During the 1500s Spain established a substantial infrastructure along the Mississippi, the Ohio, the St. Joseph and the Great miami Rivers ~ today almost all of that history is nothing but a jotting in an old family Bible, or a tracing on the ground, or maybe a boundry marker with words.
People are putting it together on the internet in a hundred communities where it is meaningful.
Eventually we'll be opening up the deerhides at Fonda NY and finding out what they say.
Interesting stuff. This and your post #38.
I'm not sure we can state with 100% certainty that ALL the oldest colonial families have an Indian ancestor because there is probably an exception somewhere.
It would certainly be accurate to state nearly all or the older the colonial family, then the greater the probability.
Due to the small size of the gene pool, there is a high probability that anyone who had ancestors in America before 1670 is related. For instance, my wife and I both are descendants of a Rev. John Crandall, an early Baptist minister in Rhode Island and contemporary of Roger Williams.
But there would still be exceptions to the 1670 rule. A handful of people imported brides from the old country to avoid intermarriage with either the Native Americans or their relatives already in America.
Post-1670, America became a place to expel undesireables such as debtors, paupers and petty criminals, so the gene pool greatly enlarged after that point.