Everybody wants to be Cherokee.
Most of the white families I knew in Mississippi claimed some degree of Native blood – usually Cherokee – and nearly always through a great-grandmother.
Obviously, there couldn’t possible be that many Cherokee great-grandmothers – it’s statistically impossible – but most folks insisted that their family story was true. From Johnny Cash to Johnny Depp, there’s never been a shortage of white people eager to claim Cherokee blood.
My family was in that number, too.
My mom’s mom claimed that her mother was 1/8th Cherokee and “nothing but a crazy Indian.” My grandmother, whom I only met twice, was severely mentally ill and had orange hair, ice-blue eyes and so little pigment that her eyebrows and eyelashes seemed nonexistent. It was difficult to imagine her carrying a single dominant gene, much less Native blood.
Factoring in her marginal relationship with reality, we hardly took her claim seriously. We figured it was just one more family myth.
Then last weekend, a professor friend of mine offered to research my bloodlines. I agreed, maybe because my own family died a long time ago. I expected her to find nothing but a line of poor white farmers stretching all the way back to the British Isles.
I was wrong.
I have Quakers in my bloodline and French – who migrated to Louisiana in the 1700s – and at least three ancestors who fought in the Revolutionary War. My many-times great-grandfather built the first tavern in Pennsylvania and hosted William Penn’s first colonial meal.
And those rumors of Native blood? In my family, against all odds, they are true. And there is Native blood where no rumors even existed.
On my dad’s side, where I least expected to find any Native ancestry, my friend discovered Samuel Pounds, my great-great-great-great-great grandfather. He was half-Monacan and a Revolutionary War vet who survived a shot to the shoulder.
On my mother’s side, it turns out my grandmother was right. We have Cherokee ancestors. My great-great-great-great grandmother was Ghi Yu Nu Nu, also known as Nancy Looney.
Ghi Yu Nu Nu was the daughter of John Looney, Chief of the Western Cherokee in 1838 and 1839, and Betsy Webber, daughter of Chief Will Webber, who was also known as “Red-headed Chief Will” for the mane he inherited from his English father.
I am descended from a long line of red-headed Cherokee.
I went 45 years without knowing any of this.
When my friend told me, I got the shakes.
My friend is still doing research, but already I’ve seen a photo of one Cherokee ancestor, a painting of another, the clan names of a few, and deeds to property they owned and had stolen from them.
I’m a writer. I should be able to explain why learning this news affects me to such a degree, but I can’t explain what I don’t understand.
I wish I could tell my parents, or grandparents, or aunts or uncles, but everyone is gone.
I’m not trying to lay claim to anything, aside from the facts: these are my ancestors. Of course, nearly every piece of me is white. But the parts that are Native? They matter. They matter to me.
And the next time someone asks where my red hair came from, I can tell them the truth: it came from the Cherokee side of the family.