In my experience, if you do have indian blood identifiable from known relatives, the tendency in Texas at least, has always been to claim Cherokee ancestry. In my case my relatives actually are Choctaw, but we were always told they were Cherokee. Everyone wants to be Cherokee cause they were the coolest tribe! So right off, claims of Cherokee blood are suspect to me.
BTW, I've had the dna test and it came up zero indian. Turns out your random dna can completely miss something like that.