In clearing up family legends-this has proven to be the most interesting/surprising in the 30 plus years I have been researching. It started by knowing nothing about my father's maternal side, other than the legend that his mother (my paternal grandmother) was part Native American. Looking at a picture of her in her youth, (as well as the phenotype of my Dad, his sister, and one of my own siblings), I thought it plausible. There was the geographic area of the US they came from, and my grandmother's rather haunting likeness to a female Elvis Presley, or a bobbed-hair flapper version of Bobby Gentry. Admittedly, I got no farther for many years than the sarcastic comment made by my Dad regarding the issue-"oh, your grandmother always said that when she was drunk"-which as I learned was often.
Things changed when autosomal DNA tests hit the market. I sent of a sample to a company that I will not name in a public post, and was excited by the results noting I was indeed 12-25 per cent Native American. The rub came when the tribal affiliation was named-Athabascan or Aleut. Well, I am no geneticist-freely I admit. However, I am a fairly decent Historian and researcher. I thought something is rotten in Denmark, for though my ancestors were certainly pioneering on both sides, I was confident they didn't take a mate in Alaska or the Southwest in the last 150 years. I crossed checked with two other autosomal tests from different companies, and imagine my surprise at learning they had discerned no Native American ancestry, but did find a small percentage of North African ancestry! Wow-talk about a margin of error from 0 to 100%!
Looking at genealogy as I have through the lens of history, logic has led me to consider the following:
1. Anthropologists are now finding the settling of America by those we call Native Americans, in all likelihood did not occur in one trans-Siberian wave, but in several voyages by different peoples or cultures. (I note the high percentage of European influence in the Eastern tribes (Melungeon peoples for instance; the discovery of probable voyages from Japan (to South America) and China (West Coast).
2. If you can document your ancestors in this country prior to 1825, there is a reasonable chance that you could have African American, Native American, or any admix of cultures from the Explorers or settlers of this country. Just makes sense-there were not that many Europeans in this country.
3. What you believe you are based on family legends is probably not what you really are in your DNA-which is where we come to the custom and culture part-
I talked my husband of 44 years into having his autosomal DNA tested thinking it would show predominantly German, followed by Eastern European, and perhaps some Jewish ancestry (due to the area of Europe his recent immigrant ancestors came from-he is only 3rd generation American).
The irony was not lost on me, when I read his results-predominantly Eastern European, some Northern European, a small amount of German-and you guessed it, some 2-5 % Asian or Native American! Obviously, due to the recent immigration it was Asian (can you say Attilla the Hun). It was also hilarious that after 44 years of enduring accordians, Lawrence Welk as a cultural icon, German potato salad, beer, and the polka at family gatherings, it turns out I was more ethnically German than HE was...his people simply identified with German culture-they were not Germans!
Well, as for me, now we are on to North Africa, I guess....