Posted on 02/07/2018 4:07:30 AM PST by SJackson
When I was a child I became curious, as children sometimes will, about my family history. Although my grandfathers were dead, my grandmothers were alive, and I asked them what they knew about our origins.
The answer: not much. But they provided me with a few names, enabling me to draw up the rudimentary beginnings of a family tree.
Later, I spent a good deal of time in the New York Public Library's genealogy room, trying to trace my ancestry back from those names. (There was no Internet then.) I didn't get anywhere with my father's side of the family – his parents were Poles who'd fled Europe during World War I – but I was able to follow a couple of lines on my mother's side back to colonial Virginia and Pennsylvania.
It was fun. But nobody else in the family cared. And then life came calling, and I put away all my findings in a folder in my parents' basement.
Fast forward forty years. Recently a relative dusted off that folder, picked up where I left off, and has nailed down a lot more information about our ancestry than I ever imagined possible. She's traced some lines back to fifteenth-century England. I knew I had English, Welsh, and Scots blood, and that some of my ancestors were French Huguenots, but I didn't know I was part Dutch. I'm even descended from Italian Protestants (!) whose flight from Catholic oppression led them, over a couple of generations, to France, Britain, and eventually America.
But the biggest news (so far) came just the other day. Did you ever hear of the Nansemond Indians? Me neither. When English settlers founded Jamestown, the Nansemond Indians were their neighbors. At first, relations weren't exactly chummy. But there were exceptions, one of which was the marriage, in 1638, of a settler named John Basse to the daughter of the tribal chief, no less.
Follow their line for several generations and you arrive at one Nancy Jane Bass, who married a fellow named William Colwell. In 1841, these two had a daughter whom they named Celestial, of all things, and who grew up to marry one William Frank Hines. One of their sons, Charles, fathered a daughter named Ruth Elizabeth Hines, who was born in 1898 in South Carolina and who, as it happens, was my maternal grandmother.
In short, if you go back far enough – eleven generations, to be specific – I'm part American Indian. Sorry: native American.
Yes! Really! At first I was stunned. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that this new bit of data explains a lot. In fact, it explains everything. Not to go into too much detail, but, hey, my life hasn't been all that easy. There have been some rough patches. I've always worked hard, but sometimes I haven't made nearly enough wampum. All these years I thought it was just, you know, the way life is for pretty much everybody: you win some, you lose some. You have fat years and lean years. If something bad happens, you should pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again. But no! Now I realize it was all racism. All these years, you white people, with your white privilege, have been conspiring to keep me down.
The more I think of it, the more enraged I get. You filthy Europeans came to my land, my paradise, my Eden, where the red man lived in harmony with the noble elk and hawk, and in brotherhood with plant and tree and stream, and forced me to study your history and literature, your math and science – white man's culture! – and thereby denied me the knowledge that would otherwise have been mine, like how to carve a totem pole and or make turquoise necklaces. You stole it all from me, while infecting my pristine continent with cholera, diphtheria, malaria, and the plague.
Let's face it: you bastards have been my oppressors ever since I was a little papoose! You dragged me out of the wigwam into your concrete jungle! You pushed your evil firewater upon me! (And all this time I thought it was my fault that I drink too much.) Now I realize why, when I was a kid, I enjoyed wearing moccasins! I could still be wearing them now – but no, you forced me into your own uncomfortable, constricting footwear and made me tread your hard pavements when I could have been walking in the sunshine of the meadow and the shadow of the forest! Of course, I realize now that I've been all wrong in my political views – specifically, my foolish disapproval of identity politics. So here's a message to all of my redskin brothers and sisters, far and near, whom I may have alienated with my opinions: we bury hatchet! We smokum peace pipe! We go on warpath together against palefaces!
To put it a little differently, so that you lousy whites will understand: I'm a twofer now. I'm no longer a gay white male, that lame excuse for a subjugated minority. I'm a bona fide person of color – a gay native American male – and therefore a double victim, being persecuted from multiple directions. It's called intersectionality, you creeps, and I'm putting you on warning: the resistance starts now. Deal with it!
Hahahaha...at least we have some humor this morning
};^P>
Beat me to it! Haha!
Just wait until he has to fill in the 2020 Census papers!!!
One of the things that allowed the Hessians to tell British soldiers from American was that the Americans were "Biscuit colored" in other words, of mixed heritage. Lots more guys came over then girls.
And no, aside from a story to tell your children it does not get you anything.
So I guess in Bruce Bawer's case it does not get him anything.
Good one! My husband has a similar story. He is 82 and when he was a little boy he asked his great aunt if he was part Indian. He wanted to be so badly. She said “ yes, there was an Indian grandmother, but don’t worry, she was the white folks kind Indian”.
He was one happy little boy!
No kidding. One of my favorites is how one of my great great uncles got fined a dollar, (a lot of money back then) for "Horse racing on a Sunday". I never was able to find out if he was a rider or the bookie.
Part of me would really like to do one of those tests. However, I know that the information would be sold, given, or just left for multiple to find.
And in looking at my family tree, I do wonder just who is in that woodpile. My late grandmother used to joke that my matriarchal line has been kicked out of every country in Europe, and my patriarchal line is banned from ever returning to an island by Sweden for drinking and fighting.
The later may be why I was raised to hate the Swedes. The former is why I sometimes wonder just what that side really should identify as. German, Dutch, Romanian, maybe some Greek. They had a taste for travel and exotic wives.
Keep looking. You might find a family connection to Elizabeth Warren.
No matter who you are, if you look high enough in the family tree you'll find ancestors you never could have imagined--including some who are not white/European, or whatever you have learned to identify yourself with. It would be such fun to be able to know them all. What surprises there would be!
Oh wake up those sleeping ancestors. They could turn out to be your most interesting ones!
My wife had the opposite experience. She was convinced that she was part Native American. Some members of her family looked like it. We tested her DNA. Nope. Sorry. All Western Europe. What a disappointment.
I woke mine up a few years ago going through FramilySearch.org (it’s free). My great-great-great grandfather and his brother fought in the siege of Ninety-Six (SC) during the Revolution. The brother was killed. Digging a little deeper I found they were Tories (Loyalists) fighting the American General Nathaniel Greene. Later this ancestor’s grandson fought in the Civil War in a Texas cavalry unit (CSA). These fellows kept on picking the wrong side!
I remember a recent news item saying that one of those DNA-ancestry companies was reporting that everyone has black blood ‘just to screw with people.’ Does anyone remember that item?
not for nothing but my cousin is in fact the lawyer for the native American people, getting them $ and rights, yes like casinos. I could hook you up if your ever interested.
your Huguenots were they in newburgh ny? if so you intersect with my tree, dutch, French, the first muslim in new Amsterdam, the longest running lawsuit in the usa. My tree is currently at 68,000, no Indians yet but one line goes back to Charlemagne.
All that to brag on his being a queer.
HOMOSEXUAL, because there’s nothing GAY about it.
Unless I slipped a digit, that is one part in 2,048 Indian. Anyway, that is still a LOT more than Lizzie.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.