I had always heard that my great-grandma was half Cherokee. My genealogy research shows that she lived in Comanche territory, and that is where she raised my grandpa.
So, it is a little odd for a half Cherokee woman to live in Comanche territory, but not completely implausible.
But the Ancestry.com DNA analysis found no Native American ethnicity in my background. Instead, it shows southeastern African, the Bantu tribe. And I have compared the ethnicity results from enough relatives to figure out that great-grandma was the source of that ethnicity. I figure she claimed to be half Cherokee to hide the fact that she was a mulatto.
Oh, and I have Irish ancestors, as well.
Wow! Genetics are amazing...
“I had always heard that my great-grandma was half Cherokee.....But the Ancestry.com DNA analysis found no Native American ethnicity in my background.”
I’ve heard from several sources that Cherokee ancestors are different from other Native American tribes.
from https://www.accessgenealogy.com/native/cherokee-dna.htm
“The Cherokees tested had high levels of DNA test markers associated with the Berbers, native Egyptians, Turks, Lebanese, Hebrews and Mesopotamians. Genetically, they are more Jewish than the typical American Jew of European ancestry. So-called “full-blooded” Cherokees had high levels of European DNA and a trace of Asiatic (Native American) DNA. 80 Some “card-carrying” Cherokees had almost no Asiatic DNA. “
Pretty much the same story here. “We have “Cherokee” blood was the cover for having slave ancestry.
I have been reading articles lately saying the genealogy DNA tests have shown to be unreliable when it comes to Native American ancestry. According to the articles I have seen they are referring to all the companies doing it not just Ancestry.com. The articles were saying not enough is known about the origins of Native Americans and something about not having enough Native American samples to do reliable matches. They looked at Native Americans who are currently members of a known tribe, documented Native Americans. If the tests are unreliable for them I would think it would be worse for people like you and I that are only part Native American. Might be why your results are puzzling.
>But the Ancestry.com DNA analysis found no Native American ethnicity in my background. Instead, it shows southeastern African, the Bantu tribe.
It’s Bantu peoples, not a tribe(there are lots of Bantu tribes). Around 400ad the Bantu’s started to spread out from their western Africa homeland wiping out pretty much all other African groups in their expansion due to herding tech and iron weapons.
Cherokee/Comanchee?
No where near each other geographically, in those days