It is curious that most of the fake Indians claim descent ONLY from the Cherokee Tribe, which is, after all, only one of some four or five hundred that populated the North American continent prior to 1492. And not all the tribes that were here when Columbus touched land for the first time in the Western Hemisphere arrived from the same source (a land bridge across the Bering Strait some 12,000 years ago). There is another ethnic group that lived around the North polar region, commonly called “Eskimos”, that were distributed from Siberia, to northern Alaska and Canada, around to Greenland, and completing the circle in the part of Scandinavia called Lapland. There is also evidence that some migration from the Pacific Islanders to the west coast of South America, in what is now Chile, also occurred, and very likely some ethnic Caucasians made their way westward along a glacier bridge from northern Europe into the lands of eastern Canada. The Ojibwa (Chippewa) are very different from their neighbors, the Plains Indians commonly known as the Sioux, and very nearly look European, if such differences may be quantified.
“American Indian” is actually a very poor descriptive term for the many ethnic strains that make up the New World people.
Great history lesson. Many thanks.
I've noticed the same thing. I never hear anyone brag that they're 1/60 Apache, Modoc, or Kumeysay.
I’m thinking that most claim to be Cherokee, perhaps, because their record-keeping and organization were above the norm probably, and their forced move from the Southeast to Oklahoma is well known. Plus Sam Houston sojourned with them for a time :)
And they seem to be bigger today in terms of business footprint than others. But that’s just my general impression.
On a lighter note...I’ve had friends who thought they were Comanche ...but as they did the research, they found out they were only Choctaw, but they went ahead and enrolled.
Bummer. You think you are a great warrior, but then discover you are only a farmer.....
Two reasons for that:
1. LORE has it that the Cherokee were peaceful people while the Sioux were depicted as evil scalpers.
2. Most of these 'fake indians' have trouble spelling the word 'Sioux' properly, and can't even name any other Indian 'tribes'.