The persistent legends of American Indian ancestry seem to date well back
into the 19th century (and as Mr. Jhonson has noted tend very often to fade
back a generation each time research on a particular line advances). The
period claimed for the ties is generally the mid 18th century. Our various
ancestors living in the mid 18th century and even the early 19th century
doubtless had different motivations for "speculating" on that part of their
family history just out of the reach of either records or memory. Whereas
now it is fashionable (and not entirely an unwelcome sentiment I think in a
democratic and egalitarian society) to dream of having an ethnically rich
and diverse ancestry. This would not have been the case 100 years ago. I
wonder what the motivation was for the people with whom these stories
originated to preserve, invent or speculate the existence of these marriages
or liaisons. There is the Pocahontas story with a few families legitimately
claiming that descent and there are I suspect two or three other Native
American "royal lines" (daughters of chief "Corn Silk" and the like) that
may captured the imagination and I suppose with so many of the white
population in the south emerging either from the servitude or penury that
either caused or resulted from their passage to America, a move to the
frontier and a new start may have encouraged a little invention. But I must
admit I have no single shred of evidence for such a thing. On the one hand
I think I saw (must check) in a book on Melungeons by Pat Spurlock that
there were large numbers of Native Americans on the Southern East Coast who
assimilated (en masse) into one part of colonial society or another. Then
with different groups migrating to and beyond the Appalachians mixing of
such communities and intermarriage, particularly on the frontier, might not
be considered that odd a thing. A person would end up by tracing in census
or court records back to a family with a European surname that goes back to
before the Revolution in Virginia or the Carolinas and then they might not
be able to find parents for them. Did they migrate down from Pennsylvania
or were they assimilated Native Americans who simply are not in the records
prior to that time (It bears remembering that in colonial times if someone
did not look that different from the people around him and did his militia
service, paid his tax and went to the locally accepted church, there may not
have been such a strong tendency to discriminate as was later to become
prevalent). Another point might be that it was might have been thought
preferable to call a black-white or mulatto-white marriage a native
american-white marriage. This would suggest the effect of later attitudes
in the south bending the truth to avoid embarrassment and even unfavorable
legal consequences and again it might tie in with the information Mr.
Farmerie gave vis a vis the Lumbie and others. We have strong opinions
about these sorts of issues now, but how our ancestors (either Native
American or Immigrant) may have felt about these matters- and I believe our
present opinions are more enlightened in at least a few key respects
regarding human equality and the desirability of celebrating diversity-
need not necessarily bear substantial relation to how we feel now. Which
brings me back around again to what was my original question-accepting that
whether or not assimilation accounted for a large part of the modern day
southern "Indian Ancestry" phenomenon in US genealogy, I think there may
have been considerable invention along the way as Mr. Jhonson seems to
suggest I am interested in what motivated the inventors to do the inventing
or at least just to speculate in a less than entirely objective way to their
forbears Native American identity. It is a question that has occurred to me
before this and I have often wondered about it.
As to relevance to this topic covered by this group, I am interested as my
rather limited number of posts will show, in the early medieval period. It
is pretty well believed that early medieval "genealogists" padded the
earlier phases of their royal and noble lines with heroes, heroines, gods
and the like (They had precedent of course dating back at least to Homer)
Some of these (the genealogy of the Kings of Wessex for example) we can see
the mark of political self interest perhaps overly fortuitously cobbling
together any Saxon dynasty in the area for which a scrap of parchment has
survived (I will try to get the citation if requested- I saw the cobbling
together of a Dorset based dynasty-possibly descended from Roman or post
Roman era federates, a Hampshire based dynasty-possibly descended from
invaders or coastal pirates-it bears remembering that shortly thereafter
Fredegund held the allegiance of a settlement of militarily capable Saxons
at Bayeaux who may or may not have admixed with the Bretons-, and a west
country dynasty that may have been a hybrid of British and Saxon- in a book
on early English Kings or Kingdoms I unfortunately do not immediately have
to hand. I think it was hinted that the politically expedient attribution
of lineages of Kings of Wessex, truthful or otherwise, to Cerdic predated
Alfred's family) and producing a dynasty unbroken back to Woden. Desiring
to be King of Anglo Saxon England, Alfred or his famly may have found an
heroic lineage that was at least as old as the other surviving claimants
(and he may have felt justified if Ine and Caedwalla had already
accomplished the same thing) may have been very important so one can
understand and perhaps try to look at the evidence that does remain in a
different light (without necessarily failing to properly respect Alfred who
was an estimable individual by all accounts).
On the other hand there is the old Syagrian connection Charlemagne presented
in modern times in different forms by Kelley, Mommaerts, Settipani and
others. It has been suggested that the Carolingians made this up because of
the prestige attached to the consul Syagrius and possibly a relation to the
emperor Avitus. While I think the lineage was badly mangled and perhaps
well understood I have a hard time seeing the same forces at work as may
have been present at the courts of Ine and Alfred. It seems doubtful that
Charlemagne or his court outside of such remnants of the Avitan or Syagrian
families as may have still existed at Clermont and Cahors knew who Syagrius
was or what he did. (I am not saying that these families did not survive
but they were certainly not in anything like the same form. Such records
and familial memory as they possessed were either in monastic libraries or
lost). The contrasting point has also been made that there were more
impressive (and not implausible) politically expedient "ancestors" to forge
ties to if that was what they were about. That role was more likely filled
by the Trojan origin legends of the Franks contemporaneously popular in the
Carolingian court. Hence I would have the opinion that intentional
fabrication for political advantage or even to show great antiquity of the
ruling house's lineage are probably not indicated in this case (though that
by no means eliminates incorrect attribution).
In conclusion, I think a study of the motivation of genealogical fabricators
or possible fabricators (or bunglers or modifiers or whatever), while it
does not in any sense prove that any person was descended from any other can
be useful in studying the past and the genealogical context. If anyone can
suggest why large numbers of southern U.S. families 200 years ago may have
considered it either expedient or desirable to suggest that they were of
mixed parentage I think it would be interesting.
Grady Loy
<WJhonson@aol.com> wrote in message news:9f.5222c9f6.2ecaffb0@aol.com...
In a message dated 11/15/2004 10:53:01 PM Pacific Standard Time,
farmerie@interfold.com writes:
produce alternative scenarios for
their origins. Turkish, Jewish, Native American (who in turn are made
to be Turkish), and various other things. This goes on in spite of some
good genealogical work that has been done on some of the families
documenting their mulato roots, with a little bit of native American
Frankly I'm quite skeptical of this so-called "tri-racial heritage". I'm
not
saying it's not possible, but I am saying that what little documentation
I've
seen is just that ... little. Of course you can fall back on the "they
didn't document OUR kind back then" argument, but that just leaves me
feeling flat.
It seems that every other person I work with has some family legend of
American Indian ancestry. That ancestry seems to recede just one
generation
further back than we can trace surprisingly enough.
Will