[ItsTheMediaStupid]

Frankly, you're trying to defend my own--and I find it condescending in the extreme.

I think not. I think you may have something against the Cherokee because they fought against your fellow Frenchmen. Not to say that some Indians didn't take French names.

[Mamzelle]

My tag name is a matter of family humor--I adopted it years ago. And the French don't like "Mademoiselle" turned into "Mamzelle" anymore than they like "sparkling American wine" being called "champagne." I call sparkling wine from California "champagne" as often as I can.

While you have no way of checking the veracity of any claim I might make to my own ancestry--I wouldn't have any way of checking yours. We only have the words on a screen.

Characterizing the Cherokees during Jackson's time, and during the Civil War, as having some sort of Napoleonic brilliance of military strategy is your variation on the sentimentalized "noble Red Man"-- and is actually far more condescending than characterizing them as savage.