Articles & FAQs

Digging for Cherokee Roots
by Carla Toney

© Copyright Carla Toney. All rights reserved. The right of Carla Toney to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. No part of this article may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from Beothuk Books

Help requests multiply on American Indian genealogy sites every day: "Family tradition says my great great grandfather / grandmother was American Indian. I am trying to find the tribe she/he was from. Can anybody help?"

While digging for Cherokee roots, or roots of any other tribe, it is important to document each generation carefully back, from parents and grandparents, until you reach a trader, a missionary, an agent, or an ancestor who was living on a known frontier where Indians and whites lived together and mixed.

This basic genealogical research is necessary, but what if you have completed it and you still haven't dug up any Cherokee or Indian roots?

That's when it's time to start looking at what I call 'windows of entry'. There are certain very clear times and places when Europeans married into different tribes.

For instance the first 'window of entry' was the 1600s. In 1635 boatload after boatload of young men sailing from the English ports of London and Bristol arrived. While emigrants to New England consisted more frequently (though not exclusively) of families, it was predominantly single young men who migrated to Virginia.

In the 1600s there were also thousands of indentured servants who were transported and sold on arrival in the New World. Conditions were harsh. Many did not live out their years of servitude. Thirty-nine lashes was the penalty for running away for both indentured servants and for slaves.

Democracy was by no means a goal of the early Virginia landowners. Government was set up to prevent poor whites, indentured servants, Indians and slaves from having any political power. But fears of the landowners led to early 'democratic' changes in Virginia when landowners became frightened that white indentured servants, Indians and slaves would all unite and threaten their monopoly on power and land.

This led to the elevation of the status of poor whites in Virginia. Poor white men were drafted into militias and paid for their service. Voting rights were extended. And poor whites became a buffer between Virginia's wealthy elite and Indians and Blacks.

Another 'window of entry' is the 1700s. The winter of 1709-1710 was devastating in Germany. Fruit trees froze. It was said that birds froze on the wing. French soldiers marauded in the Palatinate and Rhine Valley. German aristocracy tried to compete with the courts of France and levied impossible taxes on peasants and small farmers.

Thousands of Germans fled to England. There were 12,000 to 13,000 camped on Black Heath (southeast London). From there a quarter went on to the Americas, a quarter to Ireland and Scotland. Eventually half returned to Germany.

Thousands of Germans also made their way to the Rhine and fled in boats down the river to Holland, where they embarked in sailing ships and made their way to Pennsylvania. Between 1700 and 1750 German surnames entered into tribal usage when these Germans married Indians.

Scottish names also entered into tribal usage in the 1700s. Although many Scottish children had been kidnapped and sold into slavery in the New World as early as the first half of the 1600s, it was in the 1700s that the British transported Jacobite rebels from Scotland to the Americas.

Transportation was far more common than most people realize. The Rebellion of 1685 led to the transportation of many men from the southwest of England to the colonies and Caribbean.

Some 50,000 to 75,000 men, women and children were transported as criminals to the Americas prior to the Revolution in 1776 (thereafter these 'criminals' were transported to Australia instead).

Offences for which the penalty was often transportation could range from stealing a handkerchief (an offence which was used by compassionate officials and magistrates [judges] to prevent hungry people from hanging for the theft of food) to infanticide (a mother killing her young child).

So while the early 1700s saw the transportation of the Scottish Jacobite rebels, the latter half of the century saw the emigration of Scots, who had earlier fled to Ireland, continue their migration from Ireland to the Americas, many to South Carolina.

The children of many of these early marriages were often described as mulatto or free persons of color. White slavers sometimes kidnapped these free persons of color and tried to sell them to slaveowners. Such status did not bring wealth, power, prestige or safety.

Whole tribes were sold into slavery. Many tribes were wiped out entirely. This American 'holocaust' lasted for centuries.

Indians often faced a choice. Emigration or extermination. And the mixed race children of early marriages often migrated with the remnants of tribes that no longer existed. Remnants mixed with remnants. One tribal mixture joined with another.

The first race laws were enacted in Virginia in 1705. If you are finding it difficult to trace your Indian 'grandfather / grandmother', it is quite possible that you should be looking for an Indian forbear of a tribe that was wiped out centuries ago.

Only by studying this American holocaust, and learning about extent of the European genocide on American shores, will you find any trace of your great great great great (multiple greats) grandparent.