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Dear Linda.
God, I love your soap box!
Bwahha! My mother was a pure, natural blonde. She had blue eyes like saucers, she looked like a Bru doll.
My Dad was white skinned, but he had all the Indian features, just like Ricardo Montalban in the Wrath of Khan! Little dark eyes, hook nose, straight mouth, dark hair, small, compact, strong body…..my best friend has said that I look “exotic”. I used to have blonde hair, but now its the color of oak bark. My husband, ( second husband…I got it right this time) points out to me all of the Indian features that I have, irrespective of coloring….color MEANS NOTHING. Say, take a look at Vance’s ggrandmother and her baby…SHE looks like an Indian, but her own child does not. How early, and how easily, fair skin becomes part of the mixture. Pretty early, I’d say. Its written out of Drift fairly easily. Color is, I hate to use this phrase, a white man’s marker. Its part of our culture as Americans…its hard to escape! I have friends who are white Cherokee, and “black Cherokee”…I had an Iroqois teacher once who was actually STILL red! He referred to himself as “dark”. I pointed out to him that he was missing out on all the Red Man jokes. He said he’d think about that. Heh.
But all joking aside…diabetes is a serious illness. My brother -in-law was half Mayan, and he was a diabetic. He died of liver cancer. I know one “hispanic” who said to me: “I’ve never heard of an hispanic who had cancer berfore” ( go figure). When I told her he was 1/2 Indian she just said OH, like it didn’t matter.
HOWEVER, even though their Dad was 1/2 Mayan, and looked it, and my sister has appreciable amounts of NA, their kids do not look Native in any way. One is actually blonde, like my mother.
HOWEVER, they still pop up with all of these medical issues associated with their NA heritage. LOOKS are deceiving. You just can’t go by them.
Talk to you later.
Lynne
Lynne,
Cancer is a terrible disease I had a cousin die of leukemia at 19.
On my mother’s side of the family my sister and I are the only blondes. Several of my cousins are red headed and several have black hair and very dark eyes but we all have light skin so you are probably right about that. My grandmother had black hair and grey eyes( my son has the grey eyes). My eyes are a mixture of a alot of colors (grey, green, brown) My husband(my second also) says at times my eyes look almost black. I’ve always used the term midnight for my eyes. My mother and sister’s are the same way. My sister looks more like my Dad’s side of the family but with the crazy looking midnight eyes:D
Another interesting thing I learned….they think they may have found the “Lost Colony” . I read something about them possibly being in Chocowinity, NC which is 15 miles from where my father grew up and his grandmother’s last name was “Little” which is one of the names listed as members of the lost colony….Peter and Robert Little. That has my “little” brain spinning. My dad’s mother was a very quiet woman never said much of anything…she was very short with long black hair and dark eyes….fair skin. There has never been a single whisper of NA on my father’s lines but I’m beginning to wonder. I read that when the Elks family in Chocwinity were told of this possibly they were in shock. They had never heard anything about possibly being NA…..this is odd and I plan to research it more.
Later on,
Linda
My sister who is blond and blue-eyed like my German father, had a face-lift several years ago that was paid for my insurance. She had an eye that was really small. The plastic surgeon said that she had to have some Indian or Asian background to have had this feature. It runs in the family. I have it, Mom has it, even Deb who is something like a third cousin (She has posted here in the past.) has it, as do her daughters. She sent me a picture of a man who was the uncle of my gggrandmother and his eye is almost closed from this. He looks like a twin to the man listed as the the last living Tutelo.
Techteach
Hi
I have something the doctors call a lazy eye so does my mother. It’s not smaller then the other just lazier LOL but the eyelid on that eye seems to cover it more than the other one does.
Linda
Hello Linda and Teachtech.
Yes, drift is a funny thing. I have little black eyes. My oldest daughter has little blue eyes. Its odd how eye size crops up all the time.
I started out trying to find out more about the Smiths, who were my grandmother’s family…and before I could get around to them, my husband started trying to find out about the Peppers. He found that my ggrandfather was the product of a first cousin marriage, and the grandparent that his parents had in common was a mulatto in Halifax co, called “Ellet” Shaw. His wife was Mary Bobbit, another mulatto….and strangely enough, my grandfather’s brother married his own first cousin, who was also a Shaw. Bill Childs did some looking around for me on the internet and found that a Nancy Pepper was already living with the Smiths and listed as a first cousin, with her children listed as second cousins. So it seems that the Peppers, the Smiths, the Shaws, the Bobbits, were all mixed race individuals who crossed lines more than once. As I said before, I really don’t know what these people were up to….but since some of them are listed as white and some are mulattos; and because of the physical traits we carry, I’m pretty sure that some of them were Indians, and possibly spent time marrying other Indians. This is my theory anyway, though who knows, it may come crashing down.
There really is nothing that I plan to do with this information. It has come to my attention, with Bill’s help and my husband’s occasional digging, that my Dad believed some things about his ancestry that just weren’t true. I am pretty sure that his mother was a Haliwa, as he said; but apparently what he didn’t know is that he has mulattos on both sides of the family, and that the Smiths were also his ancestors on both sides of the family. He once told me that his mother was French ( I guess her surname is french) and that his uncles were very dark people…”Just like the Belgians I met in the war”. While this may be true, that his uncles were dark, from reading the census details, I doublt if its because they were French. I also found that in places where his father’s side of the family were married to women just known as “Mary”, two of them have turned out to be mulattos, and in once instance, knowledge of the womans’ last name would have led to the discovery that first cousins were marrying first cousins. So maybe there was a little of a cover up going on.
Heh, I saw a picture of my grandfather once….and I wondered at the time why HE wasn’t the Indian that my Dad spoke of. In all likelyhood, he had significant NA heritage, he just wasn’t the one that was spoken of as Indian. Of course he died when my Dad was very young. And apparently my Dad thought that his aunt was his grandmother. He wasn’t very old before he was packed off to the orphanage, poor guy.
Good talking to you both,
Lynne
oh Lynne,
For years we have been looking for a Lurana Etheredge we just found out today that she was 1st cousin to her husband Thomas Etheredge both of them had considerable NA blood. We found this by accident so I think there was cover up too. Lynne this is what causes Von Willibrand’s something both you and I have.:( I have to admit i was pretty upset when I learned this but of course they had no idea of the genetic problems caused by their actions.
Their grandfather married a girl from Halifax county but to this day we cannot find out what her name was, like you we believe she was Haliwa because it was after this marriage that the NA entered our line. We have pictures of our grandparent, great grandparents it is very apparent they are NA. And Then of course I knew my grandmother she died when I was 24. She claimed to be 1/2 NA and her father like my father and my grandfather were white. So that means her mother was a full blood which leads me to believe there was more of the marrying your cousins going on then just what I have found out. We also cannot figure out the surname on Luranas’ mother or Thomas mother. Unlike your family though mine were never listed as mulatto. My sister and I have wondered why this is and the only thing we can come up with is the Etheredge’s owned alot of land and were pretty wealthy. Money talks as we all know. Plus they were neighbors and friends to another very wealthy family in the area in fact one of my ggrandmothers married into this family. They were the Moore’s of Edgecombe County…the British crown gave the Moore’s 2 very large tracts of land in 1739 and 1740. My gggrandfather Joab Moore was a lawyer imagine that LOL. The way it looks the Moore’s and the Etheredge’s came to Edgecombe county together from Virginia so it’s quite possible they were friends way back in England. We do know another branch of the same Moore family headed into Granville county they could possibly be your Moore’s but I don’t know alot about them. The challenge for us now is to find the surnames of all these women who apparently didn’t want us to know their names. There are Rebecca, Mary, and so on. Grrrrrrrr is all i can say for their gift of Von Willibrands. Iknow I have Rebecca’s X chromsone floating around in me as she was Luranas’ mother and I’d be willing to bet she was an Etheredge too or possibly related to her father-in-law’s wife who we believe was a Haliwa. This is a messed up tangled mess. I’m pulling my hair out LOL I’d better not cause it might come back black LOL cause it has been getting darker and darker as the years go on. By the way my husband has an ancestor from Tennesse who was listed as mulatto and he has been told he is Blackfoot so I think they were listing anyone who was not completely white as a mulatto.
later on Linda
Dear Linda,
Yes, they were listing anyone who was not considered white as a Mulatto. That goes for Indians as well. In fact, there simply was no catagory available for Indian. By the time census was being taken in the US in NC, there had been over a hundred years of admixture.
In a way….the government was doing then exactly what it is doing now….creating a false extinction via paperwork. There are literally thousands of people just in NC who have significant NA heritage, but because of paperwork, they have ceased to exist. ANd its a clever plan, because it works so well. You exist, I exist, all of the people on this group exist, but officially we don’t exist.
This lack of officialness doesn’t bother me. Mainly because it has little to do with the facts. As I have said before, in the great, overwhelming, numbers of mixed blood Indians that are part of this country….in those numbers lie great strength. The only thing that stops mixed blood Indians from being Indians is ourselves. We are here. We are aware. And let others deal with it as they will.
The cousin marriage was a little of a shock at first, mainly because nowdays its looked at as a bad thing. Back then it probably wasn’t. And there really weren’t as many people around in those days. Indians married whites, and blacks , and back and forth, and maybe staying within the group was considered a safe bet…I mean….who wanted to marry a stranger? Heee hee. Anyone looking at these old records in the past 80 years, may have seen mulatto and then just flipped out….you know all about the color line. You know that if you could be put down as white it had nothing but everything going for it. Like voting for instance. Like being part of a stronger group with more rights. Hell, we are all survivors here. You did what you had to do. That was then. This is now. All of the grandrelatives who kept the story alive, did so for a reason. They didn’t have a tribe and tribal land to back them up, they just had what they knew, and what they knew they were. They were proud of it, or they wouldn’t have told you about it. However, they had a pride that there really wasn’t much they could with it. They were all modern people, because all Indians, offiial or unofficial are ALL modern people and live in the world of today.
And when they answered the census and went about their daily business, they lived in the current world of THAT day, and did whatever they had to do.
The world has changed. There is no reason why we can’t change a little as well. there is also no reason why we can’t change the world to suit us better, rather than having it change us to suit it better.
Regards,
Lynne
Lynne,
I was talking to my brother yesterday and we were discussing how Warrenton NC (Warren Co) never had race uprisings in the 60’s and 70’s. Warrenton has always been about 90 % NA even though the people there did not claim their heritage. The NA in Warrenton owned land and businesses. They owned most of the land in the downtown area. We are thinking that there must have been some agreement (verbally or written) between the Anglo people and the NA that were originally from the Haliwa and Tuscarora people, that they would be allowed to live good lives but would have to let their indian heritage be unknown. Other towns near by such as Greensboro NC and Durham had all kinds of racial issues going on. Warrenton was never like that. The primary surnames in Warrenton are: Harris, Jones, Richardson, Johnson, Plummer, Hawkins and a few Carters lived there. The black people in Warren Co lived in the rural area and mostly sharecropped. They did not own any businesses or their homes.
I think that is strange and there had to be some agreement made with the NA that had migrated into the area.
I am doing some research to see if I can find out if there was an agreement made. I would think since there were more NA than whites or blacks there that the white people felt it was better to do what would create a more peaceful existince. They probally felt if there was any uprising then NA’s would come from everywhere and they would not be able to control us in the way they controlled the AA for so many years. After the civil war Warrenton didn’t have slaves to work the land and the plantations shut down and those people moved on. Warrenton is quite a unique town. I doubt if the whites there even know that their roots are Scot-Irish.
My parents or grandparents did not tell me what I needed to know, but it is amazing how my ancestors through the spiritual realm have shown me who I am and where I am going by leading me daily to knowledge that fills in the blanks.
I give all honor and praise to The Creator for allowing that to happen.
I’ll keep you up to date on my research….
Thanks Jade for keeping me posted.
Its very revealing to find out peices of information that help put together the past. I think that you are right on target with your assumptions about race relations in Warrenton.
Many of the wites listed most likely had relatives that were Indians, and the Indians were living in exactly the same kind of conditions, owning the same kind of land and businesses, and living the same kind of lives. Also, it might be instructive to remember the Jim Crow laws against whites and blacks becoming legally married, did not apply to whites marrying Indians, or blacks marrying Indians. The intermariage of Indians with other races was not considered an issue to legislate against. Here is another reason why racial identifiers on census can be obscuring.
The amount of time that passed in NC between the arrival of Europeans, the days before and after the Civil War, the late 19th century and the early 20th century, have all had their special laws, both written and unwritten. We do know that our ancestors, no matter who they were, had to live with and deal with these laws. We also know that on the eastern coast of the state, the Haliwa had been allowed to buy their land and own it under the European system. By the time the Creek and the Tuscarora were fighting the federal gov. the policy was NOT to allow Indians to buy their tribal land. To digress, you can see how early land ownership enabled some tribes to mix freely after a time period. Social barriers were probably disolved earlier because of the lack of a tribal land ownership system. This would be especially true as the individual Indian owners aquired more land by buying it, inheriting it, and widening their area of influence…..just like any family would do.
In looking over some census details about Halifax co., and just knowing people in our state….it wouldn’t surprize me if there were a kind of Indian caste system in operation as well. I don’t think this is unreasonable to assume, because we can see it operating today in the population ( and I do not means Indians specifically)….viz….some Indians who “treaditionally” married whites, might keep doing that, and some Indians who traditionally married blacks might keep doing that as well. OR, I could be totally wrong about all of this and it was more of a tapestry of merriment than I could ever imagine and people just got along swell. Well, it could happen, anyway.
Good luck in your research,
Lynne
Hi Lynne and Jade,
Jade I was sadden to hear how you didn’t feel accepted by the Haliwa when you attended the Pow Wow that is a crying shame. I guess because our families left the Indian settlements we are now outcasts.:mad: I’m with Lynne when she says we need to stand up and be counted. There are so many of us we can make a real difference but we need to organize to do that and that’s a HUGE step for us all. And then the problem with geography since so many of us have left the area. I was born in the great state of Virginia and lived a big part of my life in Virginia and North Carolina something always calls you home though. I know I don’t want to die here in South Alabama. I want to be laid to rest in the homeland of my people. I have several Creek friends down here who have made me feel very welcome but I am not Creek I am Saponi and so is my husband. One day we will come home. Maybe it will not be our generation that orgainzes maybe it will be our children or our grandchildren but I have faith it will happen I just hope I live to see it to bring honor on all those generations that came before and all those that come after me. We are NOT extinct!!!!!!!!!!! Saponi blood flows hot and heavy through this woman veins. Pinch ouch LOL yep I’m Alive and I’m Saponi nope we are not extinct.:) YA’ll have a lovely blessed day!
Linda
Lynne and Linda,
I forgot to mention something I had read online about Warrenton NC history. This is what I read: ” Although the community was predominately African American (which they were not, they were indian. Not sure who wrote this..) it prospered despite legalized discrimination practices.” See, that ‘s the thing I’m talking about. Warrenton was majority indian. Warrenton originally was occupied by British settlers, Saponi (Haliwa) and Tuscarora until just before the Civil War. They even changed the name from Bute Co (after a former British prime minister to Warren in honor of a Boston doctor who died in the battle of Bunker Hill. After the change to Warren the county was divided into two counties, Warren to the north and Franklin to the south. Whatever arrangement was made it was made during the British occupancy in Bute Co (Warren).
The other thing I forgot to tell you were a couple of more prominent names in Warrenton: Ransom and Green (originally from VA.)
It is so sad that even today, the NA in Warrenton (not Warren Co) are still not recognized or even mentioned in the history of Warrenton.
Jade:
What part of VA were the Greens from? This is sort of the primary name in my genealogy. They were from near Shepherdstown, then VA, now WVA.
Techteach
Hi Techteach,
I’m not sure what part of Va. Warren Co is on the Va line. On one side we were close to Palmer Springs, Boydton, South Hill. I’m sure it was one of these places because most people that came from Va were from these areas because of the geographical closeness to Warrenton.
Jade
Jade,
You mention the name Ransom. This is of interest to us because Caleb Etheredge who we believed married the Haliwa lady had a son he named Ransom. This name is completely out of line with the Etheredge naming patterns but we know for certain he was his son because he names him in his will. I wonder if his mother was a Ransom?
Linda
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