NO! You are STILL NOT Cherokee!
NO! You are STILL NOT Cherokee! Thousands of you have commented on our original video telling us your stories trying to prove that your great-great-grandmother was a full-blooded Cherokee princess, but you still aren’t getting the message. A while ago we made our video entitled “NO! You are NOT Cherokee! The most common myth in genealogy”. That video took off and had mixed results of support, and people wanting to prove that they were Cherokee. That video was aimed at the likely millions of Americans that believe that they are part Cherokee and the reasons why that myth is so prevalent, especially in Appalachia. Many folks commented on the video about subjects and went on tangents that didn’t pertain to the video’s actual subject. We learned quite a bit from the thousands of comments, and we wanted to address those subjects in this separate article.
Those subjects were:
One- I have pictures of my Cherokee ancestor, they have high cheek bones and jet-black hair
Two- Indian blood quantum issues
Three- The Dawes Rolls
Four- My ancestors hid out in the mountains to avoid the Trail of Tears
Five- $5 Indians
Six- My Cherokee ancestry is in my Melungeon ancestry
Seven- I’m not Cherokee, I’m some other tribe
Eight- The Cherokee are a made-up tribe
Nine- My Cherokee ancestor was sold as a baby to a white family
Ten- My Cherokee doesn’t show up on DNA tests
Eleven- Cherokees are a lost tribe of Israel or come from the Middle East and are not related to the rest of the American tribes
Twelve- The growing following of the belief that the first Native Americans were black, black people were never brought to the New World on slave ships because they were already here, and those that we think of today as Native Americans actually stole the land from black people, and reservation lands etc. should be turned over to the “true Native Americans”.
This article isn’t a substitute for the original, it’s more like part two, so if you haven’t seen the original video, you will certainly want to go back and watch it at the link below:
Hey everybody this is Colonel Carson with Family Tree Nuts, and I’m a full-time genealogist and historian. At Family Tree Nuts, we build family trees for clients that either don’t know how, don’t have the time, or don’t want to pay those expensive membership fees. We’d love to honor your ancestors for you. We also make history videos all over the United States, and a few countries. If you like videos like these, be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel.
I will now address the subjects of this article. Keep in mind that this is a brief description and explanation, and each topic could be its own full-length article.
One- I have pictures of my Cherokee ancestor, they have high cheek bones and jet-black hair. I actually addressed this in detail in our previous video but so many folks have brought this up, I choose to add to it. Folks, come on, are you honestly saying that some black and white photograph in the family photo album is proof that you are Cherokee? Many of our ancestors lived rugged lives, often had tans from working outside, and of course sometimes had “jet black hair”.
Perhaps you are referring to one of your ancestors dressed like an Indian, which also can be misleading. Photographers used to travel around with outfits and costumes, and the most popular were western cowboys and Indians. Your ancestor may have dressed up for fun for one of these photos. Now, if you have a genuine photo from the reservation of a Cherokee ancestor, then they are likely legit, but if you have that, you likely have other proof besides just a photograph. Most of you that are using photographs as your proof that you are Cherokee are simply seeing what you want to see and making that the reality.
Two- Indian blood quantum issues. A blood quantum is the rough percentage that someone is Native American. For example, if one of your parents is “full-blooded” Native, and the other parent is of European ancestry, you would be 50% Native. For each generation separating the “full-blooded” ancestor, the percentage is cut in half. Therefore, one grandparent, is 25% or 1/4, one great-grandparent, is 12.5% or 1/8, one 2nd great-grandparent, is 6.25% or 1/16th, etc. The blood quantum laws began in the early 1700s as a way of determining “whiteness”.
In the 1930s, the blood quantum was used for the opposite reason, to determine how Native that someone was in order to be eligible for land, scholarships, and other privileges. Some tribes use blood quantum to determine tribal membership, with some requiring at least ¼ native blood, and other tribes only require a person to show lineage to someone officially documented, such as on the Dawes Rolls.
Several commentors have stated that they are Cherokee because the band that they belong to doesn’t require any certain blood quantum, but that’s not the point. Even though the band or group that you belong to doesn’t have any proving standards, it doesn’t make your ancestors Cherokee. You can be an adopted Cherokee into that band or organization, but in order to be part of one of the federally recognized tribes, you need to prove your blood.
Three- The Dawes Rolls. The Dawes Rolls were taken from 1898 until 1907 to document anyone of native descent in order to determine their eligibility to be given land ownership or money from the sale of said land on reservations. Today, many folks still refer to themselves ¼, 1/8, 1/16 Cherokee or other tribes, when referring to their “Indianness”. As stated in our previous video, if the Native American ancestor does exist, they are almost always someone’s 5th to 8th great-grandparents, making the individual 1/128 to 1/1,024 Native American. So many Americans claim that one person in 1,000 that lived in the 1700s as their identity and forsake all of the others. While that one person may be real and should be honored, so should the stories of all of our other ancestors. They shouldn’t be left out.
Four- My ancestors hid out in the mountains to avoid the Trail of Tears. Several commentors stated that this is why their Cherokee ancestor isn’t on the official rolls and that’s why they can’t prove that they are Cherokee. This statement has a couple layers of complications so I will break it down. First of all, approximately sixty-seven+ years separate the main group of the Trail of Tears, and the Dawes Rolls, making up at least two or three generations. The Cherokee that registered on the Dawes Rolls were mostly grandchildren and great-grandchildren of those that walked the Trail of Tears.
So, if your Cherokee ancestor hid out in the mountains to avoid being moved west, they certainly would have had to have been born in the first thirty years of the 1800s. If you use the standard of the average of every twenty-five years as a generation, and someone who is fifty-years-old in the year 2025, and born in 1975, that persons 5th great-grandparents would be born around the year 1800, and would have eventually married into a white family. If 1 of the 128 of their 5th great-grandparents, was full-blooded Cherokee, they would only have on average less than 1% Cherokee DNA. So, if your ancestor hid in the mountains to avoid the Trail of Tears, you are most likely less than 1% Cherokee and claiming that as a large part of your identity is kind of ridiculous.
Five- $5 Indians. I’d venture that it’s safe to say, that most of you watching this video have never heard that term. A $5 Indian is someone, usually of European ancestry, that bribed a government official with $5 or other incentives to add their name to the Dawes Rolls so that they could earn land and money allotments set aside for Native Americans. The most common tribe that these folks claimed to be was Cherokee, and in some circles it is thought that that is one reason why so many folks claim to be Cherokee today.
The amount of $5 Indians that abused this system is unknown, but it is thought to have been very minimal as large-scale fraud would have been obvious. $5 Indians may account for a very small percentage of folks today that claim Cherokee because it is unlikely that those that scammed the system would have continued to claim to be Cherokee after they received their allotments. Also, most of those that claim Cherokee usually have roots in and around Appalachia, and not Oklahoma where the $5 Indians took up roots. Be sure to see our video about the subject at this link:
Six- My Cherokee ancestry is in my Melungeon ancestry. This is a mega topic of its own and one that we will be making a series of videos about in the near future, so be sure to subscribe to our channel so you don’t miss them. The story of the Melungeons is full of myth, lore, tall tales, and likely some truth. They are a group of people that lived in remote areas of Appalachia, before the time of white settlement, that are said to be a mixture of Northern European, Native American, African, Hispanic, possibly Turkish, and other heritages. Some say that they are descended from Portuguese sailors from the 1500s or 1600s that crashed on the American coast and mixed with the native population, before moving inland to the mountains, and over the centuries mixed with whites and runaway slaves. These people remained in segregated communites until the early 1900s, and modern science has proved a good deal of their lore as true. Much more could be said about the Melungeons, but if you are using your supposed ancestry connections to them as a way to profess yourself as Cherokee, that is a feeble claim.
Seven- I’m not Cherokee, I’m some other tribe. This is a common comment that we received so I wanted to address it. While Cherokee is certainly by far the tribe most claimed by people, at the time of this video, there are 574 federally recognized tribes in the United States. Usually the tribe that someone claims is regional, but most of the facts of our two videos about being Cherokee are also applicable to other tribes.
Eight- The Cherokee are a made-up tribe. This one is complicated and somewhat silly. The Cherokee have long been known as one of the most accepting of members into their tribe. There are only three bands of Cherokee that are federally recognized, but there are over two hundred bands of Cherokee that are not. For most of the unrecognized bands, they were formed with good intentions, some by those that actually did have some Cherokee ancestors. As time as went on, white folks that had heard the family lore that they were Cherokee joined these groups. These groups while they often respect Cherokee culture and traditions, are not officially recognized and are technically nothing more than a social group. To many in the native communities as well as historical reenactor and living history groups they have earned the nickname of “Pretendians”.
Nine- My Cherokee ancestor was sold as a baby to a white family. There are several stories and family lores that claim this, but they are very difficult to prove. Most of these stories date to around the year 1900 and often involve children that were shipped away to Indian Schools. The stories state that the baby or young child was forcibly taken form their mothers to be educated in a “white man school” and when they arrived, they were placed into the arms of a white family that wanted them. The only way to prove a story like this is a DNA test, or a family letter or other document with a confession. It is quite possible that this Cherokee baby wouldn’t know about their origin and therefore wouldn’t have passed the legend down. Most of these stories are likely romanticized, and any of these stories that are actually true, surely make up only a tiny fraction of those that are claiming to be Cherokee.
Ten- My Cherokee doesn’t show up on DNA tests. We discussed this a bit in our first video, but I want to add to and summarize in this video as well because this is a popular comment. The main reason why your Cherokee ancestors are not showing up on your DNA test is because they simply don’t exist, or as discussed earlier in this video, they are too far back in the timeline of your family history to be detected. Also, it is reported that there isn’t a large sample section of Native Americans in the DNA databases as many of them are reluctant to donate DNA for fear of being of mixed race themselves. If you are showing a small percentage of East Asian or Middle Eastern DNA, that may actually be from a Native American ancestor, but it could also be from an East Asian or Middle Easterner of course. Most experts agree that anything 2% or less can be considered “DNA Noise”, which means that it may actually be there, but it may be in error. For a more detailed explanation on this subject, be sure to see our original video, and our video entitled “Why siblings have different DNA” at the link below:
Eleven- Cherokees are a lost tribe of Israel or come from the Middle East and are not related to the rest of the American tribes. This interesting statement has little to do with someone being Cherokee, or not, but it has been brought up several times by those commenting on our video. Some well-known scholars have claimed that it is entirely possible that the Cherokees are descended from Jewish or Semitic traders that came to the New World as early as two thousand years ago. They claim similarities in Jewish and Cherokee writing, holidays and traditions and even have claimed to have proven the link with DNA between the Cherokee and Sephardic Jews. This theory is contested by most historians, but enough evidence has been found to give the theory some credence.
Twelve- The true and first Indians were Black. You heard that right, those that most of us would consider the first nations people, some claim that they are invaders and imposters as the true natives. This theory is growing rapidly, mostly in the black community and scores of videos about the subject can be found on YouTube. Some of these videos even showcase and quote me from our original No! You’re not Cherokee video.
This following believes black people were never brought to the New World on slave ships because they were already here, and those that we think of today as Native Americans actually stole the land from black people, and reservation lands etc. should be turned over to the “true Native Americans”. They have a plethora of things that they consider evidence, but mainstream historians consider the claims to be loose and could be interpreted in a variety of ways. One of the main reasons for their beliefs is the fact that Christopher Columbus stated in his writings that the natives he encountered in the New World were “copper colored”, which must mean that the natives were in fact black, and not the “red men” that we have been led to believe.
Even though many have criticized the movement as cultural appropriation, millions have now accepted the theory as fact. In our original video, we had so many comments about how black people were the true Native Americans, citing overwhelmingly that white people claiming to be Cherokee were because of the $5 Indians, we had to post a comment stating that we would delete their comments if they made them. We whole heartily believe in free speech, but that topic was taking over our video comments and it had little, if anything, to do with why so many people think that they are Cherokee. Since this video addresses this topic, those comments are welcome here.
You may be surprised to hear me say this, but I’ll close the topic by stating that their theory does have some interesting takes and shouldn’t be immediately discounted. It is possible that there were black people in the Americas before, or along with what we would consider traditional Native Americans. It is not my intention to discredit their theory or make light of it, and I hope that in the future some proof can be found to settle the issue. However, at this time my personal opinion is that their theory is false and a stretch at minimum. I also question many of their agendas of being wronged as the rightful owners of what the tribes have received. We plan to do a series of videos about this topic in the near future so be sure to subscribe to our channel.
This concludes our main topics of discussion but before I end this video, I need to go on record that yes, obviously some of you actually are Cherokee. So many folks have been offended by me making the blanket statement that you aren’t Cherokee, but in the original video, I clearly make this point as well. Yes, a few of the millions that claim it, are Cherokee, but for most of you, the bottom line is, it’s so far back that it’s only a speck of who you are. We should all be proud of our true ancestors and who we really are.
So now we know why I said that you’re STILL not Cherokee. What do you think? Do you know people who claim to be Cherokee? What are your thoughts about those that do? We’d love to hear what you have to say in the comments below. Make sure that you subscribe, and don’t forget to see our original video that is jammed packed full of facts about this subject! We are proud to share this information with all of you and be sure to see our video about this subject at the link below. And remember, Family Tree Nuts, let out nuts find the nuts in your family tree.
-Colonel Russ Carson, Jr., Founder, Family Tree Nuts