How to Prove Native American/Indian Ancestry | Ancestry

hi everybody Crista Cowan here with another episode of one question with the barefoot genealogist this week's question is a question that we get asked a lot a lot of people have family stories or even some documentation or pictures that lead them to believe that they have Native American or Indian ancestry and the question is how do you prove that now I was just reading some statistics and you know you know how statistics go but the statistic was that if you had ancestors in the United States as early as the 8th the early 1800s round 1800 1810 that there is a 50% chance that at least one of your ancestors is Native American that was something that I didn't know before I started preparing for this I had done some some Native American research and so I know some of the tips and tricks and some of the ins and outs but um that was kind of an interesting tidbit for me now one of the premier resources for Native American and information even currently today is the Bureau of Indian Affairs and they have a website that website is BIA Bureau of Indian Affairs gov and I just pulled a little something off their website that I want to share with you because I think it's kind of interesting they said Adam here's why people want to know about their ancestry some people want to become enrolled members of a federally recognized tribe others just want to verify a family tradition whether it's a belief fact or fiction passed from generation to generation and that they descend from American Indian either in their distance or recent past while others just want to learn more about the people they descend from and then they talk about the process of doing genealogy and we'll talk about some of that today and then they say this and I love this they say when people believe they may be of American Indian ancestry they immediately write or telephone the nearest Bureau of Indian Affairs office for information that is not the place to start but many people think that the BIA retrieves genealogical information from a massive National Indian registry or comprehensive computer database this is not true so with that little bit of an introduction let's just dive in to a few quick tips and then some resources that are available for you at least as much as we can do in fifteen or twenty minutes and to help you verify your Native American ancestry now just like with any jenny ology research the best place to start is with what you know and work your way back in time if you're brand new to genealogy of course that means starting with yourself collecting information about your birth and marriage collecting information about your children and their birth and then moving back to your parents and working your way back through time that way one of the things that you want to do if you're interested in learning about Native American ancestry is just pay pay really close attention to some of those clues as you go through that process that may help you later on names there are some very unique names to Native American culture if you see those cropping up in your family history that's certainly something to take note of so that so that you have that readily available birth places and we're going to talk a little bit about place here in a minute but birth places and residences and then race and race is going to show up on a lot of documents you just have to look for it sometimes it's on the census marked is just a little W in one of those columns we sometimes skip over not always our Native Americans marked with an eye or an IND for Indian and sometimes they were listed as white so don't make that definitive decision based on that race that you see on a document but certainly use that as a clue now the number two thing you're going to want to do once you have researched back from yourself to the generation that you think or that your family story says is the Native American ancestor or where it comes into the family you're going to want to learn a little bit about the geographic areas where different Indian tribes lived and then compare that with where your ancestors lived so um of course um I like many people have stories in my family of Native American ancestry and when I started overlaying where different Indian tribes lived at different times and where my family lived at those same times there was a little bit of a disconnect and so on one of the lines that we thought maybe had some Native American ancestry and it hasn't been proven yet or certainly not the tribe that it was rumored to be part of because that tribe was not anywhere near that place let me just use one example and and the rest of the examples that I'm going to use today are all from your questions so if you asked a Native American question specifically using names and information that I could look into pay attention I may use your family as an example here so um one well first you need to know that right now in the United States there are over 550 federally recognized American Indian tribes and Alaskan Natives and they are currently on over 200 or about 280 reservations in the United States so lots and lots of different possible tribes lots and lots of different possible locations but I'm just going to use this example which is probably the most well known example and that's of the Five Civilized tribes the Five Civilized tribes were the Seminole the Cherokee the creeks the Chickasaw and the Choctaw um and those tribes as in 1830 there was an Act passed in government the Indian Removal Act some of you may be familiar with the Trail of Tears and the history behind that and basically what it meant was that those tribes one at a time were removed from their native lands into Indian territories west of the Mississippi so we're going to look specifically at the Choctaw as an example the Choctaw were the first tribe to be removed they were removed of starting in about 1830 1831 it's interesting to note they're living here you can see in Mississippi and Alabama and when the when they were removed about 17,000 of them moved up here to Indian Territory into this Chuck this area that was designated for the Choctaw about 6,000 of them actually stayed in Mississippi and Alabama and a lot of them that stayed they were harassed there was a lot of persecution and so many of those who stayed in Mississippi and Alabama tried to mask their Indian heritage now certainly that's a broad generalization but it was a very common practice you would need to research your specific family a little bit more to see if that was the case for them but a lot of the Native Americans from the Choctaw tribe that stayed in Mississippi and Alabama and there like I said there were about 6,000 of them started assimilating more with the white culture and identifying more converting into you know Baptists and Presbyterians religions and going to school in education in the white culture if they could because of the persecution that they endured when they stayed some of them of course maintained their identity as a Native Americans and that's fantastic and there's some records we'll look at that will help you find them again then 17,000 of them were removed as part of that Trail of Tears into into Indian Territory now like I said this is just one example of one tribe just to give you an idea of how unknowing and understanding the history will help you find your family so again you're going to want to pay attention to where your family was in the records you do have available and you know were they living in this area of Indian territory or were they living in this area of Mississippi and Alabama during the appropriate time period so pay attention to those things you can see there are a lot of resources available I have used this map on many occasions as a matter of fact I have family that still lives in some of these places this is a map of where those civilized tribes were removed too and it was set up for them as Indian Territory officially in 1834 and then in 1890 as more white settlers moved west the Oklahoma Territory was carved out of out of the land that had been allotted for them and then in 1907 Oklahoma which included Indian Territory became a state and so there are still a lot of Native Americans living in the state of Oklahoma because of this but but again there's some assimilation that occurred because of that progression through time 1834 when they became the Indian Territory 1890 when the Oklahoma Territory was carved out and in 1907 when it became the state of Oklahoma so that's just one example of the way in which you can you can see if you're the tribe that you think you're affiliated with is in the same time and place that your family would have been there and and like I said just one example of that okay the third thing is once you determine or have a general idea of tribal affiliation now there are some Native American records that you can search Native American records specifically before that you're going to be doing your searches just like you do all your genealogy searches vital records census records school documents family bibles any kind of personal information that you can glean just like you would do any other kind of genealogical research but do have some extra resources available for Native American records there are tribal enrollment records and these are typically typically managed by the tribe and I'll show you some resources to go find those and from about 1827 to now they still keep those records there there are land allotment records available so when they were given their allotment of land as part of as part of removal and that lands oftentimes they would list who in the family that land passed to so that those records were kept from 1856 to about 1935 then there is a specifically an Indian census and that is from 1885 to 1940 and then those removal records and then begin in some places as early as 1815 and go through about 1850 so those are the records kind of the general records that are available specifically for Native American research let me show you how to find a few of those things on ancestry.com so when you're on the main search screen here okay and if you scroll down to the bottom of the search screen we have this little box called collection priority if you don't see that box you might want to check and see if this show advanced is checked just click it it opens up your box bigger and now you should have this collection priority as an option now you'll notice you can set your collection priority based on geographical region so if I was interested in US records I could set it to the United States check show only records from these collections and then that's the only records I would see I wouldn't see records from England or Canada when I was doing a search for US records one of the options also however is an ethnic delineation and Native American is one of the three delineations you can make there so that you can surface those records closer to the top okay that'll make sense here in a minute I hope so I'm just going to do a quick search here and I'm going to go directly to the 1900 census actually now when you are searching in a specific database one of the things you can do if you check the search form is enter a race or a nationality so the 1900 census is one of those records where that was recorded so I could actually type in Indian mark that exact and click search and I will only have records returned where the last name is award and their racial delineation has been marked as Indian you'll see there's only three hundred and ten of them in the United States and I can actually come in then and look at one of these records now I'm going to go all the way into this record because there's something a little unique about Indian records on this particular census you see this top part up here looks just like the 1900 census but when Native Americans were being enumerated there was an additional set of inquiries special inquiries it says relating to Indians I would suggest you read the instructions so that you're familiar with why they were asking those questions and what those questions were that they asked them and then you'll see information about what tribe they belonged to and if they knew and I don't there's some controversy with some people about why this is or isn't important but if they knew and not all of them did what what percentage Native American blood they had anyway those are just kind of the questions that they asked again read these instructions so that you know what the information is that you're looking at there okay that's one resource the other resource is my famous card catalog ok again for those of you who are new to this hover over search scroll all the way down to the bottom and click on card catalog I love it I use it every day ok once you're in there what I would recommend doing is in this keyword box type the word Indian and see what comes up this is one of those exploratory experiments now we always sort the card catalog by popularity which you're welcome to do or you can sort it by database title or size or whatever that's up to you okay but as you scroll through these what you'll discover is some really unique data sets we'll look at a couple of them specifically but um you know look through that list see if something catches your attention if you want to filter it further by location you can come over here and click on USA and then say for example your Native American ancestry is from the state of Michigan rather than from the southern United States you can narrow it down that excuse me you can narrow it down that way and see what databases come up based on location so that's a little exploratory option for you I mentioned earlier that one of the premier resources for Native American ancestry is the Indian census was taken from 1885 to 1940 okay and you can just come in here and put in your family name or as much information as you know it's just like searching any other census when you click search you'll get your search results and again if you remember these are all from examples that people sent me so I did a little research and if Mary Kathy Lawrence there she is if she is your ancestor here she is okay and you can see there's information here on the index you can also click through to the image and what you'll see is these lovely type documents this is a 1926 census and so it was beautifully typed here you'll see their numbers their indian names if they have an english name that was included and these relationships in these households and date of birth and gender so again terrific terrific resource to get you a little bit closer to verifying that Native American ancestry the next database I want to show you is commonly called the Dawes roll what the Dawes roll was is in in the late 1800s there was an enrollment and this was considered the final enrollment for the Five Civilized tribes it was named Dawes after the Commissioner I think at the time who who handled it or oversaw what you can see on any database if you scroll down is exactly what information was included in the records so you can see the the way that the information was recorded and what some of those initials or acronyms stand for so that when you're looking at that document you know what it is and you'll also see what some of the things that were indexed were so that you know the different ways that you can search so I suggest always reading these database descriptions before you jump in and just start searching now one of you wrote in and you were looking for a Miller family a Lucinda Miller there she is okay um so Lucinda Miller she was born about 1830 at the time of the census are the enrollment she was 72 years old she was enrolled in 1902 and she's listed at her tribal affiliation is listed as Cherokee and she is Cherokee by blood as opposed to by marriage and let's see I found her on here earlier it's a lot of names I'm not going to take the time to do that now but again this resource is fantastic because so many of the people in the Five Civilized tribes were included in this enrollment so that's a great resource last couple of resources I want to share with you before we run out of time this is a small collection but it actually helps solve one of your questions one of you is asking about a man named William English now that sounds like a very white man named not doesn't sound very very Indian and so there was some question about you know could this man have been Native American and with the limited information that I had and I was able to look at this and I think that I have the right person and according to this let's see the scroll up on the page I think to find him it may have gone the wrong out I went the wrong direction we are going to see that up here we have William English he lists that he is an auto Indian he lists his allotment number where he's living and then just like any other will it's fantastic he lists and his relative so his wife and then if we were to go to the next image here he lists his children and and I think there's even a daughter too listed there with their married names so fantastic resources because they were given property by the government that allotment many of them had wills or created wills so that that property remained in their family so that's a great resource there's also what you're going to find in the card catalog lots of little books like this where it's just somebody created a book based on the records that they had researched this one happens to be the ward family right and so I can come in here and I can look for Timothy Ward and it will show me here's you know information about wards who applied to become part of the Cherokee Nation as a matter of fact I think this Timothy Ward his application was rejected and but it lists him and all of his children and why his application was rejected which at the time was because he didn't have enough Indian blood in him but what that leads us to know then is that he did have some right and so you know you're on the right track as you go through that so sometimes you come across little gems like this and there are several of them in that card catalog that is about all we have time for today it always just seems to go so fast doesn't it but one of the things that I just want to remind you of again is start with what you know and work your way back become familiar with the different tribes in the areas where your family lived and then you can start looking at the different records that are available for those particular tribes keep those questions coming and we get we're getting great questions and I know both Ann and I enjoy reading through them and brainstorming ideas for how to put together presentations that will help you hopefully you find these helpful if you do and leave a comment or send us an email and both about what you like and what you don't like and what your additional questions are so that we can continue to answer them every week hope everybody has a fantastic week and have fun climbing your family tree no matter which direction you're going

Channel: Ancestry

Views: 715,376

Rating: 4.6994333 out of 5

Keywords: family tree ancestor, ancestry.com

Id: dIu-WF1LZY4

Length: 22min 44sec (1364 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 29 2011