But unlike Elizabeth Warren's family the branch I came from had no stories and no specifics. While it is possible there is an ancestor who was of Native American descent, there is no documentary evidence.
The most likely path would be from Cherokees - our ancestors on my Mom's side came from South Carolina through Tennessee and ended up in the part of Alabama that had just been "cleared" by Andrew Jackson in the 1810s. One ancestor had a pass to travel through Indian territory between South Carolina and Tennessee - but I have researched that branch and there is no possibility that there is any NA blood there. That is not the branch that is most often rumored to have NA blood.
When my sister got a DNA test done through the National Geographic’s Genographic Project, her results came back with a trace of Native American. I had my DNA tested with Ancestry and my results showed no NA traces.
As a genealogist it would be interesting to have proof of Native American blood in my family but it wouldn't make a difference to anything at all in my life.
For those wondering about whether DNA tests could prove a link to specific tribes - most NA groups have objected to DNA testing. That is one reason the research into the origins of Kennewick Man was such an uphill battle. When the Northwestern NA groups were finally persuaded to allow DNA testing, it proved that Kennewick Man WAS NA. Previously some anthropologists had thought the skull morphology indicated a different origin for the remains.
The ancestry and affiliations of Kennewick Man
Kennewick Man, referred to as the Ancient One by Native Americans, is a male human skeleton discovered in Washington state (USA) in 1996 and initially radiocarbon dated to 8,340–9,200 calibrated years before present (bp)1. His population affinities have been the subject of scientific debate and legal controversy. Based on an initial study of cranial morphology it was asserted that Kennewick Man was neither Native American nor closely related to the claimant Plateau tribes of the Pacific Northwest, who claimed ancestral relationship and requested repatriation under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). The morphological analysis was important to judicial decisions that Kennewick Man was not Native American and that therefore NAGPRA did not apply. Instead of repatriation, additional studies of the remains were permitted2. Subsequent craniometric analysis affirmed Kennewick Man to be more closely related to circumpacific groups such as the Ainu and Polynesians than he is to modern Native Americans2. In order to resolve Kennewick Man’s ancestry and affiliations, we have sequenced his genome to ~1× coverage and compared it to worldwide genomic data including for the Ainu and Polynesians. We find that Kennewick Man is closer to modern Native Americans than to any other population worldwide. Among the Native American groups for whom genome-wide data are available for comparison, several seem to be descended from a population closely related to that of Kennewick Man, including the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation (Colville), one of the five tribes claiming Kennewick Man. We revisit the cranial analyses and find that, as opposed to genome-wide comparisons, it is not possible on that basis to affiliate Kennewick Man to specific contemporary groups. We therefore conclude based on genetic comparisons that Kennewick Man shows continuity with Native North Americans over at least the last eight millennia.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v523/n7561/full/nature14625.html
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