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There are many historical stereotypes and misconceptions of the mixed bloods which persist today. It is commonly believed that the mixed bloods were frontiersmen who made their living through hunting and trapping. In the case of my mixed blood ancestors, this was not the case. For example, my g-g-g-grandfather Emmor Jefferson Stephens first worked as a bartender along the busy Ohio River in western Virginia. His son, James B. Stephens, the brother of my g-g-grandmother Martha Stephens Rogers, plied a number of trades during his lifetime. In 1829, at the age of 22, he finished his cooper’s apprenticeship in Indianapolis, and practiced this trade in Cincinnati for three years.
Jimmy Stephens had many careers during his lifetime, none of which involved hunting or trapping. Upon reaching Oregon in 1844, he continued to work as a cooper. However, it was not long before he launched the first regular ferry service across the Willamette River in Portland, which he operated for seventeen years. He also opened Portland’s first cider mill. Both the ferry service and the cider mill were very profitable enterprises.
My g-g-grandfather, Dean Rogers, learned the plasterer’s trade as a young man, an occupation he would pursue his entire life. He likewise never earned his living through hunting or trapping. So the stereotype of the mixed bloods as “mountain men” who lived off the land was not true in the case of my ancestors.
Also not true was the rumor that the mixed bloods were lazy and lacked ambition. A stereotype that developed in colonial America was that of the “squaw man,” a European man who married a Native woman and lived among her people. The assumption was that he thereby lost his independence and was completely dependent on his wife and her people for his survival. While this may have occasionally happened, it was far more likely that the Native American woman would leave her tribe and make her life with her non-Native husband.
Another stereotype was that European men never formally acknowledged their marriages to Native women and often left them and their mixed blood children to take French or English wives. While this sometimes occurred, I do not believe it was the norm. My Native American grandmothers were never abandoned by their husbands. Their marriages were lifelong.
The photos I have previously posted of my g-g-grandparents Dean and Martha Rogers and their daughter Hester are executed in exactly the same style of full-face portraits of each person individually. The women were not relegated to a group portrait or not photographed at all. My Native American female ancestors were treated no differently by their husbands than if they had been European women.
I think that some of these myths developed because most typically a Native American woman married a non-Native man in colonial times. While the opposite occurred, it was far more rare. In reality, marriages between Native American women and European men were regarded as mutually beneficial. If they had not been perceived as such by both parties, they would never have occurred in such overwhelming numbers. Saponitown has been instrumental in helping to dispel a great number of these myths and stereotypes concerning the blending of the Native Americans with non-Natives in the earliest years of our country.
Will Rogers is descended from Cherokees through both his mother and father. His mother, Mary Schrimsher, is the granddaughter of Ghe-go-he-li. Ghe-go-he-li is the daughter of Chief Bushyhead, a Cherokee of the Paint Clan. As a fifteen-year-old girl, her father exchanged her in a treaty with John Gunter, a Welshman who had discovered a salt deposit in the vicinity of the tribe. The treaty stated, “as long as the grass grows and the waters flow the Indians can have salt.” Ghe-go-he-li was not a party to this treaty, which determined her immediate future and ultimate destiny.
Ghe-go-he-li and John Gunter were married and her name was changed to Katherine. Mary Schrimsher is the granddaughter of Ghe-go-he-li and John Gunter. Mary Schrimsher is one-quarter Cherokee through her grandmother Ghe-go-he-li. Mary Schrimsher married Clement Rogers, who also has Cherokee blood. Will Rogers is the son of Clement and Mary (Schrimsher) Rogers.
If you scroll down to page 6 of the following link http://rogerscountyisokay.com/The_Gunters_two/the_gunters.htm you will find the only known photo of Mary Schrimsher Rogers. Her Native American ancestry is evident in her face. When I first saw her portrait, I immediately noticed her resemblance to my great-grandmother Hester Rogers, whose photo I initially posted on this thread.
Overall, I am very impressed with their facial similarities. The first things I noticed are their eyes and cheekbones. Dark, almond-shaped eyes and very high cheekbones distinguish their faces. I noted that Hester’s cheekbones are even more prominent than Mary’s. Both women have high foreheads and comparable face shapes. Each of them has a straight nose with a narrow bridge, and a similar mouth. Even their hair is the same — dark, stick-straight hair parted in the middle and pulled back. The only difference is that Hester’s hair covers her ears and Mary’s doesn’t. Their facial expressions are roughly identical, which could simply be a reflection of the era. People did not smile in nineteenth-century photos. The photographers must have told them to “look serious!”
I noticed each woman’s rigid, Victorian clothing — a dark dress with little embellishment. I also realized their clothing is assimilated. There is no trace of their Native American heritage in any aspect of their dress. In their portraits, Hester and Mary appear to be gazing into space, which I attribute simply to the photographic style of the period. You rarely if ever see a big grin in old photos.
The last thing I noticed is that Mary and Hester share the same ethnicity. In addition to Native American blood, both Hester and Mary are descended from Welsh and Dutch immigrants. Does this explain their resemblance to each other? I find Mary’s face just as hauntingly beautiful as Hester’s. They could easily be from the same family.
That was interesting, Bev. I’d always heard he was Cherokee, but I didn’t know how much was known about it. I guess in his family claiming his grandma was an Indian princess wasn’t an exaggeration.
Bev Stayart wrote: People did not smile in nineteenth-century photos. The photographers must have told them to “look serious!”
This was discussed recently on another forum I follow. Before about 1940 film speeds were much slower, and shutter speeds had to be slow (to let in enough light to expose it). In most of the nineteenth century (well, after 1838 or so) it wasn’t even “film” as we know it, but some kind of coated glass or metal plate. It was fine-grained, and often captured a lot of detail, but people had to sit very still.
Sometimes a baby would not cooperate, in a group photo for example, and you see a wide, smeared image. It looks like the baby was hydrocephalic or something — but you knew him as an old man, and he was relatively normal. (Except, you know, stuff like the chewing tobacco.)
It’s hard to hold a natural smile, but easier to hold a serious expression — so that’s what they did. The photographer probably said “Don’t move,” rather than “Don’t smile.”
Does anyone know the meaning of her name “Ghe-go-he-li”?
A tintype is one type of photo made by the process you described. “Tintype” is actually a misnomer as the image is on thin black-enameled iron, not tin. A tintype is one of a kind because there is no negative.
On the subject of photography, James W. Bailey is an artist, photographer and writer from Mississippi. He has strong spiritual beliefs about photographs and their ability to capture the human spirit — both of the living and the dead. He says that his religious beliefs are probably inherited from his Native American grandmother. Quoting Mr. Bailey, “I hold a religious belief, probably inherited from my paternal Mississippi grandmother, who was 1/4 Choctaw Indian, and who was extremely distrustful of photography, that photography, more than any other art form, has the ability to capture a living element of life, a flashpoint of the soul if you will.”
He observes that “many Native Americans have long believed that photographs capture the souls of the living and imprison them within the photographic image.” You can read more about his background, accomplishments, and fascinating perspective on the power of photographic imagery at http://www.nonstarvingartists.com/News/ImagedNewsItem.2005-01-05.2504.html
My Stephens and Rogers ancestors were Welsh. I am interested in determining how closely related the Welsh are to the English, the Irish, and the Scots. It appears that the Welsh and the English are “races apart” with the Welsh instead linked very closely to the Irish Celts and the Basques of northern Spain and southern France.
Geneticists have proved that the Welsh are the true indigenous Britons. Following the Roman withdrawal in the fifth century, a huge Anglo-Saxon invasion of Britain occurred, which pushed the indigenous Celtic Britons westward to Wales. As a result, between 50-100% of the indigenous population of what was to become England was wiped out. This invasion devastated the Celtic population of England, but did not reach Wales. Only a physical obstruction, Offa’s Dyke, acted as a “genetic barrier,” isolating and protecting those on the Welsh side. See http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/711000/posts
Welsh is the oldest living Celtic language in the United Kingdom and among the oldest surviving in Europe.
This genetic research is fascinating because it shows that the Welsh (Celts), as much as the English and French, were among the earliest colonial explorers. In fact, Rogers and Stephens were common names among the mixed-race Saponi.
The Hawk Eye, Burlington, Iowa’s leading newspaper, covered the ceremony I held on August 6 for my great-grandmother Hester on the 130-year anniversary of her death. The ceremony began with the setting of her hand-carved headstone. The Des Moines County Historical Society and approximately 15 family members were in attendance. The Hawk Eye ran a feature-length article, with photo, on August 7. You can read the complete article at http://www.thehawkeye.com/RSSStory/cemetery-080708
Hello Bev, I enjoyed reading the article you posted about your Greatgrandmother. How wonderful of you to do that for her~she must be so very proud of you that you showed such honor for her~well done!! Greydove~^~
Hi Greydove,
Thanks. It was a beautiful ceremony. The Blackfoot parable engraved on her headstone is, “Life is not separate from death. It only looks that way.”
My g-g-grandfather Dean Rogers is a wild card, a blind alley, in that he is my only ancestor I cannot trace because I do not know his parents’ given names. The mystery is compounded by the fact that Rogers is an extremely common surname and that he was born in Canada and migrated to the United States in the mid-nineteenth century. These types of roadblocks are undoubtedly a frequent problem in genealogy research. Our nameless ancestors remain the most curious of all because we can accumulate clues as to their possible origins, but rarely if ever complete the entire picture.
I believe if she was Paint Clan her name is probably/ good odds it is a kind of plant or vine or berry. well kind of .
One of Shoeboots sisters was
Chah wah you cah
also spelled KA HU GA
I was told KA nu GA
is ‘black berry’ sort of , kind of .
but what it is was more about an action/ a VERB ABOUT GETTING SCRATCHED PICKING BERRIES.
so in reality there was no “name” for berry but it was about the experience of picking some kind of berries.
So maybe tiny variations in this word or spelling/ sounds maybe signify different patches or or different berries.
so maybe paint clan with sour face is about eating green berries, that kind of idea.
and ‘stinky” or someone who is a ‘runner’…. is from eating the wrong kind of berries.
and so on .
and it would be still translated to be those berries that they ate that made them run to go to the potty. paint clan picked a lot of those potty kind of berries, if you know what I mean.
The impression I get in the bible and in what I have learned so far is that ancient Semitic or mixed semitic type languages and words are about an experience and some times they do not give a ‘name’ to a thing.
so this is why God had so many names.. they were his actions.. not his ‘name’ they were our experience of him.
because of that none of the words of any of these languages translate directly, or maybe you just had to be there to get it.. it is all inside jokes.
so an example would be …
when Jesus spit in the dirt and made mud and put that mud into a blind mans eyes (socket) and everyone was disturbed beyond reason, they went nuts , crazy nuts because all of a sudden that man could see . the translation just says that he could see and was not blind. they went to get the parents and everything to try and figure it out .. it was driving them mad.
but Jesus had made many blind men see.. so why was this one so different and why was it so upsetting to them . so maybe they were all so upset because of what it implies? dang what it screams at them. so what was jesus screaming at them by his actions?
could it be we now all assume that they had words for him ‘creating an eyeball’ where there was no ‘eye ball’ in just an ’empty ”eye’ ‘socket’ . of course they or anyone had never had a need to name these places and things as no where in any time had any eye balls ever grown back once they were gone . up till that day you were ‘seeing ” or you ‘weren’t seeing’ there was also no need for the world “new seeing”.
you see I think the miracle was Jesus created eyeballs from spit and mud, just like He create Adam and all the animals, that is what his action were screaming at them … eye balls are things science can’t even explain yet how or why they work . But jesus knew the laws which they operated on enough to create an eye with dirt and spit,
so now yes that would be very disturbing to some people..
so when reading the bible or working on any other languages anywhere in the world , we might want to remember that they too may not have had words or concepts that translate direct to our languages now , because you had to be there, like this example , because the wording is about what the man was experiencing, the the ending of blindness from birth. and my aunts and grandma names translate to be like
‘scratchy’ or ‘itchy’ or “OUCH” but it is about pickin blackberries or some berries with big thorns..
did that help?
sorry I do not know what her name means. but what I want to say is the real meaning might not translate well, so spend a lot of time figuring out what she did and who she was before you try and translate, because you just might of had to have ‘been there’ to get the concepts involved close enough to translate it .
hope that helps some!
You are right that names themselves provide important clues as to their origins. This led me to consider each of the names Dean Rogers gave to his four daughters. He may have named them after his female relatives — his mother, a grandmother, a sister, or a favorite aunt. This gives me a starting point for further research. Your comment was very helpful.
My grandmother Mary Elizabeth Sawyer was born in Bonaparte, Iowa. Bonaparte is in Lee County, Iowa, and borders the north side of the Des Moines River. Bonaparte was founded in 1837, and named in honor of Napoleon Bonaparte, statesman, military leader and emperor of France. Iowa was originally part of the French colony of New France. The Native Americans inhabiting the area called themselves “Baxoje”, which means “dusted faces” or “grey snow.” The word “Ioway” actually comes from the Dakotan “ayuxbe” via the French word “aiouez.” The name Mississippi River has Native American origins. “Misi-ziibi” was the Anishinaabe word for “Great River.” “Messipi” was the French rendering of this Anishinaabe word “Misi-ziibi.” The interplay of Native American and French languages in the etiology of these words is fascinating.
In researching my great-great-grandfather, Dean Rogers, I found two other “Dean Rogers,” one of whom may be his father. The first Dean Rogers I found was from Stanstead (Quebec), Canada, as was my great-great-grandfather. In 1806, this Dean Rogers crossed the U.S. border with his fiance, Betsey Peasley, to be married in Derby Line, Vermont, and then returned to Canada. My great-great-grandfather was born in 1810, in Stanstead (Quebec), Canada, so this lead warrants further investigation.
The second Dean Rogers I found was born in Connecticut and then married Mary Peasley in Connecticut. Dean and Mary Rogers later moved to Stanstead (Quebec), Canada, at the beginning of the nineteenth century. This Dean Rogers was “lost on the lake” during the War of 1812. What happened to his family is unknown, but there is speculation that his wife and daughter died soon afterwards and his remaining children were reared by others.
At any rate, I have identified a connection between the Rogers and Peasley families, both of which are Welsh surnames and both of which are associated with Stanstead (Quebec), Canada. Because my great-great-grandfather Dean Rogers was born in 1810, over 200 years ago, the scarcity of genealogical records from this era will require a lot more digging on my part to track down his biological parents.
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