Discovering my "archaic DNA" matches

I recently discovered that GEDmatch allows you to match your DNA against samples from different “archaic” DNA finds, such as Ötzi or the Kennewick man. I thought it would be fun to try it and see what came up.

Before I talk about my results, let me first explain something about how DNA is measured. Bear with me. 

There’s a unit of measure, the centimorgan*, that you may have heard if you’ve had your DNA analyzed by 23andMe, Ancestry or another service. According to Wikipedia, “One centimorgan corresponds to about 1 million base pairs in humans on average. The relationship is only rough, as the physical chromosomal distance corresponding to one centimorgan varies from place to place in the genome, and also varies between men and women since recombination during gamete formation in females is significantly more frequent than in males. Kong et al. calculated that the female genome is 4460 cM long, while the male genome is only 2590 cM long.” 

I know that’s dense, but it’s helpful to understand, because services like 23andMe and GEDmatch figure out who you’re related to based on how much your DNA overlaps with others, and how long your matching segments are. For example, I share 50% of my DNA with my father, across 23 segments (the 23 chromosomes I inherited from him). In total, our shared segments are 3720cM long. By comparison, I share 10% of my DNA with one of my paternal cousins. She and I share 24 segments of DNA, but those shared segments total just 760cM. 

As relations grow more distant, the number of shared segments – and, more significantly, the length of those segments – goes way down. This can be distance across the population (say, how closely related I might  be to Kevin Bacon), or across time (how closely related I am to my 6th great-grandfather, Johannes Harbard Winegardner, who was born in Germany in 1718, immigrated to thee U.S. in 1752 and died in Virginia in 1779). 

Any match below about 10 cM is dubious (Ancestry uses 8cM), less so if you can trace your and your match’s family tree back to a common ancestor. So the fact that GEDmatch begins matching your DNA against archaic samples at a threshold of .5cM should raise some eyebrows. But these matches allegedly don’t indicate direct lineage – a match with Ötzi doesn’t mean he’s your direct ancestor. Instead, it may just be chance, or it may indicate common migration patterns, meaning your ancestors lived in the same place, at roughly the same time, as these people whose remains we’ve sampled millennia later. 

When I looked at my “Archaic DNA” matches at .5 cM, I had lots and lots of matches. Knowing they were dubious, I slowly increased the threshold until I still had some matches with several matching segments, and picked out several of those, the ones with the most overlaps, to research further. Here’s what I found, from oldest to most recent. 

1. Ust-Ishim, Siberia, 45,000 years ago

This DNA comes from a femur found in western Siberia, and is the oldest genome for homo sapiens on record. It belonged to a male hunter-gatherer who likely descended from a group who left Africa more than 50,000 years ago to populate other regions, but later went extinct. About 2 percent of his genome came from Neanderthals. You can see an image of the femur here.

Bichon man’s skull. Picture by Y. André / Laténium. (CC BY-SA 3.0)

2. Bichon, Switzerland, 13,700 years ago

This DNA comes from the skull of a man found in the Grotte du Bichon, a cave in the Jura Mountains on the French-Swiss border. I love all the detail on this one. His bones were found “intermingled with the bones of a female brown bear, nine flint arrowheads and traces of charcoal.” Evidence suggests that the bear was wounded by arrows and retreated into the cave. The man followed, and made a fire to fumigate the bear from the cave, but was killed by the dying animal. 

He belonged to the Western European hunter-gatherer lineage, based on comparisons to other fossils from the European mesolithic period. He was about 5-foot-five, 130 pounds, muscular, probably right handed, and had a mostly meat-based diet. 

3. Kotias, Georgia, 9,700 years ago

This DNA comes from a man who was buried in Kotias Klde cave in the Caucasus Mountains of Georgia. He was one of a previously unknown group of hunter-gatherers in the Caucasus, and their DNA survives in many of today’s Europeans. He shares some DNA with the later Yamnaya culture across Europe, a semi-nomadic people known for burying their dead in pits with stelae and animal offerings, and often covered in ochre. You can see the Kotias skeleton here. 

4. Loschbour, Luxembourg, 8,000 years ago 

This man’s skeleton was found in 1835 under a rock shelter in Mullerthal, in eastern Luxembourg. He was part of European hunter-gatherer culture, and represented a transition between the dark skin of our African forebears and the light skin of many modern Europeans. His DNA reveals an “intermediate” skin tone, brown or black hair, and probably blue eyes. He was 5-foot-3, about 130 pounds, and was lactose-intolerant. He died in his mid-30s. Flint tools were found with his remains, and the cremated remains of another person, probably an adult woman, were found nearby. Her bones showed signs of scraping, suggesting that her bones were defleshed before burning. You can see the man’s skeleton here. 

5. Stuttgart, Germany, 7,000 years ago

This DNA belonged to a person who was part of the Linearbandkeramik (Linear Pottery Ceramic) culture that was prominent in Germany during the Neolithic period. This culture – and this individual – were farmers, growing emmer and einkorn wheat, crab apples, peas, lentils, flax, poppies and barley. They raised some animals, including cows and sheep, and lived in small villages of longhouses near waterways. 

Skull of a Neolithic woman found in Ballynahatty, Northern Ireland.

6. Ballynahatty, Northern Ireland, 5,200 years ago

This DNA comes from the remains of a Neolithic woman found in a tomb chamber in Ballynahatty, near Belfast, in Northern Ireland. Her genes are similar to modern people from Spain and Sardinia, but her ancestors likely came to Europe from the Middle East. She was lactose-intolerant and carried a genetic variant for hemochromatosis, which can cause excessive iron retention. 

7. Rathlin Island, Northern Ireland, 4,000 years ago

This DNA comes from one of two male skeletons found on Rathlin Island, just north off the coast of Northern Ireland. Unlike the woman found in Ballynahatty, these Bronze Age men could digest milk and their genetics are more aligned with modern Irish, Scottish and Welsh peoples. A third of their DNA came from ancient cultures who lived in the Pontic Steppe, a region now divided between Russia and Ukraine. Both men carried a variant for hemochromatosis, but a different one from the Ballynahatty woman. Ireland’s modern population has one of the highest frequencies of lactase persistence, as well as hemochromatosis. I’m partly Irish – 4%, according to Ancestry, and 79% British and Irish, according to 23andMe – and carry both of these variants.

If nothing else, this exploration has allowed me to learn more about some early DNA finds, as well as what they mean for the migration patterns of my ancestors before they turned into the Northwestern European residents I can trace through genealogical records. It’s fascinating, and as always, I’m tempted to visit some of these places to see what it feels like to stand on the same ground.

*Named after American biologist and geneticist Thomas Hunt Morgan, born in 1866, part of a line of Southern plantation owners and enslavers on his father's side. He was a nephew of Confederate General John Hunt Morgan.

Top photo: Linearbandkeramik Culture farmhouse, photographed by Hans Splinter. (CC BY-ND 2.0)

The Storms of Sleepy Hollow

Philipsburg Manor, Sleepy Hollow, New York, photographed by Daderot in 2005, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

One branch of my family tree includes many folks who were among the first settlers of the legendary town of Sleepy Hollow in New York. Even better, their family name was Storm. 

A side note before we get started: Sleepy Hollow wasn’t always called Sleepy Hollow. The little village north of Tarrytown was most often called North Tarrytown from its incorporation in the late 19th century until 1996, when it officially changed its name, staking its claim to the Washington Irving story. 

One of my earliest ancestors to settle in Sleepy Hollow (in Haudenosaunee territory) was my 10th great-grandfather, Dirck Goris (or Gorisszen) Storm. He was born in 1630 in Leiden, in the Netherlands. He married Maria van Montfoort in 1655, and they had a son, my 9th great-grandfather, Gregoris Storm, in 1656. The family, including two other children, traveled to North America in 1662; Maria gave birth to a daughter during the journey. 

Before arriving in North America, Storm had served as the Town Clerk for Oss, in the Netherlands. When they arrived by boat -- at the foot of Wall Street in Manhattan -- Storm became involved in local affairs right away. He owned property, including a tavern on Beaver Street, and later served as Town Clerk for communities in Brooklyn. In 1670 he became Secretary of the Colony. In 1691 the British sent him north to Tappan, where he became the first Secretary and Clerk of the Sessions for Orange County, New York. Later that decade, Dirck and Maria were recorded as members of the Old Dutch Church in Sleepy Hollow, not long after the church was built. 

The Old Dutch Church in Sleepy Hollow, built in the 1690s and seen here in a postcard from 1907.

He was also a skilled writer, and the church members asked him to write the history of the church, dating back to 1697. His book, Het Notite Boeck der Christelyckes Kercke op de Manner of Philips Burgh, offers a rare look at early colonial life. He died in 1716, and is buried in Sleepy Hollow. 

The original village was quite small, with several large and active families that sometimes intermarried. My Storm ancestors married Van Tassels at least three times: Pieter Storm, son of Dirck, married Margaret Van Tassel in 1696, and Elizabeth Storm married Lt. Cornelius Van Tassel in 1756. A third marriage played a small role in one of the spookiest stories of all time.  

Sleepy Hollow was well established by 1820 when Washington Irving -- who had lived in nearby Tarrytown and socialized in Sleepy Hollow -- wrote his famous short story about the Headless Horseman. The character of Katrina Van Tassel was inspired by a flesh-and-blood daughter of the Van Tassel family. Although historians believe the actual girl was Eleanor Van Tassel; her aunt, Catriena, inspired the name. Eleanor’s grandparents were Jacob Van Tassel and Aeltie Alberts Storm. They married in 1724 in the First Reformed Church of Tarrytown. 

Dirck Goris Storm’s descendants remained in and around Sleepy Hollow for generations. Gregoris lived in North Tarrytown much of his life and is also buried in the Sleepy Hollow cemetery. Likewise his son, Derck Storm, who was born in 1695 and died in about 1762. His son, Hendrick, was born in 1709 and lived until 1793; his son, Gregorus, was born in 1731, baptised in North Tarrytown, and lived until 1807. Most or all have headstones in Sleepy Hollow. (So does Washington Irving.) 

The latter Gregorus Storm and his wife, Jannitje Williams, had at least three children, including my 5th great-grandmother, Mary Storms, who was born in 1760 in Haverstraw, just up the Hudson River (and on the other bank) from Sleepy Hollow. It’s unclear to me why she went by Storms instead of Storm; her brothers, Jacobus and Johannis, didn’t. Mary married Joseph Allison in 1781 and they had 11 children together. Mary died in 1829. The Allison lineage carried down to my grandmother, Frances Allison Nesbitt, whose middle name comes from that line. 

As with the other ancestors I’ve written about, I’d love to visit Sleepy Hollow, walk the streets they may have walked, visit their bones at the Sleepy Hollow cemetery, and find out just how haunted the village really is.

The Mennonites of Massanutten in the Shenandoah Valley

The White House, built in 1760, photographed in 1929. Built by my sixth great-grandfather, Martin Kauffman Jr., for Mennonite services.

My family tree is (perhaps oddly) full of religious leaders. 

One of my grandfathers was a Southern Baptist preacher, the other a traveling evangelist. My fourth great-grandfather, Robert Frazier Jones, was a Methodist minister who built his own log church outside Atlanta in the early 1800s. 

And several of my ancestors were Mennonites whose parents fled persecution in Europe. These families started out in the Mennonite community in Pennsylvania and ultimately moved south to Luray, Virginia, where they created a Mennonite settlement in the Shenandoah Valley. They included the reverends John Roads, Martin Kauffman, Sr. and Martin Kauffman, Jr. 

Four married couples, my sixth great-grandparents, were among these settlers of the valley next to Massanutten, a mountain named by the indigenous people of the area, most likely the Algonquins. Among them were Joseph Roads and Mary Strickler; Abraham Brubaker and Barbara Miller; Conrad Bieber and Maria Magdalena Kniesley; and Martin Kaufmann, Jr., and Mary Lionberger. 

Their great-granddaughter (and my third great-grandmother), Rebecca Roads, was born in Luray and moved to Licking County, Ohio, where she married my third great-grandfather, Isaiah Winegarner, in 1831. 

Joseph’s father, John Roads, was born in Switzerland in 1712 and immigrated to the U.S. when he was in his early teens. He married Eve Catherine Albright, whose parents were from the village of Gamburg, Germany, and they were among the first settlers of the “Massanutting Colony,” which was established in 1726 or 1727 in Luray. Although the majority of these early settlers were Mennonites, a few were Lutherans or Calvinists, according to the Spring 1994 issue of the Shenandoah Mennonite Historian newsletter. 

The journey could not have been easy. “The Massanutten settlers pushed a hundred miles beyond the Potomac and the frontier settlements into the heart of the wilderness, where they could expect no aid from their friends in Pennsylvania nor from the Virginians across the mountains,” Harry Miller Strickler, one of my distant cousins, wrote in his book Massanutten, Settled by the Pennsylvania Pilgrim, 1726.

“When those Swiss pioneers located this spot they found scenery not unlike their own beautiful Alps in Switzerland, not so sublime probably, not so awe-inspiring perhaps, beautiful scenery nevertheless -- ‘God-like scenery for God-like men for God-like purposes.’ The scenery is too beautiful, and too much like Heaven must be to be described by the most facile pen. So I will not attempt it, but advise you to go and see it for yourself,” Strickler wrote.

There were undoubtedly indigenous tribes living in the area at the time who were, at the very least, displaced by the new settlers. And more settlers kept coming. By 1758 there were at least 39 Mennonite families in the area, including my 6th great-grandparents. Strickler was born in the community. Brubaker was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and had moved to Luray by 1750. Miller, too, was living in the settlement by 1750. Bieber and Kniesley were married in Berks County, Pennsylvania, and arrived at Massanutten in 1756. Kauffman was born in Lancaster and came to the settlement before 1740, when he was still a young child. Lionberger was born in nearby Hawksbill Creek, and was living in Massanutten by 1760.  

Both Joseph’s and Martin’s fathers became important religious leaders in the nascent Mennonite Church. But Joseph’s family suffered a significant tragedy. In August of 1764, historians say, eight “Indians” and a white man, who some claimed was Simon Girty, attacked the Roads homestead. They were likely looking for money, as John had quite a bit hidden in a niche in the cellar wall. John and Eva were both killed, along with six of their children; Joseph and six others survived. The attackers set fire to the homestead, destroying it, but the hidden cache of money survived. 

This information comes from A History of Shenandoah County, Virginia, by John W. Wayland, written in 1927, and there’s a similar account in Strickler’s book. While it’s widely accepted that several members of the Roads family died on the same date in 1764, I can’t speak to the accuracy of the details. 

Another view of the White House.

Martin Kauffman, Jr., built a two-story house he called the White House -- because of its white-washed stucco exterior -- in about 1760. The building was used for Mennonite services for many years. In 1770 a new religious man arrived: John Koontz, a Baptist who converted many of the Mennonites to his faith, including Martin Kauffman, Jr. 

When the Revolutionary War broke out in 1775, the Mennobaptist community split; traditionally, Mennonites are pacifists who don’t support war. “Martin Kauffman, having first been a Mennonite ... retained most of their principles after he became a Baptist. These principles caused a division in the White House Church during the Revolutionary War, and Kauffman became the minister of a small number who did not believe in ‘slavery, war, or oaths,’” according to Strickler’s book.

Martin Jr. and many others created a new church, the Mennonite Separate Independent Baptist Church, resuming services at the White House. He also petitioned the General Assembly of Virginia for a military exemption similar to the one given to Quakers and traditional Mennonites, but the petition was denied. 

The separatist church began to disintegrate, but Martin Jr. and some of his followers moved away from the Shenandoah Valley, starting a new community called New Lancaster (now simply Lancaster) in Fairfield County, Ohio. His White House remains standing in Luray, and was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2013. And my Winegarner ancestors -- dating back to Isaiah Winegarner and Rebecca Roads -- have been in Ohio for generations. 

While this group of Mennonites eventually led to the birth of my great-great paternal grandfather, Cyphus Winegarner, others descended from the same community are also found in my paternal great-grandmother’s line. Blanche Barr, who married Cyphus’ son, William Winegarner, is descended from Mary Strickler, who was part of the Shenandoah Valley Strickler clan, and from David Pence and Barbara Ruffner, whose families also lived in the Massanutten colony. It’s clear that the folks who left the colony remained close after relocating to Ohio, intermingling and marrying for at least a couple more generations. 

I have never been to Virginia, but would love to visit the area my ancestors lived. In addition to the White House, there’s some indication that a few of the other original homesteads are still around, possibly including Hope Farm, which was built on the land where the Roads family was burned. Those who were killed in that incident were buried near the banks of the Shenandoah River, just downhill from the house. I hope their spirits are at peace.

The Nesbitts of Berwickshire and County Down

My grandmother, Frances Nesbitt, was born in November of 1908 to Frederick Nesbitt and Louise Howell. But I didn’t learn until I was an adult that Nesbitt was the name of a longstanding Scottish clan with a lot of history behind it. 

The name is associated with the lands near Edrom in Berwickshire, Scotland, close to the English-Scottish border. Historians believe the name may have come from a geographical feature in this area; “nese” means “nose” in Middle English, while “bit” means “mouthful,” “piece of ground,” or possibly “bend.” The family name dates back to at least 1160, when William de Nesbite was listed as a witness to a charter by Patrick, Earl of Dunbar to Coldingham Priory.

The Nesbitts established two fortified houses in the 12th century, East Nisbet and West Nisbet. East Nisbet, now known as Allanbank, was located on the Blackadder Water near Allanton, although the original tower no longer exists. West Nisbet remains, and was extended in the 1630s to form the bulk of the present house, located in the Scottish borders. 

(There’s also a Nesbitt Castle in Zimbabwe, which was built in the 20th century by Theodore Albert Edward Holdengarde and then restored by Digby Nesbitt, a businessman from southeastern Zimbabwe.)

Nesbitts have two clan tartans, a primary one and one for dancing/performance, plus a badge that features a boar and the phrase “I byd it,” meaning “I endure.”

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Nesbitts pepper Scottish history, participating in the wars of Scottish independence and the Scottish civil war. Alexander Nisbet wrote a definitive book on the history of heraldry. His son, Philip, was knighted; he was later captured in battle and executed in Glasgow in 1646. Two other sons, Alexander and Robert were killed in the Scottish civil war. In the 1700s, some Nesbitt families moved to Ireland, and later to North America. 

My ancestors were part of this migration. I can trace my grandmother’s lineage back to what is now Northern Ireland; her grandfather, James Corry Nesbitt (that’s him with the tartans, above), was born in November of 1847 in Clanmaghery, a village in Tyrella, Ireland, and came to the U.S. in 1866, when he was 19. He moved to Ohio, where he met and married Elizabeth Woollard in 1880. According to the 1880 census, he and Lizzie lived at 260 East Town Street in Columbus, Ohio, and he worked as a dry goods retailer. The 1900 census shows James and Lizzie living with her parents at 247 East Broad Street in Columbus, and his occupation as “traveling salesman.”

Much of the 1890 census records were famously destroyed in a fire in 1921, but in those intervening years James and Lizzie had at least one child, my great-grandfather, Frederick Cookman Nesbitt, born in January 1881. In 1910 James and Lizzie were still living with her parents; he’s listed as working as a “com traveler” for a “cerfiet house” (if anyone’s got guesses, please comment below). They remained living at the Broad Street house in the 1920 census, after Lizzie’s parents had died, and James was working as the treasurer of an organization; which one isn’t listed. James Corry Nesbitt died in October of 1928; Lizzie lived until March of 1948.

James’ ancestors, including his father, William Nesbitt; his grandfather, Robert Nesbitt; his great-grandfather, also William Nesbitt; and his great-great-grandfather, James Nesbitt, lived much or all of their lives in Ireland, particularly the Woodgrange area of County Down. With the elder James the trail goes cold. We don’t know when or where he was born, or when he died. His son, William, was born in 1730, ostensibly in Ireland, and died in 1798 in Woodgrange. 

James’ father, William, came to the United States for at least a couple of decades. In the 1870 census he, and his wife Margaret, are listed as living in Ward 6 of Brooklyn; his occupation is listed simply as “Laborer.” They are shown living with their daughter, Ellen, and a 21-year-old William Nesbitt, likely a nephew or grandson. In the 1880 census, he and Margaret are shown living at 89 Carroll Street in Brooklyn, still with Ellen and William. He has no occupation identified, although by that time he was nearly 70. He died in 1888 at Clanmaghery. Clanmaghery Road, now also called the A2, still runs through Tyrella today.

I have not visited these regions of Ireland, though I’ve been to several other parts. Someday I’d like to see Tyrella and Woodgrange, and walk the coast near Clanmaghery Road. I’d like to visit the remaining Nisbet House and explore Berwickshire. I wonder if it will feel familiar.

Making friends with plants

Comfrey and chamomile.

Plant care has not always been my strength. I’ve had so many plants die from too much water, too little water, too much sun, too little sun, haunted soil -- who knows. But sometime in the past several years, I’ve slowly learned how to read plants’ cues. 

We are lucky to have a backyard, especially in a pandemic when it’s not as safe or easy to get outdoors into nature. But for a long time, our yard was next-door to a eucalyptus tree, which constantly blew a thick carpet of its leaves onto our soil, which discouraged anything else from growing. But a couple of years ago our neighbor cut down the eucalyptus, which opened up a lot of possibilities for gardening. 

Since then I’ve planted a variety of flora, some that are native to the Bay Area and California, and some that just do well here. We’ve got succulents and nightshades, chartreuse coleus and deep green impatiens with cheerful pink blossoms. But we’ve had a lot of trouble growing edible plants. Only cold-weather crops like kale and Brussels sprouts grow well in our cool and foggy city, and they often wind up so coated in aphids that they’re inedible. 

Herbs, on the other hand, seem to do okay. I’ve planted oregano and chives, mugwort and rosemary, yarrow and lavender that don’t mind the chill, and don’t attract every insect within a two-mile radius. 

This year I wanted to expand the number of herbs in my garden, and I began to wonder what the Ohlone Indians might have planted or foraged. At the same time, I didn’t want to steal information from a culture that isn’t my own. My own ancestors displaced indigenous tribes in other parts of the country, and even if they hadn’t, I have no business adopting their customs as my own. That said, the plants that grow well in the Bay Area have done so for a long time, and connecting with the land where I live means connecting with the plants of the region. 

The bulk of my ancestors came from Britain, Ireland, Scotland and northern Europe (Germany, Switzerland and Scandinavia), so I started digging around for the earliest information I could find on the use of native plants in the UK and Ireland. Before the age of modern medicine, it’s likely they would have used these plants as medicine, and learned about them from their own ancestors. And some of them were likely to grow happily here in San Francisco, too. 

I found a couple of good resources in particular. One was the Anglo-Saxon Nine Herbs Charm, a chant that mentions nine plants, the healing they provide, and how to combine them together to make a medicinal salve. The poem mentions mugwort, plantain, shepherd’s purse, nettle, betony, chamomile, crab apple, chervil and fennel. It is included in a text commonly called the Lacnunga, a collection of miscellaneous Anglo-Saxon medical texts and prayers, written mainly in Old English and Latin. It dates back to the 10th or 11th century, though some parts of it are much older. 

Another good resource is this post, from the Herbal Academy, about the gardens at Glastonbury Abbey. They include 11 plants that have been part of ancient British culture for centuries, including some brought over by the Romans, Saxons and Vikings. Among them are lady’s bedstraw, lemon balm, yarrow, meadowsweet, lovage, vervain (verbena), comfrey, elecampane, betony and woad. 

I knew a number of these plants would thrive in San Francisco, so I decided to add a few, including mugwort, comfrey, chamomile, lemon balm and vervain. Nettle already grows wild in the garden after the rainy season, and fennel grows like a weed in several spots in our neighborhood. Planting, growing, tending and making use of them makes me feel more connected -- to the ground under my feet, to the land where I live, and to my ancestors, who probably used these herbs as food and medicine. I love the idea that one of them could walk into my garden and recognize what’s growing there, know how to work with each leaf and bud.

Of "Cherokee Maidens" and "Native American DNA"

My mom grew up in Georgia, and her family — the Joneses, the Jacksons, the Purcells, the Bourns, the Ganns and so on — lived in Georgia and the Carolinas for generations.

Like many folks with roots in the South, I grew up hearing that I had some Cherokee ancestry. Not just Native American ancestry, but Cherokee specifically. Given what I knew about the history of Georgia — and the history of Tsalagi (Cherokee) tribespeople intermarrying with European settlers, it didn’t seem all that far-fetched.

More embarrassingly, though, I repeated the information as though it were true. I told people I was “part Cherokee.” I burned sage to “cleanse” places of “bad energy” and I hung a dreamcatcher by my bed. I read badly romanticized books on supposedly indigenous American shamanic practices written by white people and imagined that path for myself. More helpfully, I read books about the history of genocide against Native Americans in the Americas, the occupation of Alcatraz in the year I was born, the uprising and resistance at Wounded Knee, and similar protests.

I watched Thunderheart. Over and over and over.

When I gained access to my family history, both through genealogy records and DNA testing, I discovered very quickly that a) I didn’t have any “Native American DNA,” (a misleading description, any way you look at it) and b) that there was indeed an “Indian princess” in my tree, a title which was most certainly a fiction.

My 6th great-grandmother, Elizabeth Eastin, is listed in many an online family tree as a “Cherokee maiden” or “Indian princess,” but there’s no documentation to support the claim. Records do show that she existed, that she married my 6th great-grandfather, Nathan Gann, and that she was born in Halifax County (it’s unclear if this was in Virginia or South Carolina) in 1745 and died in Oconee County, Georgia, in 1803.

Gregory D. Smithers writes:

According to the work of Vine Deloria, one of NCAI’s leading intellectuals, “Cherokee was the most popular tribe” in America. “From Maine to Washington State,” Deloria recalled, white Americans insisted they were descended from Cherokee ancestors. More often than not, that ancestor was an “Indian princess,” despite the fact that the tribe never had a social system with anything resembling an inherited title like “princess.”

While researching my family history, I discovered that there is a Facebook group for Gann descendants who are looking at their genealogy. Although a lot of us have this “Cherokee maiden” in our family trees, our DNA suggests otherwise. Granted, that might be because any indigenous DNA is just too far back to be detectable. But, without documentation to suggest otherwise, it’s safer and more respectful to assume the ancestry just isn’t there.

If you look at the image at the top of this post, it’s a snapshot of a branch of the Gann family who registered with the Cherokee Nation rolls in 1896. There’s Charles Gann, who was likely 100% European, his wife, Nancy, who was likely Tsalagi, and their children. These kids and their descendants, regardless of DNA, can claim Tsalagi ancestry. I’m not a direct descendant of Charles and Nancy, but their descendants are out there. Not everyone who intermarried with the Tsalagi registered on the Cherokee rolls, though, so an absence of this document isn’t definitive one way or another.

Smithers again:

So why have so many Americans laid claim to a clearly fictional identity? … The Cherokees resisted state and federal efforts to remove them from their Southeastern homelands during the 1820s and 1830s. During that time, most whites saw them as an inconvenient nuisance, an obstacle to colonial expansion. But after their removal, the tribe came to be viewed more romantically, especially in the antebellum South, where its determination to maintain rights of self-government against the federal government took on new meaning. Throughout the South in the 1840s and 1850s, large numbers of whites began claiming they were descended from a Cherokee great-grandmother. That great-grandmother was often a “princess,” a not-inconsequential detail in a region obsessed with social status and suspicious of outsiders. By claiming a royal Cherokee ancestor, white Southerners were legitimating the antiquity of their native-born status as sons or daughters of the South, as well as establishing their determination to defend their rights against an aggressive federal government, as they imagined the Cherokees had done. These may have been self-serving historical delusions, but they have proven to be enduring.

In response to Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s problematic use of Native American identity, Cherokee Nation Cherokee Nation Secretary of State Chuck Hoskin Jr. said in a statement that using "a DNA test to lay claim to any connection to the Cherokee Nation or any tribal nation, even vaguely, is inappropriate and wrong." 

At the end of the day, DNA is not the same as ancestry, and ancestry is not the same as tribal or other cultural affiliation — let alone belonging. It’s important not to throw such ancestry claims around casually. Reconstructing a family tree is fun and rewarding work that helps us better understand not only where we come from, but the histories our ancestors lived — even when those histories were unimaginably hard, or shamefully cruel.