Proving Native ancestry complicated process

May 23—A common misunderstanding for those who use a DNA test to search for ancestors and find an American Indian marker is that the test can determine a specific tribe.

"When someone takes a DNA test and they find a marker that indicates possible American Indian ancestry, the one thing you must keep in mind is that no DNA test — however sophisticated it may be or what degree of data they may have — can tell you the tribe," David Cornsilk said.

Cornsilk worked for 12 years with tribal enrollment at Cherokee Nation and has over 30 years of experience in genealogy research with his own company, Cherokee Genealogical Services.

The records of the Cherokee people extend back to the mid-1700s, said Cornsilk.

The reason DNA evidence of Native American heritage is lacking is most tribes have not encouraged their members to take ethnicity DNA tests, Cornsilk said.

"The reason is, we don't know if our information will be protected. Our privacy might be compromised," Cornsilk said. "We don't know how that information will be used. We have a mistrust of those kinds of entities because they are corporations and most of them — like 23andMe and Ancestry.com — are for entertainment purposes only."

They are not legitimate laboratories, Cornsilk said.

"Not all families do, but the mixed-blood families tend to have more records and better documentation further back, but once you hit [the year] 1800, it levels out and nearly all tribal members have virtually the same evidence of their heritage," Cornsilk said.

A common statement from folks who believe their families have Native blood, but can't find proof of it, is their ancestors didn't want to be listed on the Dawes or other rolls because they didn't want the government to know about them.

"There was no choice [but to be on the rolls]," Cornsilk said. "For the sake of argument, let's say that's true. Where are their brothers and sisters, cousins, grandparents, aunts and uncles?"

When searching for ancestors in the Cherokee Nation, genealogists have a three-strike system to determine lineage.

Cornsilk said if a person searching for Native blood connection finds only white ancestors, that's strike one. If those same people don't appear in Cherokee records, that's strike two.

"If they have no other relatives — because whenever someone decides to leave the tribe, they still would have left behind relatives — that's strike three," Cornsilk said.

Several free resources are available for folks looking for their familial history — Native or non-Native — at the Cherokee National Research Center. Charla Nofire, genealogist, and Gene Norris, senior genealogist, help visitors trace their family's heritage.

A "five generation ancestor chart" is given to folks when they come in to list known family members beginning with themselves and their parents and go back as far as they can on both parents' families.

"The Dawes Rolls was done in [1899]-1906 and we can look back to whichever ancestor lived in that time," Nofire said. "The main thing we can look at is, you had to be living on the reservation. If you were born in Missouri in 1902, you aren't on it."

A person must have an ancestor on the Dawes Rolls to claim citizenship in the Cherokee Nation. The Eastern Band are enrolled in the 1924 Baker Roll. Another is the Drennen Roll listing Cherokee citizens.

Anyone can use the research library or ancestry software packages. Fold3, which is mostly military records and has the Guion Miller Roll, dated from 1908-1903. Ancestry.com, can be accessed on the computers at the center. Hard copies of cemetery and county histories books can be read onsite, but cannot be checked out.

"A very small percentage of the folks that come in find [Cherokee] ancestry," Norris said. "I think it's like 5% that actually finds somebody on the Dawes Rolls — under 10%, for sure."

Norris said the staff takes the information from the chart and completes the research for them using the software packages and books in the library.

The Tahlequah Public Library and Muskogee Library both offer free resources and links online to search for connections to the past. Jerran Walker, IT specialist at TPL, said the only thing a person needs is a library card.

"When on our website they go to the tab 'Research' and under that is 'Genealogy Resources,'" Walker said. "It has a link to the memory lab at the Muskogee Library and they have the Grant Foreman Collection."

Most of the resources can be accessed online but there is a small collection of books. A program called "Ancestry Library Edition" — like Ancestry.com — is free to access in the library using a personal computer or one of the library's systems.

One unique product is "Proquest History Vault," which contains digitized letters, papers, photographs, scrapbooks, diaries and more primary sources, Walker said.

Learn more

To access online genealogy records offered by both TPL and Muskogee Public Library, go to https://eols.org/genealogy.