A Ramble About Being Cherokee

Recently I've become interested in researching my family history as far back as I have the tools for. Right now this consists of the Internet and time spent searching looking up dead relatives and ancestors and hoping to find their parents' names. I already knew quite a bit about one part of my mother's side of my heritage, the Hanchett side. This has been traced by a distant cousin all the way back to the Boston Bay Colony in the 1640s or so, and from their back to the Norman conquest of England in 1066. As I've looked online, I found more research done by other cousins of my dad's mom's side which also traces all the way back to the colonies in the 1630s and from there back to ancestors in England as well.

But the one side of my family that has always been a bit of a mystery, for various reasons, is my paternal ancestry. This is the side of my ancestry, which I have always been told, is Cherokee. When I was a kid I was always told that I was 1/16th Cherokee, and that my grandfather was 1/4th Cherokee, but because of family history, I was never able to research it farther. Nevertheless, it was something which I have always felt was a good part of my heritage, whether I could prove it or not.

Recently, I was told by my dad that it was my great grandfather who was full Cherokee, and possibly my great grandmother was at least part Cherokee. He did a fair amount of research on our family history as well, but couldn't go back any farther than my great-grandfather. As I tried to pick up the trail again, I kept running into brick walls too. We know that the original spelling of our last name wasn't "Bair", but "Bear", and that my great-grandfather was born in 1872. My grandfather was born in 1905.

The Cherokee have a long and tragic history with the U.S, and through it all have survived as a proud, industrious, and great people that has managed to retain their language and culture even as they has weathered the storms history has thrown at them. The most famous, and most extreme example of this is the Trail of Tears, which was when, after the Indian removal act of 1830, the U.S. government forced the Cherokee off of their ancestral lands and forced them to walk to what is now Oklahoma. It's called the Trail of Tears because 4,000 Cherokee died along the way.

What's so striking about it as well is that many, if not most, of the Cherokee at this point in time were of mixed descent, with the mixture mostly with Americans of European descent. There were few "full blood" Cherokee, and most who were forced to march were half or less. The standard for forced removal was if you had 1/32nd Cherokee blood or more. Furthermore, most of the Cherokee were "civilized." They didn't live in traditional dwellings (certainly not teepees), but houses. They owned plantations and businesses, some owned slaves like other Southerners. Except for the color of their skin and the language they used they didn't live that differently from their European descended counterparts. Most were Christians. The Trail of Tears holds a special place in my heart where American history is concerned, because if my family and I had lived then, we would have been thrown out of our house, and off our land and forced to march too. Prejudice and greed only sees what they want to see, and historically they've never seen the part of you that looks like them, only the part of you that's different.


After that there were numerous treaties between the Cherokee nation and the U.S. government, most were broken by the latter party shortly after being made. In the late 1800s, about 1893, there was a proposal by Congress to end the reservation system and allot land to the members or citizens of the five "civilized" tribes: Cherokee, Choctaw, Seminole, Creek, and Chickasaw. Whoever would sign the roll, registering as a citizen of that tribe, would receive an allotment of land. Called the "Dawes Roll" it was open between 1896 and 1906 to anyone who was living in "Indian Territory" at the time and could prove citizenship. Many Cherokee however didn't trust the U.S. government and so wouldn't sign it. Other didn't meet the residency requirements, living in Missouri, Arkansas, Texas, Kansas and elsewhere other than what is now Oklahoma.

Near as I can tell, my great-grandfather fell into one of these latter camps, because he doesn't appear on the lists of the Dawes Roll. There are several "Bears" that do, but he and his family aren't among them. But I can trace him to Oklahoma and Arkansas, where I still have distant relatives today. Because he doesn't appear on these rolls, there's no way I can register with the tribe and be counted with the Cherokee.

I've always been a touch darker than other "white" people, and have always tanned easily, so I did a simple image search on the Internet to see what would distinguish Cherokee features. I then compared these images with pictures of my dad and myself. Lo and behold, there it was: genetic resemblance plain as day (cheekbones, chin, shape of eyes, hair and skin coloration), my dad especially. Further, it seems like other Native Americans at least somewhat recognize it too judging by the reactions I get or rather don't get when walking around the grocery store on the Nez Perce reservation which we live near (it's a long story). So, regardless of what the Dawes Rolls say, my face proclaims my ancestry even if I can't carry the card to "prove" it.

This idea has been going through my mind again and again. The truth about who we are will always come out regardless of what we claim or don't claim to be. This is especially true between those who claim to follow Christ, and those who actually do. How we live and treat other people betrays our "spiritual" ancestry. Jesus knew this when He called a bunch of devout Jewish people who claimed to follow Him sons of the devil. A person can't hide this, at least not for long, any more than I could actually hide my own Native American ancestry if I tried. It's written all over my face. So also is it written all over the lives of those who do or do not follow Him, no matter what they say or claim. The children of God and the children of the devil are apparent by how they treat others, as the Apostle John wrote in his first epistle.

It doesn't matter if the Cherokee tribal government recognizes me. I don't much care. All I have to do is look in a mirror. What matters is that I remember and teach my kids to remember. In spiritual things, you can flash your "Christian" credentials all you want and receive the praise of other "Christians" ad nauseum, but if you don't resemble Christ, or if others can't see Christ in you, then you don't belong to His family. It's that simple.