Hi Paul
I hope you don't give up, but you do seem to have some ideas about what a tribe is that suggest you haven't spent much time in a real tribal community. There are elements of continuity and being completely immersed and surrounded with people who share the same heritage and culture which just can't be recreated.It seems kind of like trying to recreate a living tree with a bunch of branches.
Maybe it's kind of like fishing. Until you expereince a real fish on the end of your line it's easy to imagine you are going to have a delious meal when all you got is a snag in some bottom mud...
I think wolfhawaii Kathyrn and Rattlebone gave you some good advice. See if there is some way you can spend some time making yourself useful in an undisputedly real Cherokee community.
Like rattlebone just pointed out , there is objective criteria which defines a tribe from a group of descendents , but this doesn't have anything to do with how nice the people are, or if someone else likes them. Even if the person who likes them is someone you have a great deal of respect for they could still be swayed by personal feelings.
I don't doubt there was many individuals who passed as white or black who were of some Native descent, but in most situations it seems really unlikely there was whole tribal communities that hid out ( and retained their identity ) without being noticed and recorded as such for the past 150 years.
Were the Echota Cherokee were recorded as a tribe 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 40 years ago , 80 , 100 , 120, 150 years ago?
Can the people claiming to be Echota Cherokee prove they descend from the people who were repeatedly recorded as a part of this alleged Cherokee community?
I think most people familiar with this subject would agree a tribe is always / almost always a continously recognized community and consisting of people who can prove descent from this community .
He explained that it was all about the money.
I guess that might be a bias , but without substantial recorded historical evidence of a tribe that was the Echota Cherokee, it's kind of like saying people don't believe in UFO's because they are scarey.... That may be true, but it doesn't logically follow there is little green men.
They think the Lumbee are fake? I know the Lumbee, personally, Their not "Fake". They may not be recognized but their not fake.
Well actually , that one is kind of confusing.... Some affiliated people in the area do seem to have been documented as a tribe, but if this website claiming to show results of a DNA study that was done of on the people claiming to be Lumbee is legit ( maybe it isn't ? ) .. It gets less clear, as very few of the matrilineal or patrilineal lines show Native decsent.
http://www.huxford.com/Genetics_Lumbee_Results.htmThe mtDNA that originated on this continent is A ,B, C, D and some types of X and I believe the only Y DNA that seems to have originated here is Q.
I doubt a population with this small of an indigenous input is really an indigenous tribe. Which I know is strange , as the Lumbee sound like they have a strong case and a lot of records showing they exist and were thought to be an Indian tribe for a long time.
I was recently reading how there was quite a few people who were brought to the East coast as servants or slaves from India,
http://thestudyofracialism.org/about5820.htmlSocial historian Thomas Brown, a faculty member at Lamar University, Beaumont, Texas has corroborated this in a 2004 research paper. Brown explains that many East Indians were imported to the American colonies by way of England, arriving already Christianized and fluent in English. Others arrived as slaves who had been captured and sold. “It is impossible to confidently estimate the size of the South Asian population in the Western Shore counties, but “East Indians” outnumber “Indians” in the extant colonial records after 1710 or so,” acknowledges Brown.
Furthermore, he claims: ‘In 18th century Chesapeake, South Asians stood out from sub-Saharan slaves both in culture and appearance. Since South Asians were a minority among the slave population, the community’s perception of their distinctiveness persisted for a longer period of time.' And most surprisingly, Brown adds: ‘there was a significant contingent of “East Indian” slaves in the colonial Chesapeake.’
I suppose that might explain some of these groups who are identified as tri racial isloates , ( the Lumbee)...
It is a really complex issue. But you seem to be making a sincere effort to try and get it figured out....
