Why should we care?

By this time, you are wondering, "Why should I care about all this?"  I propose a couple of points.  One, when we blindly claim to be part of a culture that we are not, it steals from that culture. It is not a bad thing to appreciate another culture and be interested in the history of that culture but you should not steal from this culture and claim it as your own.  While I may be interested in delta blues music, I wouldn't claim that I was African American blues man.  Stealing from another culture keeps you from seeing how beautiful and diverse your own culture can be.

Next, is it respectful to the culture to claim you are part of it, when you are not?  How would you feel if someone obviously foreign tried to become part of your culture?  This is not a "white supremacist-we are always right-don't support other cultures" idea.  This is a move to be comfortable with your own culture.  Realize how rich your own culture is.  Support other cultures and respect them, but do not steal from them and claim to be "one of them."

What if someone acted like this around you?

An author starts a landslide

Thomas Troxel was born in 1893 in Scott County, Tennessee.  He wrote a small booklet in 1958 called Legion Of The Lost Mine telling the romanticized story of Cherokee Chief Doublehead and Big Jake Troxel and the blossoming courtship between Troxel and Doublehead's daughter Princess Cornblossom.  The frontier love story tells of the noble chief with the beautiful daughter who meets the adventurous woodsman from the colonies.  Adventures, death, a hidden silver mine, and a marriage are all featured in this fanciful tale.

(Thomas Troxel, author of Legion Of The Lost Mine)

Troxel was born to white parents, yet ten years after writing this book he began claiming that he was chief of a nation of Indians know as the As'Quaw people.  In an article featured in the Knoxville News Sentinel, Troxel is photographed wearing a headdress and claims that Chief Doublehead, a factual Cherokee chief, was leader of the As'Quaw tribe.  The article is in its entirety here: 

Well how much damage has been done?  The mythical Princess Cornblossom now has a state historical marker in Stearns, Kentucky which tells the basic premise featured in Legion Of The Lost Mine.  This marker also mentions the mythical As'Quaw nation that Troxel inherited from his ancestors preserving a lie on the American landscape. 

Appalachian Storyteller

Shelia Kay Adams, an Appalachian storyteller from Sodom, North Carolina, used to tell the story passed down in her family of a distant Indian ancestor.

Later, I heard Adams give a talk where she mentioned that she had participated in the "Ancestry DNA" project.  She stated that she always heard of Native American ancestors in her family history.  When she got the results of the DNA test, nothing like that appeared.  Adams tell the same story here:

 

In this version, she does not mention Native American blood, but she included it in the "exotic blood" that was mentioned in this talk.  Notice that she said that she is forty percent English.  In the talk that I was present at, Shelia Adams said that the people who live in England now are sixty percent English.  Adams' family lived relatively close to the Qualla Indian Reservation, around eighty miles.  Yet this reinforces the idea that there was not as much intermarriage between whites and Native Americans as many people want to believe.    

Playing Indian

Many people in Appalachia claim Native American heritage.  The Lowe family of Scott County is one of these families.  Family tradition tells of their ancestor Mikel Low's family marrying into a Native American family that was present in the area.  

(Louisa Lowe Adkins, granddaughter of Mikel Low.  Family tradition states that her mother was a full blooded Cherokee Indian.)

Are these claims true?  Jehu Phillips, who was born between 1818 and 1825, was interviewed by a newspaper in Scott County in 1904 and told of what pioneer life was like in the area.  While he remembered Native Americans living in the area, and knew Mikel Low personally, he never draws a connection between the Lowe family and their supposed "relations" to the Native Americans in the area.  

(Jehu Phillips, a Civil War soldier, was interviewed about the pioneer life he lived growing up.  He mentions knowing the Native Americans who lived in the area yet does not mention intermarriage with whites.)

  

How do Native Americans feel about the white people who "saved" this nation?

How do whites "play Indian"?

It can be in several ways.  Maybe it is identifying with their favorite sports team, such as the Florida Seminoles, Cincinnati Redskins, or Kansas City Chiefs.  Perhaps the most popular way is by distorting history and claiming Native American History in their lineage.

Even politicians are not immune from doing this.  Recently Elizabeth Warren, senator from Massachusetts, claimed Cherokee blood.  While she was from Oklahoma City, (Oklahoma was once considered "Indian Territory") many Cherokee are angry about her claims.