I doubted that I could provide any documents with sufficient authority to overturn official tribal records. Nevertheless, having been through genealogy research on my own family, I was familiar with the issues, so I decided to see what I could find out about his grandmother.

The first problem is that old records of blood quanta are not always reliable, and the tribe has routinely corrected previous records. My grandfather, Dewey Washington Dailey (1901-1986), was an allottee on the second allotment schedule and was always listed as full-blood up through the 1960s, when the tribe changed his official blood quanta to 7/8th, based on the fact that one of his great-grandparents was white. Dewey’s mother, Belle Robedeaux (1878-1939), was the daughter of Antoine Robedeaux (1847-1903), who was presumably the son of a Frenchman named Robedeaux. It is generally accepted that surnames such as Robedeaux and DeRoin among the Otoe-Missouria and Ioway tribes are the result of this same type of parentage.

Mary “Anna” Rich is enumerated on the 1900 US Census as full-blood, and I’m sure she was considered full-blood by the tribe. With regard to her parentage, the evidence is overwhelming, but circumstantial. Ben and Julia Rich are enumerated on the 1899 and 1900 Tribal censuses as husband and wife, and “Annie” first appears on the 1900 Tribal census as Ben’s 1 yr-old daughter.

Keep in mind that I was not raised on the reservation, so my observations and conclusions are based on academic research without the benefit of personal experience. But it seems to me that the real issue here is that in earlier times, many people who were “considered” full-blood were not actually full-blood. Historically, descendants of half-breed children who were raised within the tribe and married within the tribe, after two or three generations, eventually were culturally “accepted” again as full-blood.

I don’t have any documentation other than family history from others, but I believe Mary Anna Rich’s mother, Julia Mahee (born c.1875), was the daughter of Harry and Laura DeRoin Mahee. Again, Julia is consistently enumerated as a full-blood. However, her mother, Laura DeRoin (born c.1852) was the daughter of John and Rozella DeRoin, who were quite likely not full-bloods. In fact, the list of allottees on the Nemaha Half-Breed Reservation in 1860 includes a Rozella DeRoin and several men named John DeRoin. The fact that they were using familial surnames in the mid-1800s is more evidence that they were not full-bloods. It’s quite possible that both John DeRoin and his wife, Rozella, were the children of white fathers and Otoe-Missouria mothers. If that were the case, it would make Mary Anna Rich, their great-granddaughter, 7/8th Otoe-Missouria.

I don’t know why the tribe would still have Frank Rich listed as full-blood. It may be as simple  as the fact that he died without descendants before the tribe became more diligent about blood quanta, so there was no reason to change it.

Maryland has no federally recognized tribes. Neither does the State of Maryland currently provide any such official designation. Nevertheless, there are several communities of indigenous people who maintain an identity, including the Piscataway, the Nause-Waiwash, the Lenape, and the Lumbee.

In March, 2002, the Maryland House of Representatives passed House Bill 342 which would provide for Maryland Indians to apply to the Commission on Indian Affairs for official state recognition. Although it passed the House by a majority of 128-7, Governor Glendenning vetoed the bill. He cited his concern that such provisions would open the door for Indian casinos within Maryland.

In 2008, Governor O’Malley signed into law a bill which officially designates the Friday after Thanksgiving as American Indian Heritage Day in Maryland. The day was already a work holiday for state employees, but now it has a name and focus.

Links to native American Indian organizations in Maryland and DC

• Accohannock Native American Living Village of Crisfield, MD.
• American Indian Inter-Tribal Cultural Organization of Rockville, MD.
• American Indian Society of Washington, DC.
• Baltimore American Indian Center of Baltimore, MD.
• Cedarville Band of Piscataway Indians of Waldorf, MD.
• Fort Detrick Native American Employment Program.
• Jefferson Patterson Park and Museum in St. Leonard, MD.
• Lenapehauken Education Research Center of Eden, MD.
• Maryland Commission on Indian Affairs in Baltimore, MD.
• Maryland Native American Flute Circle in Timonium, MD.
• National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC.
• Nause-Waiwash Band of Indians of Vienna, MD.
• Office of Multi-Ethnic Student Education at the University of Maryland.
• Pocomoke Indian Nation of Mt. Airy, MD.
• US Indian Health Service American Indian Heritage in Washington, DC.

See my calendar of American Indian Events in Maryland.

During the course of the game, the play-by-play announcer brought up the fact that the Sooners’ quarterback, Sam Bradford, is of native American descent. Sam was raised in Oklahoma City and is a former all-state player from Putnam City North High School. His father, Kent Bradford, was an offensive lineman at OU when I was a student there.

I don’t remember exactly how the announcer started the sentence, but he ended by stating that Sam Bradford was “certified Cherokee“. Of course that brought a smile to my face. I give the announcer and the ESPN research team credit, even though the terminology was unintentionally humorous, for properly identifying Sam’s ancestor, Susie Walkingstick, certainly a well-known surname among the Cherokee. The announcer also pointed out that Oklahoma has the largest native American population of any state.

The next day when I talked to my father about it, he chuckled, too.

To be fair, the Cherokee, as well as other tribes, use the CDIB — Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood — to identify and document tribal enrollment. I suppose ESPN learned from somewhere that Sam is an enrolled Cherokee, and maybe that he has a CDIB card, so they made the semantic jump from having a certificate to being certified.

Since Sam was named the starting quarterback in August, and with his surprising success, much has been written about his native ancestry. Sam and Kent have embraced the attention, but they have also been forthright about their personal involvement, or lack thereof, in their Cherokee roots. Susie Walkingstick, Sam’s great-great-grandmother, was a full-blood Cherokee, but she is Sam’s only native ancestor. In other words, his other 15 great-great-grandparents were all white, making Sam officially, by blood quanta, 1/16th Cherokee.

During the weekend of the Otoe-Missouria Encampment of 2007, I photographed every legible grave marker in the Otoe-Missouria Tribal Cemetery. I had to skip probably a couple dozen graves which had illegible names or were marked only with familial terms such as Grandmother or Daughter. I incorporated the relevant data into the interactive genealogy database. This page shows my transcription of the names and dates from all of the grave markers. The earliest grave I found was for Clem Biddle, who died in 1902, but the tribe had settled here twenty years earlier. I do not know if that’s when the cemetery was established, and that the previous deceased were buried elsewhere, perhaps in private family cemeteries, or if the older graves are simply unmarked.

The People

Most of the people born before 1930 are included in the genealogy database. The exceptions would be the spouses of people who married after 1930, and many of the deceased children whom I cannot definitively connect to the parents. The names on this page are spelled exactly as I read them from the grave marker, which may differ from other sources. As I explain elsewhere, for the purpose of my genealogy indexes I spelled all Robedeaux the same, but you can see four different variations here. Some maiden names are included (in parentheses), obtained either from the grave marker or from other reliable sources. Some burial data was obtained from published obituaries, even if no grave marker was found.

Please understand that I do not live in Oklahoma. I was there for my family reunion and the Encampment, and I used the opportunity to do this cemetery survey. Everything I know about these people is already posted in the genealogy database or on this page. If you would like to request a copy of my photo of a particular grave marker, I will be happy to provide it. All of the photos are posted on my Flickr account, but they aren’t indexed in any way. Keep in mind that my intention was to photograph the inscription, which didn’t always include the whole stone. However, please do not contact me with requests for more information about a particular person. Other than my immediate family, I have no more information than what is already posted.

Otoe-Missouria Tribal Cemetery Survey

Burials after July 2007 were added as the information became available.

The question was, “Can you tell me whether Chief Shunatona is Otoe or Pawnee? I want to use the story about Great Horse and cannot find the tribe for Shunatona.”

The answer is, Chief Charles George Shunatona (1917-2001) was a Pawnee Indian. Having said that, I can qualify it by explaining that his father, Richard Shunatona, was Otoe. I have several photos of him on the Otoe-Missouria Photos page; he is buried in the Otoe-Missouria Tribal Cemetery. Richard Shunatona married Jenny Bayhylle, who was Pawnee. They raised their family among the Pawnee, so their children were absolutely Pawnee. However, I am not sure if the “Great Horse” tale handed down to Charles Shunatona was from his mother’s Pawnee side of the family, or if Mr. Giago was simply unaware of the paternal Otoe ancestry and mistakenly attached the story to the Pawnee. The name Shunatona is an Anglicized version of their ancestor Chief Chongatonga of the Otoe, whose name does in fact mean, Great Horse.

It may be difficult for people today to understand that a person’s tribe or clan is as much a cultural or spiritual designation as it is a blood designation. For example, if your parents came from different religions, or different countries, or even different states, you wouldn’t describe yourself as half-this and half-that. You would describe yourself in the context of where and how you were raised.

For a time, my great-grandfather was married to Dora White Mule. She was considered to be the last survivor of the now-extinct Snake Clan of the Otoe-Missouria. The truth is, she was born to two white parents but adopted into the tribe as an infant when her mother died. She was raised Otoe-Missouria, so she was Otoe-Missouria.

Sonny Littlecrow, of course, is a member of the Otoe-Missouria tribe. He and his wife, Janet, specialize in custom made pow wow regalia, but they also have some standard items in stock. Besides their catalog of clothing, their website also has a few pages of general interest.

On the Soapbox page, they dispels some common misconceptions about Native Americans. Some of the comments fit right in with my articles about being Cherokee. The one that made me laugh out loud was the comment at the bottom about Indian Princesses. He hit it right on. I remember a few years back when there was a discussion on one of the genealogy website forums about the validity of referring to someone as an Indian Princess. At that time I added my two cents, mentioning that my Aunt Cecile was once the Princess of Haskell Institute, and tribes today often select a Princess to represent them at events, but there was never any such thing as royal descent in the sense that white Europeans tried to invent.

But my favorite line was the one that ends the page, talking about people who like to claim that some unnamed ancestor was an Indian chief:

You can bet your paycheck that the real chief’s descendants know the name of the chief(s) that they descend from.

There are a few other pages on the Littlecrow site that deal directly with pow wow etiquette and a discussion of traditions you should know before you think about becoming a pow wow dancer. Both of these pages supplement what I have posted on my Pow wow Etiquette page.

S. Foust wrote:

Access Geneology internet site article on Otoe history says that French explorer LaSalle in 1680 met 2 Otoe Chiefs in present day Illinois. Those chiefs told LaSalle of journeying far enough west to fight white men on horses, who were obviously Spaniards. This is 40 years before your claim on BrokenClaw that the earliest account of the Otoes battling Spaniards was in 1720… It appears from your bio that you have never lived in the Plains States or even the Midwest. I have to question the accuracy of your information since you have little real contact here… I am a very historically knowledgable person, as is my mother. Neither of us have ever heard of Spanish explorers coming east to the Missouri River. I think you are mistaken. What are your sources? You should provide them on the site, so they can be double checked.

BrokenClaw wrote:

Thank you for your interest. If you revisit my Otoe-Missouria history page you will see that I have always listed my references. In fact, I have a link to my References page on the very first line of the history page, and there is a link button on the left side of the page labeled “References” [I have since redesigned the website, so the References link is at the top of the page].

My reference is a transcript of an article published by the Nebraska State Historical Society in 1923, which is a translation of an article published in Paris in 1920, which is based on manuscripts from 1744, 1753, and 1755, the title of which is “Massacre by the Otoe Tribe of Spanish Military Expedition on August 11, 1720″. In my article, I describe it as the “earliest known account of the Otoe and Missouria engaging Europeans in battle…” I describe the location as the “Missouri Valley”, not the banks of the Missouri River as you assumed. The Platte River, as a tributary of the Missouri River, is part of the Missouri Valley. I have seen the Access Genealogy article you described. It may be a matter of semantics, but I would hardly characterize that one sentence as “an account” of a battle. However, if such an account exists, and if you can provide me with the source of their information, I would be glad to correct my article.

I clearly state on my website that I grew up in Pennsylvania. But I find it disturbing that you would question the accuracy of my articles based on that fact. I don’t write fiction. My articles are based on research using the references which I cite, unlike your Access Genealogy page which lists no references. I don’t write about contemporary sociology or politics of the tribe, so the fact that I don’t live there gives me a more unbiased view of the topics which I do investigate. In summary, I am always open to new information and the correction of misinformation. However, you were totally wrong about me not citing my sources.

S. Foust wrote:

It was not that I did not notice your references, I questioned their accuracy. You said there was a battle between the Spanish and the Otoe on August 11, 1720. The North Platte River rises in Wyoming and flows about 700miles across NE. The battle you refer to took place on the Platte at present day Schuyler, NE south of Columbus, NE on August 14, 1720 according to the NE State Hist Soc. This is over 100 miles from the MO River. The proper term when referring to the Missouri River and its tributaries is Missouri River Basin.

BrokenClaw wrote:

Okay, so you purposely misrepresented my citation of references in your first message. And now you misquoted me again. I never said the battle took place on August 11, I merely quoted the title of the published account. In my article, I only say that it took place in the year 1720. I will grant you that river basin is probably a better description. But I still don’t understand why you discredit my sources in favor of an article which posts no sources. Did you write it?

S. Foust wrote:

If you are going to maintain that battle as the first contact between the Otoe & Europeans and ignore the LaSalle reference, so be it. But get it right.

BrokenClaw wrote:

Once again, you are misreading my writings. I never said that the 1720 battle was the “first contact”. I said it was the “earliest known account of… battle.” I didn’t say that it was the first contact. I didn’t say that it was the first battle. I said that it was the first “known account” of a battle. And again, what is the reference for the La Salle statement?

S. Foust wrote:

Whatever info you received from Franklin Co that claimed to be about the Otoes, I would question. The Otoes were never anywhere near there! Those are the plain facts. But you would not know that since you live in PA… Also, people from the east do not appreciate the vast emptiness of the prairie. If you want to write about your people and be thought of as an Indian historian, you need to be in contact with the tribal headquarters OK… If you want an acurate history of your tribe, it is going to be found listening to the Otoe Oral Historian and having someone translate every word for you, not at the University of Delaware! I suggest you come to Oklahoma & visit your people, and come to KS & NE to spend time here and see where they lived.

BrokenClaw wrote:

I would not expect you to be familiar with my entire website, so I’ll explain it to you. The “History of the Otoe-Missouria” is only one article. The main focus of the website is the genealogy of both sides of my father’s family: the Otoe-Missouria of Oklahoma and the Christian Munsee of Kansas. My genealogy databases contain over 2700 individuals. The references from Franklin County, KS, apply to the section about the Christian Munsee, who lived and live in Franklin County, KS. The references from the University of Delaware apply to the section about the history of the Delaware Indians. And keep in mind that a book is a book, regardless of library in which it sits. Now with regard to your other false assumptions… I never said that I live in Pennsylvania; I said I “grew up in Pennsylvania”. I am grown now; I no longer live there. You are also wrong about my familiarity with the plains. I have, in fact, lived in Oklahoma, for a time with my grandparents on the Otoe-Missouria Reservation, and I attended and graduated from the University of Oklahoma. I have traveled across Kansas and Nebraska several times, so I am familiar the “vast emptiness of the prairie.” Next, I never claimed to be a historian. I simply wrote an article about my family’s history for my family. In my professional life, I also wrote an article about the pharmacology of catecholamine-induced renal perfusion. That doesn’t make me a pharmacologist, either. I sincerely hope that more of the oral history of the tribe is written down for future generations. Once again, if you look at my References page, you will see that I personally own copies of the published works. If you know of any other, let me know. I’m certain that others, like the Arkeketa family, have important family histories, but as far as I can tell, they have never shared it in a book or digital format.

Finally, I’m still waiting for you to give me the reference for that La Salle incident… Oh, wait, I found it myself… at the University of Delaware library. I read the original narrative from La Salle himself (so I hope you don’t question its accuracy), in French, and I have decided not to change my statement about the 1720 incident, except to edit the location from the Missouri Valley, as noted above. I also added the 1680 contact with La Salle to my history page, since I now have a reference to cite. Please read my complete assessment of the La Salle incident.

I have not received any further response from Ms. Foust.

The Meeting

In 1680, two years before his famed expedition down the Mississippi River, René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle [aka Robert La Salle or Cavelier de La Salle] built a fortified camp along the Illinois River near the settlement of the Illinois Indians, which he named Fort Crévecoeur. His purpose was to establish friendly relations with the native population, and to learn as much as he could from them about the Mississippi River and the obstacles that might await him. In February of that year, he received two Otoe chiefs who had traveled from the west. La Salle’s official narrative, written in the third person in his Seventeenth Century French, reported the meeting this way:

Quelques jour auparavant et la 17 de Février, deux des plus considérables de la nation des Matoutanta, esloigneé de 80 ou 100 lieues à l’oust de la Grande-Riviere, arriverent pour les Francois.
L’un d’eux avoit à la ceinture un pied de cheval avec la peau d’une partie de la jambe qui luy de sac à pétun. Il dit qu’il l’avoit apporté d’un pays situé à cinq journées du sien, du costé de l’ouest, et dont les habitants se battoient à cheval avec des lances et avoient de longs cheveux. Ces circonstances firent connoistre qu’il parloit des Espagnols du Nouveau-Mexique, parce que les sauvages de ces quartiers ne laissent croistre leurs cheveux que d’un travers de doigt.

This brief passage has been interpreted by some to infer that the Otoes had engaged the Spaniards in battle by 1680. This conclusion appears on at least two websites about Otoe history:

• Access Genealogy: Nebraska Indian Tribes. “In 1680 two Oto chiefs came to visit La Salle in Illinois and reported that they had traveled far enough west to fight with people using horses, who were evidently the Spaniards, a fact which proves their early westward range.”
• Four Directions Institute: Otoe. “1680 Two Otoe chiefs visited La Salle in Illinois, told him of fighting Spaniards far to the west”

Translation of the Narrative

However, La Salle’s narrative does not, in fact, say that the Otoe fought the Spaniards. What it actually says is that the Otoe chief told him that a particular piece of equipment he carried, a petun [tobacco] pouch made from the hide of a horse, came from a country where the inhabitants fought on horseback. From the Otoe’s description, La Salle concluded that he was speaking of the Spaniards. That fact was more than a little interest to La Salle. Knowing that the Spaniards were venturing into the prairie, he knew that he needed to traverse and claim the Mississippi River soon, before the Spaniards beat him to it.

In 1901, Melville B. Anderson translated the entire La Salle narrative, including the Otoe passage:

Some days before, on the 17th of February, two chiefs of the Matoutanta [Otoe] tribe, living eighty or a hundred leagues west of the Great River, came to see the Frenchmen.
One of these had at his belt a horse’s hoof, and the skin of part of the leg, serving as a petun pouch. He said he had brought it from a country five or six days’ journey to the west of his own, where the inhabitants fought on horseback with lances and had long hair. These details showed that he spoke of the Spaniards of New Mexico, since the savages of those regions let their hair grow to the length of but a finger’s breadth.

Interpretation of the Narrative

It is difficult to ascertain from these few sentences exactly what the Otoe chiefs told La Salle about their contact with the Spaniards. Obviously, the report is only as good as La Salle’s interpreter at the moment. It’s possible that the Otoe told a detailed description of how they fought off the invading Spaniards, but that La Salle chose to report only the relevant fact that the Spaniards were moving to the northeast. The La Salle narrative is replete with descriptions of battles and conflicts between native tribes and European explorers, so it seems unlikely, if the Otoe chief had said they fought the Spaniards, that La Salle would have left that out of his report. Instead, he merely reported that the horseflesh was brought from a country [apporté d’un pays] where the inhabitants fought on horseback. The passage could just as easily be interpreted to mean that the Otoe had seen the Spaniards on horseback, or that they had heard tales of the Spaniards fighting on horseback, but it’s certainly not explicit that the Otoe had fought the Spaniards themselves.

Father Louis Hennepin, one of the missionaries who accompanied La Salle and was in his camp at the time, wrote his own narrative. He recounted many of the same events the week before and the week after, but he made no mention of the visit by the Otoe, so it appears that the La Salle passage is the one and only account of the meeting. In modern times, the foremost published historian of the Otoe-Missouria, Berlin Basil Chapman, submitted testimony to the Indian Claims Commission. In his statement about the non-aggressive nature of the Otoe, he referenced only the incident of 1720 and made no reference to anything earlier.

The websites listed above do not cite an author or reference for their statements, so it’s unknown if they drew their conclusion from a reading of the original document, or if they were merely repeating the conclusion of someone else’s interpretation of it. Obviously, I have read the original French document and have reconciled Anderson’s translation with my own translation, but I draw no such conclusion. Until I see a compelling argument to the contrary, or a document in which La Salle later added more to the story, I can only conclude that the Otoe had some type of contact with the Spaniards by 1680, perhaps fought against them, and that they were aware of the Spaniards’ armament. That knowlege probably served them well when they did fight the Spaniards in 1720.

End of the Journey

When La Salle reached the mouth of the Mississippi River in April of 1682, he conducted a ceremony in which he officially claimed the Louisiana Country for his king. His words were recorded by Jacques de La Métairie, notary of Fort Frontenac who had joined the expedition. Among the proclamations that he gave that day, La Salle announced:

…ce du consentement des Chikacha et autres peuples y demeurant, avec qui nous avons fait alliance, comme aussi le long du fleuve Colbert ou Mississipi et rivières qui s’y déchargent, depuis sa naissance au-delà du pays des Sioux ou des Nadouesioux, et ce de leur consentement et des Ohotante, Ilinois, Matsigamea, Akansa, Natchè, Koroa, qui sont les plus considérables nations qui y demeurent…

La Salle was claiming ownership of the entire Mississippi River basin, and he put the political spin on it by proclaiming that he had the consent of the principle tribes who inhabited the region: the Chickasaw, Sioux, Otoe, Illinois, Mitchigamia, Arkansas, Natchez, and Koroa. Of course, the Louisana Territory was inhabited by dozens of other Indian nations, and it’s doubtful that any of them, including those he named that day, could fully understand what he meant by claiming the land.

References

1. Relation of the Discoveries and Voyages of Cavelier de La Salle from 1679 to 1681 — the Official Narrative; translation by Melville B. Anderson. Chicago: The Caxton Club, 1901. pp. 143-144.
2. Hennepin, Father Louis. A New Discovery of a Vast Country in America. Reprint of the 1698 London edition. Notes and index by Reuben Gold Thwaite. Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co., 1903.
3. La Salle, Nicolas de. The La Salle Expedition on the Mississippi River. Edited by William C. Foster; translated by Johanna S. Warren. Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 2003. Appendix B.
4. Chapman, Berlin Basil, et al. Otoe and Missouria: The Prehistoric and historic habitat of the Missouri and Otoe Indians. New York: Garland Publishing Inc, 1974. p. 81.

I wrote that original article after a series of coincidental experiences. In about one week’s time, I had heard four different people, in general conversation, claim to be “part Cherokee.” One was a character in a TV show, one was a professional athlete on TV, one was a person being interviewed on the radio (who said he was part Indian, and when the interviewer inquired what tribe, the person responded, “Cherokee, I believe”), and one was a person I met on the golfcourse. Naturally, I asked that last person to elaborate on his native ancestry, but he confessed that all he knew was that it was a family story about an unknown ancestor.

However, I also receive periodic emails from people who object to what they perceive as a disparaging attitude. They feel that I am belittling their efforts to make a connection with their native ancestry. In the article, I mention my mother’s ancestors of European descent and state that I feel no particular connection to those countries. That research also uncovered other facts about my maternal ancestors that no one in my family knew or had ever told me: that many of our ancestors were Mennonite who had emigrated from German Alsace to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.

Now, no one in my direct lineage has been a member of a Mennonite church for at least four generations. While my Mennonite ancestry certainly gives me a greater appreciation for the religious persecution that drove people to emigrate to the colony of Pennsylvania, I would never go into a Mennonite church and strike up a conversation by saying, “You know, I’m part Mennonite, too.”

Recently I received an email from someone who told me that my Cherokee article seemed to “defeat the open and generous nature” of the rest of my website. But it was her other statement that prompted me to write this blog entry. She said that “However silly their comment(s) or actions may seem to you, for them it may simply be a starting point of a larger journey - to make that connection.” As long as it is a journey in search of truth, and not a journey based on false sincerity, then I applaud the effort. But the person must understand that genealogy research requires a personal commitment and not just a few emails.

In my article about Native Ancestry I state that I already knew who my native ancestors were. True, but to uncover the whole story, or at least as much of the story that I have now, my research has taken a period of years. I visited the tribal cemetery in Oklahoma. I searched the online archives of the Smithsonian Institution and purchased photocopies of records. I subscribed to an online Census service. I went to the National Archives in Washington DC and searched and photocopied tribal records. I went to the University of Delaware to do research in their library. I wrote, phoned, and ordered records from the Franklin County (Kansas) Historical Society. I purchased and read every book I could find about my ancestors tribes, including those from rare book dealers. I sent letters and made phone calls to people I didn’t know, but who I thought might be related or might know something about my relatives. And of course I corresponded via email with dozens of other relatives. That is the type of commitment I made, so I hope you can understand why I may seem a bit cavalier about people who take pride in their flippant reference to their unknown native American ancestor.

Epilogue: While researching my mother’s ancestors, I discovered that my great-great-grandfather’s brother, Martin Shaffner, fought in the Civil War, including the Battle of Gettysburg, and was later killed in Virginia. Again, I did the footwork myself - finding his Regimental history at the Lebanon County (PA) Historical Society, finding his grave at the Ebenezer Cemetery, finding his name on the Regimental plaque at Gettysburg, finding his service record at the National Archives in Washington. But you see, the purpose of my efforts was to honor him, not to honor me.