Reply #18: I always knew I had Indian in me...

[AnneD]

I thought it was 1/4...Then my brother showed me his tribal roll card. Seems I am 1/2 Cherokee. Well butter my butt and call me a biscuit. It means squat-I hope to get some health care benefits. But it did answer a lot of questions for me like.....

Why Dad left home and joined the USAF-seldom to return, or what language my elders were speaking when they tended the fire in the pot bellied stove over night-when they thought I was sleeping, why my relatives had to place newspaper in the chinks of their houses to keep out the drafts, why we slept in one room with blankets covering all the doors in a futile effort to keep the cold out, why my Aunt didn't get electricity and indoor plumbing until 1967, why I can smell the things I can and read animals like I do, why my brothers track things, how I could shoot a bulls eye first time I ever picked up a bow (sling or rock), why my brothers can't drink alcohol, why my older brother can break train and ride horses-even the most difficult.

My Grandmother had brown hair brown eyes-Grandpa black hair and blue eyes. Their full Cherokee children had every colour imaginable. Cherokee, after all, were civilized, mixing in with agricultural communities on the eastern seaboard.

Oh and the irony of it all...My husband is Indian...from India. The difference between an Indian and an Indian.....chest and facial hair.