In family lore all over the U.S., millions of families have a story that someone, usually a grandmother or great-grandmother, was at least part Cherokee. Rarely, it is another Native American tribe.
According to Sam Morningstar, an expert in Native American ancestry, if people don't have verified records in hand, no matter what stories say, they are almost certainly not Native American. It isn't that people are lying, he says, but just that people are reciting family lore.
"There were only two places where full blood communities could be found after 1839 (and continued producing full blood children into subsequent generations) and that was in Cherokee Nation, or what is now northeastern OK and western NC, around Qualla Boundary," Morningstar said, writing in Quora.
The entire western band of Cherokee females in the 1800s numbered about 4,000. East of the Mississippi, the entire female Cherokee population numbered about 1,200 during the 1920s.
Such small populations could not account for the millions of people who think they are in some part Native America, he says.
The easy way to find out is to examine Indian rolls or just do some genealogical research.
