Leave it to Scott Brown, who lost his re-election to the U.S. Senate to Elizabeth Warren, to stir up the pot again on Warren's ancestry and Trump's attempts to insult that ancestry by referring to Warren as Pocahontas. He's now introducing the idea that Sen. Warren should be DNA tested to prove her ancestry. I almost wrote this peice the last time this issue bubbled up, but didn't find the time. Now that Brown is bringing DNA into the mix, I feel I, as a genealogist who now frequently uses DNA in my research, must put in my 2¢ about this whole matter.
First, let me address this new DNA angle Scott Brown is pushing to prove Sen. Warren heritage.
In 2012, CNN's Kevin Liptak wrote
The New England Historic Genealogical Society provided CNN with initial research showing several members of Warren's maternal family claiming Cherokee heritage. The Native American link extends to Warren's great-great-great grandmother O.C. Sarah Smith, who is said to be described as Cherokee in an 1894 marriage license application. NEHGS gathered that information through a 2006 family newsletter, and says the original application cannot be located.
The society was quick to point out that research into Native American ancestries often relies on oral histories, and that paper documents were not kept for many early generations of Native American families.
Based on the research, it is estimated that Warren is no more than about 1/32 native American depending on whether O.C. Sarah Smith was full blooded native or not. If she was full blooded, you might think, "Oh, her native American ancestry is about 3% of her genome, so it would show up in a DNA test." You might think it, but it may not be entirely correct.
You see DNA doesn't actually "blend" when it is passed down from generation to generation. During DNA recombination, it breaks up into blocks and the blocks are swapped the other parent's DNA with 50% of the the total source DNA no longer present in the recombined chromosome that is passed down. This process can and usually is uneven, meaning that the 23 chromosomes you got from your mother almost certainly are not 50% her mother and 50% her father. On average it is 50%, but the actual split falls along a bell curve for any one recombination event taken in isolation.
It could be closer to a 60/40 split as it is for me in my paternal chromosomes. I'm more my paternal grandmother than my paternal grandfather. So for each recombination event at each generation, you can have one particular line that gets the short end genetically to the point that after just a few generations, there may not be any DNA from a particular ancestor in your genome.
According to the International Society of Genetic Genealogists
[S]ome relationships will not be detected purely because of the random nature of autosomal DNA inheritance which means that we do not inherit DNA segments from every genealogical ancestor. The number of detectable relationships decreases with each generation. At ten generations we have approximately 1024 ancestors although there is generally some overlap as a result of pedigree collapse. While all these ancestors can potentially be documented in our genealogical tree we only inherit segments of DNA from a small subset of these ancestors. Luke Jostins found that "The probability of having DNA from all of your genealogical ancestors at a particular generation becomes vanishingly small very rapidly; there is a 99.6% chance that you will have DNA from all of your 16 great-great grandparents, only a 54% [chance] of sharing DNA with all 32 of your G-G-G grandparents, and a 0.01% chance for your 64 G-G-G-G grandparents. You only have to go back 5 generations for genealogical relatives to start dropping off your DNA tree.
In other words, while you are genealogically descended from your great-great-great grandmother, you may not have a genetic link to her at all. It is entirely possible that none of her DNA is represented in your genome, and if it is, it may be such a small percentage as to be negligible and virtually undetectable to the commercially available genealogical and ethnicity DNA tests, which only sample about 700,000 locations among the millions of locations in your DNA. They report an ethnic breakdown, usuaully using only a subset of those 700,000 nucleotides based on reference populations that are likely not great representations of the ancestral populations they describe; furthermore, that breakdown consists only of the DNA you got genetically, not your genealogy. It is an important distinguish between your genealogical ancestors and your far more limited genetic ancestors (i.e. the ancestors represented in your DNA) when considering the results of these tests.
For example, from my research and the oral tradition in my mother's family, my mother and her siblings should be no more than 3/64's native American. We have native American ancestry from two separate lines, but do not know the level of "blood purity" of the closest ancestor identified as native American. If either already had European (or even African) admixture, the level of native American DNA in that ancestor would already be lower. I have DNA tested my mother and four of her siblings. Of those five, only one was reported to have native American ancestry by the ethnicity breakdown provided by the testing company. A deeper analysis by me using other tools that examine heritage admixture has found traces of native American DNA in all of them, but at levels lower than the expected amount. That tells me that the ancestors of mine who were considered native Americans may have already had non-native DNA in their own heritage or, as I explained above, my mother, aunt and uncles may not have had those DNA segments passed down to them proportionate to their native ancestry.
This is actually very common. Europeans began intermarrying with the native population almost as soon as their feet had touched dry land in the Americas. A person deemed by the Federal government to be an Indian in 1825 may have already had notable if not significant European admixture.
Taskanugi Hatke was a prominent chief in the Creek Nation. He is more famously known by his Anglo name, William McIntosh. His namesake father was a Scottish American and his mother a Creek native American, though the precise admixture of his mother is not well known given the lack of records. She herself may have already had European admixture meaning Chief McIntosh may have been majority European, but as he was descended matrilineally from the Creek nation, was deemed by the Creek to be one of them. According to his Wikipedia entry:
For generations, Creek chiefs had approved their daughters' marriages to fur traders in order to strengthen their alliances and trading power with the wealthy Europeans. Through both his mother and father, McIntosh was related to numerous other influential Creek chiefs, several of whom were of mixed race. They were descendants of strategic marriages between high-status Creek women and the mostly Scots fur traders in the area.
This is discussing someone born in 1775 and we already have potential majority European ancestry in a person considered native American.
The point of this is, a DNA test may not show native American ancestry, particularly if the putative native ancestry is from an eastern tribe such as the Creek in Chief McIntosh's case, Cherokee in my family's case, or Cherokee or Delaware in Sen. Warren's case.
The fact that Warren's ancestry matters to Brown and to Trump is in itself rather offensive and racist. For too much of this nation's history, its native peoples have ironically been discounted as being Americans. Despite being native to this land far earlier than those of predominantly European ancestry, being part native American was seen as being inferior, making one less of an American if American at all. Thankfully most of our culture has changed, with many people embracing and taking pride in their native heritage and others seeking to prove the oral traditions in their family of native ancestry. As in Sen. Warren's case, this is often only in the family's oral tradition as records, if they ever existed at all, may no longer exist to prove this ancestry and DNA testing may be inconclusive.
Families don't generally make up oral traditions of native ancestry. They may now start doing so since it does not bear the same stigma, but in generations past, if there was a family tradition of native ancestry, chances are good that there is likely some truth to it. More often than not, the oral tradition is to hide such unsavory ancestry to pass as being 100% European rather than acknowledging native American or African ancestry.
On my father's side of the family, one group of my ancestors claimed to be of Portuguese descent and this explanation for their darker skin was often accepted though sometimes dejected by 19th century courts. There was a kernel of truth to the Portuguese origin. They afterall had been aboard a Portuguese ship sailing from a Portuguese colony when a Dutch privateer captured the ship and sailed them to Jamestown, Virginia in 1619 where they were sold as indentured servants who became free after a term of years. They were infact black Africans from the Malanje region of the Angolan highlands, but their descendants in America are more commonly known by a corruption of the word Malanje-ians, they are known as Melungeons. As slavery took hold and interracial marriage banned, these free persons of color who by now descended from not just the "20 and odd" Africans sold by the Dutch privateer, but from white settlers as well, escaped to the mountains beyond the limits of where settlement in the colonies was permitted. They began intermarring with the native Americans as well as other whites. By the late 1700's and early 1800's as white settlement pushed beyond the eastern front of the Appalachians, white settlers encountered communities of darker, grayish or olive skinned people with blue eyes and European features. They claimed to be white as well, owing their dark complexion to being Portugeuse. It was their way of passing to escape the stigma of being a non-American, of not being white.
Despite native Americans and Melungeons having ancestry here long before 99% of Americans, Brown and Trump still do not see or wish to demote the Americanness of those with such ancestry. It boils down to a bastardized definition of what it means to be an American.
I can claim ancestors who were here before European man. On my paternal grandfather's line, I have my aforementioned ancestor who arrived in Jamestwon in 1619. On my paternal grandmother's side, in her direct male line I have an ancestor who in 1635 arrived in a small fishing village called Boston along with Cotton Mather's grandfather Rev. Richard Mather. My maternal grandmother's direct male line came to America in 1684 arriving in New Castle County of the Pennsylvania Province. My maternal grandfather's direct male line were the late comers only arriving in America in the 1740s evenutally patenting land from William Penn's sons outside of Gettysburg, PA. (A springhouse built by this ancestor and his sons was recently saved and added to the National Military Park as it and the house built by a later settler were used as a field hospital during the battle a century later.) There are only a couple of lines I can't trace back before the Revolution and they were all already here...in America. If anyone can claim to be an American, it is me, but that's not the definition of being American. It is not my definiton of being an American.
That was the definition of heritage in Europe though. You were what your ancestors were. But America is different. It was designed to be different. And Brown and Trump's notion of what it is to be an American runs completely counter to the new order our founders sought to create. it is not often a liberal can approvingly quote the conservative commentator and columnist George Will and deputize him to make a point, but in this I can. In a documentary created and produced by Ken Burns about Thomas Jefferson, Burns interviewed Will who gave this wonder insight into what it means to be an American. Will said
A lot of nations emerge from the mists of history and their basic identity is tribal. It is rooted in groups. Ours is rooted in a great assent, an assent to certain propositions. We are, as Lincoln said, [...] a nation dedicated to a proposition.
In discussing the Declaration of Independence and Jeffson's masterful authorship of this radical departure from European ideas of government, Will noted
We have a civil religion in this country and [Jefferson] provided a catechism. Every religion ought to have a catechism. Here are what we believe. Want to be an American? Here's what you believe. No one knows how you become French. No one knows where Germany comes from. It sort of emerges from the mist. We know when we started. We know the afternoon. July 4th, 1776. And we know how to become an American. You come here and assent. Then you're an American, just as Amercian as anybody whose family has been here 10 generations. You're in. You're it. That's what an American is.
He is absolutely correct. I am an American, and it is not because my family has been here 10 generations. The people who will be participating in naturalization ceremonies this Independence Day, upon swearing their oath, will be just as much an American as you or I or Elizabeth Warren. They will have, like all of us, assented. Being an American means believing in certain ideals, ideals we see some Americans like Brown and Trump trying to undermine. But that too is part of the freedom Americans have, respecting the rights of those who wish harm upon those ideas and ideals even while we oppose them.
President Andrew Sheperd in The American President had it right
America isn't easy. America is advanced citizenship. You gotta want it bad, 'cause it's gonna put up a fight. It's gonna say "You want free speech? Let's see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who's standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours. You want to claim this land as the land of the free? Then the symbol of your country can't just be a flag; the symbol also has to be one of its citizens exercising his right to burn that flag in protest." Show me that, defend that, celebrate that in your classrooms. Then, you can stand up and sing about the "land of the free".
Trump and Brown's vision of a bleached white porcelain America is delusional. We are an applique quilt, continually adding new fabrics and pieces building a perpetually changing eclectic masterpiece.
