[Vivian Markley]

When I awoke this morning Vince was on my mind and I just feel the need to speak to him. I hope he is at least reading the list for a little while. I know when I get so angry that I feel I need to move away from a group, I often read on for a little while and at times, I find a way to return. I want him to know that I feel his anger and I cannot speak for him but I have at least come to terms with my own anger so I will speak of it. It seems we have walked a similar trail. I am angry because I want to know who I am, that is all I ask for, the truth. I don’t want to be part of a new tribe or any new group, but I want to know the truth of my ancestors and why my mother wanted me to grow up like other people, which gave me the message that for some reason our family was different. I started with genealogy and the family stories. Most filled with half truth and secrecy that required you to ask someone else who knew more but definitely the cover up of Indian blood. No particular tribe, just Indian or complete denial.

First is the denial by my fierce Kerr ancestors who were documented Indian haters because their father was killed by Indians on Kerr island in the Ohio river near Marietta. Story goes that Sally Thompson was a white girl who’s father was given land in Canada for his service in the war. Strange ! I was under the impression that Canada was British. She is stolen by the Indians and a “squaw” took her to Col Johnson’s, Indian agent in Ohio, so she would not be raped by the “drunken braves”. She was reported to be 11 at the time. She lives with Col Johnson for a time and is then placed with Jessie Miller and his wife, a childless Brethren or Quaker couple. By the time she marries my grandfather James Kerr, grandson of the famed Indian fighters, at the age of 18, she has a acknowledged 3 year old male indian child. Times just do not compute and this story has not been refuted for years. How does she get pregnant by an Indian when living with the Millers? Is it a Miller child and she is the Indian and the Kerr’s when paying to have their noble history recorded for all posterity in Beer’s history trying to legitimize what the whole county knows.

Second is the “Cornblosson massacre”. Yeh, a Blevins reports it, back in when it happens and yep, they may have duped the Kentucky government. But at least it is called a “legend”. When I first ran across it on the web I worked with a girlfriend of mine that got me interest in the local council. We both had this elusive “Indian blood” and it blew us away. She descends from Gregory and Shephard from that area and I from Blevins, so we pretty much had it covered. We went to Sterns and found the locals don’t believe a word of it, but it still makes me wonder how the legend did survive. The Blevins and Troxels moved on to Alabama. By 1820 the Troxell’s and Blevins in Wayne co had thinned out but it is not untill 1830’s that they appear in Marion Co Tenn before going to Dekalb Alabama. Something wierd about this group and there are 14 Jacob Troxells (sp) in the 1820 census including Miami County Ohio. My friend and I decided the whole thing was most likely a love affair gone bad within this whole group, somebody threaten to kill somebody and the next thing you know we have a legend. That is because we both have this “rage” that you expressed. To top it off, the Blevins are still so divided as a family themselves that it is difficult at best to discover their true roots. Some believe in Indian blood and others are in absolute white territory.

Third is the way these families migrated in groups, how? and why?and did they always stay in contact with and intermarry others from the groups they left behind?

I have concluded we have warriors and the peacemakers. I often play the role of the peacemaker but that is only needed after the warriors have been in charge. My family is definitely the warrior by nature and this is where the rage lives and when confronted, I will fight to the end. But I know the end, it is the present and what I search for is the beginnning. Until I get each of my grandfathers back to a boat, I will not be satisfied that they are all European. When I joined the council here, created and run by Lakota, I discovered that this group comes with the warrior spirit. They fight many a local battle against “Indian” oppression and also collect clothing and computers for Pine Ridge. But they fight among themselves continually. They are caught up in a paradox that brings them ” hurt” over and over again. It appears that most Indian tribes assimilated other Indian tribe members or whites and accepted them as their own befoe the practice of blood quantum began. Most on the rolls are know to be of mixed blood when it comes to Eastern tribes. There seems to be something in their nature that wants them to believe that we could all live in peace. But each time they trust people and share their life with them, they get taken advantage of. This happened with their ceremonies that they shared in this century as they tried to reconnect their children to their past and now they are faced with the issue that they have been sold out once again and their trust violated.

But they are not my people. How they live their lives, today may teach me about what happened to my people and why they are all now “white”. Why they escaped the rolls and the reservations? What did it take to be the warrior who refused to succumb to the “rules” and how did they take their families and keep moving to new lands and stay separate from others and stay connected to those whose roots were the same as theirs?

The anger comes from deep within and it stirred up whenever a “newby” believes and states as facts pure fables. When the internet first became popular, my Nathan Ward had a wife whose grave marker simply states “Indian wife”. Now she is the daughter of Dragging Canoe! I think that would have fit on the marker if it was true. As my Gregory/Shepard sister put it at council one day when one of the Lakota women made a comment about how all white are “wannabe indian princesses”, she came back with “No, some of us know our grandfathers were just drunken men.” We did not come from Indian “royalty”, but we do believe that at some point in time, someone married a common member of a tribe somewhere and our family had to hide it to survive in the white world and we were somehow taught to be angry and resentful. The Lakota will have a hard time surviving Blood Quantum for the next four hundred years. At least their destruction is being written down.

We need people like you with the anger and energy that understand that there were many eastern tribes that were anilated by blood quantum over the past four hundred years. We can get through the first 200-250 years fairly easy by 1700 when the assimilation that was required for survival occurred, we are faced with a severe challenge. Only a few will have the strength to face this quest and you are one of them and are needed. Some will be satisfied to “know in their hearts” but it is not about who I am but it is about who my people were and what really happened to them. If we do not regain that knowledge now it will be eternally lost.

Sometimes we loose our focus and I am wondering if trying to form a “tax exempt group” is not the birth of a new acceptance that the truth has not been found so we will accept that we do not know but have to move forward with our lives and say that we know we have this common bond that has roots somewhere not fully identified. This bring us back to who we are. We cannot “honor” our ancestors until we can truly identify who they were and I do not see that we are at that stage yet. Maybe some are but I am not confident enough about my lines that came out of this Peidmont area.

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