About

For most of my life, I believed that I had Native ancestry.

It began with my maternal grandmother who told me fairly frequently that I must have inherited all the Indian blood in the family because of whatever behavior I was exhibiting at that moment.  When I asked her about the Indian blood in the family, she told me that my great, great, great grandfather went to the mountains and brought back a "squaw" as his wife.  She never told me which great, great, great grandfather that was (from each grandparent, we have 4 great great great grandfathers.) or any other details.

The word squaw is considered a very derogatory word in most of Indian America but does derive, apparently, from Algonquin words, (New England), that mean woman or wife.  Perhaps that's a clue to the origin of one of my grandmother's ancestors.  I don't know.

This belief that I had Native ancestry lead me, eventually, in my mid-20s to become a family historian, to try to verify and find those ancestors.  In the course of that investigation, that is ongoing, I found that there are tales of Native ancestors in my father's family as well.  Those stories are more detailed; people identified, but still unverified.

As I said, I believed that I had Native ancestry.  I'm not so sure now.  I had my father's Y-chromosomal DNA tested and - nothing.  No Native ethnic tags.  Y-chromosomal DNA is that part of a man's DNA that has been passed from his father and back along the male DNA chain which means that none of the Y-chromosomal DNA passed down to my father, contains Native ethnic tags.

I also had my mitochondrial DNA tested and - nothing.  No Native ethnic tags.  Mitochondrial DNA is that part of a woman's DNA that has been passed from her mother and back along the female DNA chain which means that none of the mitochondrial DNA passed down to me contains Native ethnic tags.  All my mitochondrial DNA shows European origins.

In additional, I had my DNA further tested on my autosomal DNA which includes more of my DNA and while there are many additional ethnic origins in my autosomal DNA, none are Native American.  I'm told, in some detail, that doesn't mean there weren't Native ancestors, but that explanation isn't particularly interesting but means that ethnicity DOES become diluted over generations, unless it is reintroduced.

The next step is to order the additional autosomal DNA test for my father to see what shows up.

So, I have given up on the idea that I have Native ancestry.  Even before the DNA tests, I realized that even if I have Native ancestry, I wasn't raised as a Native person but as a WASP.  Everything in my life, in my parents lives, in my grandparents lives are and were Waspish.  Ethnic ancestry is just that, ancestry.  Being part of the culture is as or more important, as far as I can tell.

In any case, over the years, I was quite interested in Native culture and Native issues, particularly that of the Iroquois or Haudenosaunee and the Lenape people who were the people I might have been related to, and the other Native cultures of New York State.  I was, for a time, quite involved and learned a lot.  I met a lot of really interesting people.  I participated in a lot of wonderful gatherings.  Because of that involvement and interest I learned a lot and recently have been thinking about various people I've met and historic figures about whom I'm still iterested and decided to create this site for the purpose of putting some of what I've learned together for others who might be interested.

The intent is to confine the information here to New York State people, as much as possible, but, for various reasons, that will not be entirely possible since, even historically, people moved around a lot and what are now states were not always so.  It means that the borders of information will be somewhat fuzzy.  For instance, there is a relationship between the Lenape and the Navajo which I will try to reconstruct at some point - not now.  And, some of the events that I attended were not just for people of New York State and included people from around the country and even from other countries.

The information here will be largely biographical since much of what I learned has been through people who have been given the responsibility of preserving and passing down that information.

I hope that this information will be of interest to others.