The Cherokee Nation is intuitively understood by the White Southerner. To be sure, he is also understood by the Black Southerner. The Cherokee is very much part of what being a local control, family type person is. He is an adaptor, an acceptor, a businessman and trader, and a generous host. Much of what is known and understood about the Confederate Cause is wrong and/or misunderstood by people who have gone to school too long and learnt less and less while at it.
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| A group of Old Confederate Cherokee Indian Veterans |
The first point we must cover is that most white Southerners who can trace their ancestry into the colonial period of what is now the United States of America has some or a lot of Indian ancestry, You all have had introduction to and knowledge of El Zorro, for instance, who is, at a minimum, 3/16th Cherokee. El Gringo Viejo is 1/32nd by his father's side (Mohegan), and 1/16th by his maternal side.
When we say, "most Southerners" of the type described, we are talking about 90% of all such White Southerners. Blacks also have substantial Cherokee as well as Seminole ancestry mixed into swirl of chromosomes. The Whites were more apt to be drawn from the Cherokee, Cree(k), and Choctaw Nations and groupings, but those nations also had been substantially ethnically "compromised" because they had intermarried among themselves. The broad Cherokee grouping is the Southern extension of the Iroquois Nation and the language, appearance, and cultural practises were similar. The Iroquois and the Cherokee were at once combative and collaborative with the white man. By the time one hundred years had passed each side knew who the "good Indians and bad Indians'' and the "good White men and bad White men" were and who could be dealt with in any honourable and/or effective way. Formal intermarriage was in no wise rare between the two groups.
Almost all Indians who fought or served in any way during the War Between the States sided with the Confederacy. There were four Indians who held the rank of general during the War, all were Confederates.
As for their treatment, it was good and bad. People like Sam Houston and David Crockett broke with their own government and nation over the treatment rendered the Cherokee who were removed from the gold bearing lands in North Carolina and Georgia. By any standard it was a crime and Andrew Jackson should have been taken out and shot for his betrayal of the Cherokee and for his selling out of the principles established in the treaties with the Cherokee. Houston was a fully adopted son of his neighbouring Cherokee tribal chief and named "Raven" by his adoptive people. Crockett is thought to have had early Iroquois and Cherokee that mixed with his French and English ancestry.
Elizabeth Warren, Democrat candidate for the office of United States Senator from Massachusetts, is a poser and a fraudulent person. First of all, she is such because she is a socialist, and from that one defect spring all others. Since she is a socialist-marxist, she obeys no universal rules and accepts no truth, save for the truth of the necessity to destroy private initiatives, self-reliance, and private property. To a marxist, of course, a lie is the truth if it forwards the aims of socialist victory over the fascists and monarchists.
She is a mean, vicious, hateful, and narcissistic person, who knows....not feels....but knows that the "rules" do not apply to her. One thing she forgot on the way to her lie is that having some or considerable Cherokee does not make a person stand out in the South. We do not wake up in the morning and run to the saloon and beat on the doors at 09:00 o'clock so that we can run in and tell everyone, "I' m one of them there Indian-type people, you all!"
However, many, many, many saloon sessions have been spent in the South as the guys recount the bends and branches of the genealogical tree that lead to the speaker's Indian background. Each is interested in the others and it is known to be a requirement, almost, to be a "Real Southerner".
None or almost none of us would ever answer "yes" on the form which asks, "Are you a member of a recognised Native American tribe, nation, or other Indian grouping?" We might understand the Indian, be proud in our Continental Aboriginal connection, have ancestors who fought and defended the Southern Indian Nations, but it really does not make us "Real Live Indians". It is just that simple. The Cherokee cause and position is closer to El Gringo Viejo than his living brother, but that does not make either El Gringo Viejo or his brother, an Indian. As far as El Zorro is concerned, we do not propose to speak for him. We have gone over the issue many times, however, and it is this writer's notion that El Zorro's opinions and attitudes help shape El Gringo's attitudes, if anything. My grandparents were very matter of fact about their Indian background, but they considered themselves to be just plain-old, Anglo Saxon, Upland South people from Eastern Tennessee.
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| Sitting Bull's son and Pocahantas's daughter. |
El Gringo Viejo
