For the Chumash people of California, family history could be a touchy subject.
The Chumash culture ... was very straightforward about bodily functions, so, unlike English, those descriptive terms weren’t used in a derogatory manner. Many words described family bonds, however, marking the importance of family ties. “The biggest insult was to name a deceased ancestor out loud in someone’s presence,” Johnson said. [Link]
Archaeologists have found 14,300-year-old fossilized feces in a cave in Oregon.
DNA analysis of the dried excrement shows the people who lived in the caves were closely related to modern Native Americans. Their genetic roots reach across the Bering Strait to Siberia and eastern Asia.I'm not sure that I would want to know if my DNA matched dried excrement.
"These are probably the ancestors of some of the Native Americans living in America now," said Eske Willerslev, director of the Centre for Ancient Genetics at the University of Copenhagen. [Link]
Marie Smith-Jones was the last native speaker of the Eyak language. She died Monday at her home in Anchorage, Alaska.
Eyak is one of 20 languages spoken in Alaska, many of which are thought to be fading out of existence. Mrs Smith-Jones was determined that the Eyak language would not die with her, and devoted much of her later life to this cause.
Working with linguists at the Alaska Native Languages Centre she compiled an Eyak dictionary and grammar guide. Michael Krauss, professor emeritus at the centre, said: "She understood as only someone in her position could, what it meant to be the last of her kind. And she was very much alone as the last speaker of Eyak.
In an interview in 2005, Mrs Smith-Jones gave her Eyak name, Udach' Kuqax*a'a'ch, which she translated as "a sound that calls people from afar". [Link]
Tom Hendrix has built a memorial for his great-great-grandmother—a Native American woman who survived the Trail of Tears and returned to her home in Alabama.
What he did to remember her involved 6 and a half million pounds of rock, and the size of 5 football fields. Hendrix wanted the legacy of his great grandmother to be remembered for a long time.
What he did has taken much of his time and strength. "I have worn out 3 trucks, over 20 wheelbarrows, over 1,000 pair of gloves, two dogs, and one old man," said Hendrix. [Link]Here's a blog post with photos and videos of Te-Lah-Nay's Wall—supposed to be largest monument to a woman in the United States, and the longest unmortared wall in the country.
Excavations for a new BBC building in Salford, England, may turn up the burial site of a Sioux warrior.
The 120-year-old mystery of the whereabouts of the final resting place of the 6ft 7ins brave known as `Surrounded by the Enemy' may lie under Salford Quays. The horseman, a member of the Oglala Lakota Warriors of South Dakota, died during a visit to Salford with Buffalo Bill's Wild West show in 1887/8.Local councillor Steve Coen says there may be living proof of Native American presence in Salford.
"It is very possible that there may be descendants as they were here for a long time and they were certainly very friendly with the local population."
One Sioux baby was born in Salford and was baptised in St Clement's Church before slipping out of the history books. [Link]
Well, sort of. Ancestry.com has added U.S. Indian Census Schedules, 1885-1940.
These censuses cover only Native Americans who lived on reservations under federal supervision. The Constitution excludes these "Indians not taxed" from the federal decennial census, but a 2006 Prologue article discusses how this rule was bent in 1880 and 1890. And how poorly native names were recorded.
In many cases, only a single name, either the given or surname, is recorded. Frequently, enumerators recorded an English given name without any surname or used "Indian" as a surname or given name. In the 1880 census, for example, there are 924 enumerations in which the surname is "Indian" and 560 entries in which "Indian" is recorded as the given name with no surname. Occasionally, "papoose" or "squaw" is used for given names, or a number is used in place of the given name. One enumerator took the unusual step of making this note in the 1880 census: "Indians won't always give their names. When they do it is unsatisfactoryily [sic] given."
The town of Upton, Massachusetts, has taken possession of a mysterious man-made cave called the "Upton Chamber."
Barbara Burke, chairwoman of the Historical Commission, says the chamber is perhaps three centuries old. She bases that on an 1893 newspaper article, which states that elderly residents at the time said their ancestors had talked of the cave and and did not know who built it.Still others think it was built "under the influence of Irish monks in the 8th century."
Some say Colonial settlers might have used the chamber to store ice or vegetables. Others think it may have been a Native American ceremonial site. [Link]
DNA tests may help solve the 420-year-old mystery of what happened to the Lost Colony on Roanoke Island.
As director of DNA research for the Lost Colony Center for Science and Research, [Roberta] Estes will manage a multidisciplinary approach to tracking roots from a "most-wanted list" of people who might have connections to the Roanoke colonists or to the 16th century American Indians - or to both.
Testing of American Indian remains or known descendants of the colonists in England might be part of future research, Estes said. [Link]
Two women in England, Doreen Isherwood and Anne Hall, have learned that their mitochondrial DNA is Native American.
Indigenous Americans were brought over to the UK as early as the 1500s.
Many were brought over as curiosities; but others travelled here in delegations during the 18th Century to petition the British imperial government over trade or protection from other tribes.
Experts say it is probable that some stayed in Britain and married into local communities. [Link]
DavidB at Gene Expression tackled the question yesterday of Winston Churchill's purported Jewish ancestry. A check of secondary sources revealed no such lineage.
He concludes that the claims stem from a parenthetical comment—probably tongue-in-cheek—in a 1993 article by Moshe Kohn.The only serious gap in the official records of Churchill's ancestry is a long way back in the female line, which cannot be traced beyond his great-great-grandmother, Anna Baker. According to family legend, she was part-Iroquois Indian, which the family believed accounted for the prevalence of dark eyes or complexion in the family. This does have a certain whiff of cover-up, but if so the cover-up may be of something other than Jewish blood. According to one account, Churchill himself believed there was a drop of black somewhere in his ancestry (see Elisabeth Kehoe, Fortune's Daughters: The Extravagant Lives of the Jerome Sisters (2004), p.4). In any case, the usual claims of Jewish ancestry concern Churchill's mother's father, Leonard Jerome, and not the female line leading back to Anna Baker.
Barbara Forgas found possible evidence of her Native-American ancestry while tearing down walls in her late grandfather's Lewisberry, Pennsylvania, home.
Did John Gross use pieces of an American Indian mural as insulation because he was thrifty, or was he hiding a valuable artifact he feared would be destroyed by racism?
Maybe he hated the reminder of his ex-wife, Sara Slaseman, and hid her family heirloom out of spite.
Barbara Forgas does not know why her grandfather put 8-foot-wide panels - with painted images of American Indians - inside the walls of a bathroom he built about 70 years ago in his centuries-old farmhouse. [Link]
Now comes news that the bones of Sitting Bull his descendants want to move may actually be in Canada.
Jerome First, a 70-year-old Montana Sioux and the great-grandson of Sitting Bull's close friend, Chief Medicine Bear, claims the latest uproar over the bones is irrelevant because Sitting Bull was secretly buried in the Turtle Mountains of southern Manitoba.
The Turtle Mountains straddle the border between southwestern Manitoba and North Dakota.
"They faked his grave," First told CanWest News Service on Friday, "because Sitting Bull had visions that there would be a fight over his body." [Link]
Sitting Bull's descendants want his remains removed from South Dakota to the Little Bighorn Battlefield in Montana because they object to the "improvements" planned for his burial place.
The catalyst for the great-grandchildren's decision apparently was a proposal by the nonprofit Sitting Bull Monument Foundation, which recently purchased the grave site from a private owner. According to its Web site, the foundation's plans include preservation and protection of the grave site and development of an educational and cultural center and museum. It would also include riverfront recreational development, an amphitheater, snack bar, restaurant and gift shop. [Link]
The admissions policy of the AhNiYvWiYa tribe—a group that wants only "to be left in peace and granted 501c(3) status as a not-for-profit group"—is more flexible than those of other American Indian tribes. In fact, I think I might fill out an application.
"We do not look at a quantum of blood," said White Eagle of his tribal requirements.The AhNiYvWiYa language is taught with the help of confused Wal-Mart employees.
"Most people will not be able to find documentation, so we ask people to trace any family history they can. Through our spiritual ceremonies, they will be shown. What we ask of people is that they're willing to learn language and want to be part of our true culture," White Eagle said.
The class is still learning the fundamentals, but in later weeks they will make a trip to Wal-Mart, where only AhNiYvWiYa will be used while shopping for produce and appliances.
"People are going to look at us like we're crazy," joked White Eagle. [Link]
I'd like to be able to claim Barack Obama as a cousin, but I can't. His mother's maiden name was Dunham, but she inherited it from a guy named Jonathan Singletary alias Dunham who DNA tests show wasn't related to my line. According to family friend Julia Suryakusuma, Mama Obama's complexion belied her native roots.
No evidence was found by William Addams Reitwiesner of Cherokee heritage in Obama's pedigree.“You know Ann was really, really white,” smiled Suryakusuma, looking through the album, “even though she told me she had some Cherokee blood in her. I think she just loved people of a different skin colour, brown people.”
Dunham was from Wichita, Kansas, but her parents moved to Hawaii in search of a better life. According to Obama, a distant ancestor was a “full-blooded Cherokee”. [Link]
More than 100 Northern Cheyenne ran a 400-mile relay last week in subzero temperatures and blowing snow. They were commemorating an attempt their ancestors made in the winter of 1879 to escape from an Army outpost in Nebraska to their Montana homeland.
This year’s Fort Robinson Outbreak Spiritual Run began Jan. 9 in Crawford, Neb., and ended Sunday in Busby, where dozens of people greeted the returning runners with ululating and the sound of car horns.
“It’s a privilege and an honor to be with these kids, they’re so strong,” said 67-year-old Marie Sanchez, who ran the relay with six of her grandchildren. “They might be a little rowdy at first but they settle down, they are respectful.” [Link]
DNA testing has established that Shawnee Chief Blue Jacket was not a white settler named Marmaduke van Swearingen.
A 19th-century writer apparently created the controversy in 1877 when he said Blue Jacket was actually van Swearingen, a white Shawnee captive who grew to be a noted warrior. In a dramatic twist, the chief was said to have killed one of his white brothers in the great Indian victory over the U.S. Army along the Wabash River in today's Mercer County. [Link]DNA testing has not yet disproved the theory that Lakota Chief Sitting Bull was in fact Mary Todd Lincoln.
From The (Newport News, Va.) Daily Press:
Skull for sale discovered to be part of Indian history
By SUE LINDSEY
Associated Press Writer
December 11, 2005
ROANOKE, Va. -- Steven Mendola thought he would help out the medical profession when he put a human skull up for sale on eBay as a teaching tool. Instead, he's done a service to Virginia's Monacan Indians by returning one of their own.
Sorting through a closet after he took over the Staten Island, N.Y., office of a chiropractor who had died, Mendola found the old skull.
[snip]
The chiropractor checked with New York authorities to make sure he wouldn't be selling someone's long-lost relative. The skull had a sticker on it labeled "Suponi," which he assumed was an Italian name. No one with that name was missing, he was told.
[snip]
Mendola hadn't put the sticker name on the eBay listing, but when he gave it to Dan Reany, then with WSLS-TV, the reporter discovered it was more likely "Saponi."
That's a Siouan tribe related to the Monacans in Virginia. The sale was off--it's a federal crime to sell American Indian remains.
[snip]
[Read the whole story]
From the Minneapolis (Minn.) Star Tribune:
Seeking a new name against an old legacy
Nick Coleman, Star Tribune
October 9, 2005
Monday is Columbus Day, but not everyone will honor the name Columbus. Some will be trying to change it.
Meet Delano Columbus. He's a 25-year-old member of a proud family of Mdewakanton Dakota Indians who were saddled with the name of the Italian most people think "discovered" America, even though millions of people, including Delano's ancestors, already lived here.
It sounds like a joke, and it was meant to be. A cruel one.
The Columbus family was given its name by government agents in the punitive aftermath of the Dakota Conflict of 1862.
[snip]
And so [Delano] has decided to go to court to get his name changed. He hasn't quite figured out whether to change it to a traditional name or to an English translation of a Dakota name, but he is sure about one thing: He doesn't want to be called Columbus anymore.
[snip]
[Read the whole story]
From abc7news.com (of San Francisco, Calif.):
East Bay Shopping Center Sits Atop Burial Ground
Delicate Balance Between Commerce And Culture
KGO By Willie Monroe
Sep. 23 - A Bay Area filmmaker explores an open secret about a popular East Bay shopping center. Emeryville's Bay Street sits on an ancient Ohlone Indian community including a burial ground. It's a delicate balance between commerce and culture.
Bay Street Emeryville is described as a million square foot urban village. It's a center of commerce with upscale stores, restaurants and a movie theater. Nearly 400 apartments and townhouses are being built above the stores.
[snip]
The dead buried here inspired Andres Cediel to make the documentary "Shellmound" for his master's thesis at the University of California at Berkeley's graduate school of journalism.
Andres Cediel: "You know, I grew up in the East Bay my whole life, went to school there, and I never heard of the burials at the Shellmound, never heard of any Native American burial grounds or anything until the shopping center opened."
[snip]
[Read the whole story]
