Rooting for Native American Roots
For decades I have longed to discover that I was not purely of European ethnicity, but also Native American, From childhood the evidence of my affinity mounted. I wore moccasins. I had an "Indian chief" feathered headdress. Thanksgiving at school inevitably recalled the caring of Squanto; indeed, the indigenous people who helped the Pilgrims survive deserved a hearty thanks. I had been intrigued for years about the story of Pochahontas and John Rolfe, as illustrated in a folio sized children’s book illustrated by Ingri and Edgar d’Aulaire. I was clearly too focused on the weaponry, as I made a tomahawk to play a Native American in summer camp and made my own bow and arrows for woodland fantasies. I loved finding milky quartz arrowheads in Virginia fields near where my mother had been born. I built wigwam-like shelters of hay under an elm in a field near the house where I grew up in outside Boston. I appreciated the mutual respect of the Lone Ranger and Tonto, a favorite television Western, the staple of the 1950s. Mum had framed a calendar print of a kindly Navajo to hang in the house, complementing Navajo rugs. And I could hardly blame Geronimo and Sitting Bull for standing up to white aggression.
I especially liked thinking about how we pay homage to Native Americans every time we say chipmunk, hickory, moccasin, moose, muskrat, opossum, powwow, raccoon, skunk, squash, succotash, toboggan, woodchuck, or caucus. Yes, caucus! Algonquian loanwords. We honor First Peoples in their placenames—the names of twenty-seven out of fifty states—countless names of towns, mountains, rivers, lakes, brooks, and islands. I became fascinated by the connection between Great Blue Hill and the name Massachuset which means Great Hill and named the people who lived near the hill (see my post, "Big Blue is Our Logo").
As I delved more deeply into family history, I had been drawn to those forebears who seemed to go out of their way to live peaceably with native peoples. The first I noticed was Rev. Samuel Treat of Eastham on Cape Cod, who preached to the Nauset. They mourned for him when he died in 1717 after a record blizzard and dug a tunnel through a huge snowdrift to carry his body to his burial place, inspiring Katherine Lee Bates' poem Indian Bearers. I discovered that the first of my New World Paines, Thomas Paine of Eastham, lived next door to the Nauset. I was on the lookout for a copy of forebear Daniel Gookin’s Historical Collections of the Indians in New England, long out of print, and finally snagged it.. An anthropologist without realizing it, Gookin had worked with the Praying Indians in the 1650s and spent many nights in wigwams across eastern Massachusetts. He wrote admiringly of the many indigenous peoples who had welcomed him among them.
I was fascinated to read a manuscript about the travels of forebear Jonathan Huntington Lyman out West encountering the Comanche in 1840, years before Francis Parkman’s Oregon Trail. At age twenty-two I was fascinated to visit Taos and Acoma pueblos in a world where Native Americans still ruled.
But I spent way too many years not wondering who in my world was actually Native American. I had never attended a powwow. In 2016 I went to a historical presentation on King Philips War at the Massachusetts Historical Society, and met five members of the Massachuset. I decided to attend a meeting of the Praying Indians in South Natick, where Chief Caring Hands welcomed me, telling the congregation I was a descendant of Daniel Gookin. After I fnally attended my first powwow, I came to appreciate that Americans with Native American blood had been around me all along.
Meanwhile, talking to Native American interpreters at the reconstructed Native American settlement at Plimoth Plantation, I learned that one should omit the term “tribe” and use “people” or “nation,” omit “brave” and use “man.” At the downtown Pilgrim Hall museum I first heard of Zerviah Gould Mitchell (1807-1898), descendant of Massasoit, and a early voice for native rights. I was delighted to discover that pioneering female American author Lydia Maria Child had written about interracial marriage in 1824. Her book Hobomok was ahead of its time. It met with resistance.
Mom had shared her family tree, and at some point wondered aloud if there might be some Indian blood in her Nash past. There was, to be sure, a large gap in names back before the 19th century in a Nash spouse’s forebears, begging the question. Plus, two of Mom’s brothers, Uncle Mallory and Uncle Phil, her father, and her Nash aunts all looked to be blessed with Native American features. But there the mystery stood.
And all the while, in my youth, at the top of the stairs, hung a portrait, painted in the early 1800s, of the Nash grandmother whose part of my family tree was a blank. With dark hair parted down the middle hidden under a bonnet and her dark eyes, she imparted nothing Native American to me for decades. But decades after Mum gave the portrait to a first cousin I can now look at a photo of that portrait and see the Native American in it.
But if this woman of uncertain name who married James Nash (1798-1867), and likely in Manhattan, was part Native American, then perhaps her great-grandfather born around 1720 was Tuscarora, or Muncee (Manhattan means land of many hills in Munsi), or Lenape (the indigenous people from New Jersey to New York), or Mohican (north of the Lenape), before their forcible removal in the mid-18th century, although Native Americans hardly vacated Manhattan: apparently 87,000 are still there.
I wondered what a DNA test might show. But blogs were revealing that many individuals with proven Native American heritage were disappointed to receive DNA test results showing 0% Native American, a false negative. There are reasons, as DNA inheritance is complicated. Even siblings may not get the same results. In 2018 I learned that a first cousin had been DNA tested by 23andMe and came up 0.9% Native American. None of it could have come from her mother’s side. Later I got another yes when another first cousin sent her 23andMe findings—up to 0.1% Native American or Asian.
Still, I realized that these results did not confer tribal identity. Nor was I in any way seeking to intrude on an indigenous people. Never mind: I was thrilled to realize that some forebears had rejected the notion that ethnic lines should not be crossed, and that their union had begotten progeny, and here I was. There was no more shame: they were not alone! DNA research now indicated that 8% of European Americans carried 1% Native American blood.
Looking for further confirmation, I decided to join my cousins and get myself DNA tested at 23andMe. The results were disappointing: 99% Western European, and a little stray South Asian (India) and Ashkenazi Jewish (diaspora in Western Europe). A Native American portion did not show up as it had for my two cousins. However, that did not rule it out, as false negatives could occur. Here is how 23andMe answered the often-asked follow-up question “Why doesn’t my known Native American ancestry show up in my DNA?”
If your most recent Indigenous American ancestor was more than five generations ago, you may have inherited little or no DNA directly from them. The farther back in your history you look, the less likely you are to have inherited DNA directly from every single one of your ancestors. This means that you can be directly descended from a Indigenous American without having any Indigenous American DNA.
Your Indigenous American ancestry may be assigned to a “Broadly” category. Even using state-of-the-art science, the Indigenous American and Northeast Asian populations are genetically similar, and sometimes they can't be distinguished from each other with high confidence.
I then contacted 23andMe as to whether the DNA results for any of my children could still turn up Native American, and they answered yes, as follows: "When a parent’s and child’s results are compared, this process is called 'phasing.' Phasing increases the resolution of a child’s results. For this reason, a child may have more detailed ancestry assignments than their parents. Although it is correct that a child inherits all of their DNA from their parents, a child’s results may appear inconsistent when compared to their parent’s. In these cases these ancestry assignments are likely to be reflected [included] within the parent’s “Broadly assigned” or “Unassigned percentages.”
My son's DNA test delivered. It indicated that he was 0.4% Native American, indicating that his father despite the false negative had to have double that amount, or 0.8%. By my calculations, doubling the amount for each prior generation, the 100% Native American ancestor was six or seven generations back, perhaps in the early 18th century. Connected at last.
The big takeaway in non-Native Americans discovering their Native American Roots is that no matter what prejudice reigned back in the day, they are descended from individuals with courage and decency who had crossed ethnic lines, fallen in love, and had children. They did not let bigotry stop them. Bravo to them.
One more thing. Finding out that my forebear Robert Treat Paine, a Signer of the Declaration of Independence, had represented the Continental Congress in a meeting with the Grand Council Fire of the Iroquois Confederacy in 1775 reminds me what our own Confederation owed to theirs, which had been in existence for centuries, but even more, it reminds me of “Seventh Generation Stewardship,” long-term thinking. We need a cross-generational caucus all right. I suspect there is much more to learn from Indigenous culture than we non-Native Americans can begin to imagine.
© 2023 Thomas M. Paine. If anything I have said here is inadvertently disrespectful, mea culpa; let's talk!
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