Blood degrees were unknown concept to Cherokees

BY WILL CHAVEZ
Senior Reporter

TAHLEQUAH, Okla. – Until the 19th century, Cherokee people lived by a clan system and identified themselves with their mothers’ clans. They had no concept of a full blood or half blood and were Cherokee if they had a clan.

“If your mother died, then your aunt would take you in or your grandmother. You would not be abandoned,” said Gene Norris, senior genealogist for the Cherokee National Historical Society, in his presentation “The Dawes Final Roll and Public Misconceptions” during the ninth annual Cherokee Ancestry Conference held June 11-12 in Tahlequah.

In the 19th century, as the Cherokee Nation adopted written laws, its identity turned into a political one and the clan system began to be set aside. However, the CN did not issue blood degrees. Those were brought upon tribes by the federal government, Norris said.
“They did not know how much Cherokee they were because they had no concept of that.

They knew they were Cherokee, and that’s all they needed to know,” he said.

In the early 1900s, when the Dawes Commission interviewed CN citizens to determine blood degrees for land allotments, they met resistance and some Cherokees refused to be interviewed. Commission workers sometimes took the testimonies of people who barely knew the person refusing to be interviewed. In one instance, testimony for a Cherokee man named Jackson Christie was given by his half-sister’s daughter’s husband, Norris said.

“It would be like your neighbor, who has known you for 20 years, going to the government and answering personal questions about you, and the government buys it. That’s what happened with the Dawes Roll,” he said.

In Christie’s case, his distant relatives did not accurately know his age and told interviewers Christie was “about half” Cherokee, though records show he was likely a full blood, Norris said.

In other instances Cherokee siblings’ blood degrees were written down with different degrees. Though it could be proven the siblings were full brothers and sisters, one sibling may have been written down as 4/4 Cherokee or full blood, while another may have considered three-quarters.

With all its shortcomings, the Dawes Roll is considered “written in stone” and cannot be amended except by an act of Congress, Norris said.

Because of the confusion surrounding the Dawes Roll, Norris said he has heard various reasons as to why a family is not on the roll from people searching for Cherokee ancestry. One reason is that an ancestor gave away or sold the roll number after receiving it from the government. That could not happen because those numbers were assigned to specific person, he said.

Another common story is that an ancestor was ashamed of being Indian or was afraid of being discriminated against and would not enroll, but many historians don’t believe this reason either.

Since 1907, the Bureau of Indian Affairs has used the Dawes Roll to determine who receives a Certificate Degree of Indian Blood card. Also, since 1975, when the CN amended its constitution, CN citizenship is based on the Dawes Roll, with each citizen required to have a direct ancestor on the roll.

Sometimes, Norris said, a person may find their direct ancestor’s sister or brother but not their direct ancestor. A person cannot use an indirect ancestor to enroll with the tribe, he said.

People also ask Norris, if they submit a DNA test showing they have Native American ancestry, can they enroll with the tribe? Norris said that is not possible because the CN does not accept DNA results for enrollment, and it’s difficult to determine if someone is specifically Cherokee through DNA testing.

Regarding Native American blood and blood degrees, Norris said he has never found a master document showing how the federal government determined blood degrees. He said the CN does not require a certain blood degree to be a tribal citizen.

Today, he said the lowest CN blood degree he knows of is 1/4,096.

“You have to keep in mind that the Cherokee didn’t give themselves blood degrees, the federal government gave them blood degrees,” he said.

will-chavez@cherokee.org • (918) 207-3961