for years, many cheerokee women settled with the Indian men. Many irish also worked in the coal mines of these mountains, Georgia, north carolina, arkansas, tennesse, and kentucky are all places where the cheerokee, irish ancesrties link back to.
angie
Pam Grier is not obviously black? Wikipedia was no help because it says both her parents are African American?
Ridiculous. What is so 'not obviously 100% black' about Pam Grier? She's brown skin, has a thick afro, full lips and a button nose.
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