Native American ancestry research is one of the toughest that a genealogist will ever encounter. This is due to the fact that many Native Americans (and African Americans, South Asians, Mediterranean) simply blended in to the Anglo White community and “white washed” their former ancestries with terms like Black Dutch and Black Irish.

 Irene

The brother of my Great Great Grandmother Mary Elizabeth Mowery Archer filed for a Cherokee Nation citizenship in 1896. He was rejected, although many family members and members of his community all said he and his whole family was of Cherokee blood. I imagine John would have been disappointed that his cousins rejected him, as the white man had rejected them, and moved them West on the Trail of Tears.

Total Records: 1

The Miller family also has Native American. I have photos showing them with Asian eyes and high cheekbones. The Miller family is related to the Cole and Webb families which were of older East Coastal Native American mixed ancestry and other mixed families like the Bounds and Rousom families and the literal “Black Dutch” Wolfe family of Swiss German ancestry. The Webb family is probably of Tuscarora ancestry.

DNA testing has proved helpful in unlocking our ancestry secrets. The DNATribes test has given me high “Mestizo” results. DNATribes describes their Mestizo ancestry region as

Mestizo (“mixed”) (not shown): Native Americans who
have blended with Europeans and (to a lesser degree)
Africans in recent history. This blending is most typical of
Latin American Mestizo populations, but can also be
found in English and French speaking populations of
North America (Metis).

 

MY MESTIZO SCORE DNA TRIBES ABOVE

When doing Autosomal DNA testing for ancestry the first thing you must do is to compare your results with the overall ethnic populations. In this case, since I do have significant European ancestry, I must look at the European ancestry and my scores in relation to Mestizo ancestry DNA results and also to populations that have Native American ancestry like Hispanics.

As you can see from the graph above, my Mestizo DNA score was very high for a Anglo American. I am above the 95^th percentile in relation to other “Anglo” Americans. My Mestizo score is also considered high for a Hispanic person.

This would conclude that Native American ancestry is in the family tree, which I know through genealogy records of families like the Archer, Miller and Mowery that it is a fact.

DNATribes does not have Cherokee and other Southeastern Native American tribes in their database. Never the less, there were also clues as to Native American origins on a tribal basis.

Above are two tribes that are considered very high scores (although low 0.01) for an Anglo American.

Above are my scores for Athabaskan and Central American. Although this would seem to be very low, it is above the 95^th Percentile and very high scores for an Anglo American.

I also recently received my Native American high resolution panel from DNATribes yesterday. In this panel, I had only one match, to the Chol Mayan tribe of Chiapas Mexico.

(My Match to the Chol Mayan tribe on DNATribes high Native American Resolution panel.  Although low, above 95th percentile for a Anglo American)

So how could Mayan DNA ancestry travel to North America. I have two theories. One is the Camino de Real, literal in Spanish “The Royal Road or King’s Highway” which traveled from San Antonio to Natchitoches Louisiana when Texas and Louisiana were part of New Spain.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_San_Antonio_Road

Many Native Americans from Northern Mexico traveled on this road to trade with the Spanish and since the Miller family was from Louisiana this could be a source. (Note: See Choctaw Apache tribe blog post below)

The other theory is an ancient one and that being of Native American migration from the Caribbean to Florida and Louisiana. The Creek and Choctaw descend from the South, not the North, their ancestors migrated North from areas of the Yucatan to North America.

My DNA Mestizo matches to populations in South America

Theory number two, is very possible, the Chol Mayan DNA result above could in fact be Choctaw DNA from the Miller family. Since the Miller family is closer in terms of ancestry than the Mowery Cherokee this could be the case. The Bounds family came from Kemper Mississippi, and that is Mississippi Choctaw country, and it is known that the Bounds family were there living among the Choctaw as traders and religion.

The search continues for our ancestry, we know we are part Cherokee, but that is not enough. The Cherokee ancestry being several generations back could have easily been genetic swamped out by now. This ancestry appears to be more recent or it may be ancient but it none the less is there.

Next on the blog, the African ancestry, as I will take the High resolution African ancestry panel.