Posted on 02/07/2018 4:07:30 AM PST by SJackson
When I was a child I became curious, as children sometimes will, about my family history. Although my grandfathers were dead, my grandmothers were alive, and I asked them what they knew about our origins.
The answer: not much. But they provided me with a few names, enabling me to draw up the rudimentary beginnings of a family tree.
Later, I spent a good deal of time in the New York Public Library's genealogy room, trying to trace my ancestry back from those names. (There was no Internet then.) I didn't get anywhere with my father's side of the family – his parents were Poles who'd fled Europe during World War I – but I was able to follow a couple of lines on my mother's side back to colonial Virginia and Pennsylvania.
It was fun. But nobody else in the family cared. And then life came calling, and I put away all my findings in a folder in my parents' basement.
Fast forward forty years. Recently a relative dusted off that folder, picked up where I left off, and has nailed down a lot more information about our ancestry than I ever imagined possible. She's traced some lines back to fifteenth-century England. I knew I had English, Welsh, and Scots blood, and that some of my ancestors were French Huguenots, but I didn't know I was part Dutch. I'm even descended from Italian Protestants (!) whose flight from Catholic oppression led them, over a couple of generations, to France, Britain, and eventually America.
But the biggest news (so far) came just the other day. Did you ever hear of the Nansemond Indians? Me neither. When English settlers founded Jamestown, the Nansemond Indians were their neighbors. At first, relations weren't exactly chummy. But there were exceptions, one of which was the marriage, in 1638, of a settler named John Basse to the daughter of the tribal chief, no less.
Follow their line for several generations and you arrive at one Nancy Jane Bass, who married a fellow named William Colwell. In 1841, these two had a daughter whom they named Celestial, of all things, and who grew up to marry one William Frank Hines. One of their sons, Charles, fathered a daughter named Ruth Elizabeth Hines, who was born in 1898 in South Carolina and who, as it happens, was my maternal grandmother.
In short, if you go back far enough – eleven generations, to be specific – I'm part American Indian. Sorry: native American.
Yes! Really! At first I was stunned. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that this new bit of data explains a lot. In fact, it explains everything. Not to go into too much detail, but, hey, my life hasn't been all that easy. There have been some rough patches. I've always worked hard, but sometimes I haven't made nearly enough wampum. All these years I thought it was just, you know, the way life is for pretty much everybody: you win some, you lose some. You have fat years and lean years. If something bad happens, you should pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again. But no! Now I realize it was all racism. All these years, you white people, with your white privilege, have been conspiring to keep me down.
The more I think of it, the more enraged I get. You filthy Europeans came to my land, my paradise, my Eden, where the red man lived in harmony with the noble elk and hawk, and in brotherhood with plant and tree and stream, and forced me to study your history and literature, your math and science – white man's culture! – and thereby denied me the knowledge that would otherwise have been mine, like how to carve a totem pole and or make turquoise necklaces. You stole it all from me, while infecting my pristine continent with cholera, diphtheria, malaria, and the plague.
Let's face it: you bastards have been my oppressors ever since I was a little papoose! You dragged me out of the wigwam into your concrete jungle! You pushed your evil firewater upon me! (And all this time I thought it was my fault that I drink too much.) Now I realize why, when I was a kid, I enjoyed wearing moccasins! I could still be wearing them now – but no, you forced me into your own uncomfortable, constricting footwear and made me tread your hard pavements when I could have been walking in the sunshine of the meadow and the shadow of the forest! Of course, I realize now that I've been all wrong in my political views – specifically, my foolish disapproval of identity politics. So here's a message to all of my redskin brothers and sisters, far and near, whom I may have alienated with my opinions: we bury hatchet! We smokum peace pipe! We go on warpath together against palefaces!
To put it a little differently, so that you lousy whites will understand: I'm a twofer now. I'm no longer a gay white male, that lame excuse for a subjugated minority. I'm a bona fide person of color – a gay native American male – and therefore a double victim, being persecuted from multiple directions. It's called intersectionality, you creeps, and I'm putting you on warning: the resistance starts now. Deal with it!
Now that we’ve located a surviving Nansemond, I see a casino in his future.
Funny tongue-in-cheek article. Hey, maybe that should be his new Native American name.
That’s enough Indian DNA to get a job at Harvard doing nothing for $400 G’s a year.
but, does your papaw have high cheekbones?
I like Indians (rain dance not tech support).
Unless I’ve forgotten my grammar school geography, Nansemond County has now become Suffolk, VA. My father traced our ancestry back to Colonial days in the Jamestown area and there were family rumors about a Native American in the mix somewhere. I always surmised this one would have been from the Nottoway Tribe, or maybe the Chickahominy. Unfortunately, whatever paper trail might have existed was lost in courthouse fire(s). Sad - would have been nice to know.
If he is gay - that’s the end of the genetic line. No more Indians for him.
.....make sure you mail in a few DNA
samples to a few labs....this way the
Gubment can record even more about you
My Indian ... er, Native American ancestry traces back to that enigmatic and disoriented group, the lost tribe of the Fukawi ...
I have wondered in the past few years, with the endless grievance industry screaming that there are enough XXX underrepresented category and demands to spend more money to recruit and advance whatever category can scream the loudest, why the whole house of cards doesn’t collapse with the new self identification craze? Got a problem in the executive suite, just have have the biological males identify as women, gays, martians, or whatever.
I have no desire to know about my lineage pre 20th Century. Too many times I heard stories from my grandparents about the black sheep in the family. You know the cattle rustlers, swindlers and white slavers. Best let sleeping relatives lie.
Tongue-in-Cheek? You'd nickname a gay man Tongue-in-Cheek???
Have you no shame?
...I’m Not 100% White. Honest Injun!-A heap big personal discovery...
A post that could never be legitimately done by you know who.
If you can “identify” as any of 98 different “genders” at any given moment, you ought to be able to “identify” as any given “race” at any given moment.
Other then the White slavers, the “black sheep” stories are the best.
I don’t care what percentage you are of what race.
But if you are not 100% American, take a long hike on a short pier.
Perhaps Elizabeth Warren can be artificially inseminated (with her permission, of course!) to carry on the bloodline.
Then Elizabeth can rightfully claim to have a little Indian in her.
This line reminds me of a South Park episode.
You know, the one where Cartman thinks he is a redhead and is in a room with many other redheads, goading them into mass murder of non-redheads, when he is informed that he is not actually a redhead.
Suddenly his message changes.
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