Whats your heritage?

[Buzzer]

There's a lot of Cherokee because they mixed in with whites the easiest. Socially speaking, anyway, they had a lot in common with white settlers and integrated the easiest (Trail of Tears and the like notwithstanding). They were also an important part of Texas independence from Mexico (though they then got royally screwed despite the efforts of some, and marrying Cherokee was one of the reasons the Republic of Texas made laws about race and marriage). They even joined the Confederates in the Civil War (part of that was bitterness over the Trail of Tears, but some were also slave owners).

All in all I can believe many have Cherokee in their bloodline, more than any other Native American group. Still, so many were trying to officially claim heritage that the Cherokee nation made some very strict guidelines on who could be counted, guidelines that many with Cherokee ancestry could not meet if they'd integrated into white society (and makes sense to me).

I never heard of them being associated with Pocahontas, and it's not just hippies who claim Cherokee ancestors.

Of course this is all very true, and I was definitely aware of these historical factors. That being said, little of this was exclusive just to the Cherokee (there were four other so-called "civilized tribes" along with the Cherokee who largely lived alongside, traded with, and assimilated closely into white Southern culture) and when the dust all settles there's still a particular self-identification over-reporting of Cherokee vs. the others, just as there's an over-reporting of Irish compared to say, German or French or similar even when many of those groups emigrated in similar or larger numbers. Ultimately most people, particularly in America, have a degree of haziness to their full family history and "grandma used to say we were part Native" (or related to Daniel Boone..) can somehow through repetitions turn into a claim in self-identification which may or may not be accurate. The poor documentation doesn't make family research any easier, particularly with Native blood, because anti-miscegenation laws in the U.S. made Indian-other marriages illegal for much of our history and so many of these marriages were common law, and are difficult to trace and document factually.

There are undoubtedly considerable numbers of otherwise white European-Americans with Cherokee heritage, but a very good fraction of the total people who claim it actually may have ties to other tribes, or only the rumor of an ancestor somewhere. It is kind of the go-to tribe when people suspect some Native ancestry but really have no hard evidence of it or to which tribe that ancestry hailed.

Heck half the time when I mention Blackfoot blood people haven't heard of the tribe... I have to sigh and say "Did you see Dances with Wolves? They were like that tribe.."