I think every family has some legendary tale repeated from generation to generation regarding some scandalous ancestor or ancestry. Perhaps even several stories float about in most families as they do in mine. One such historical narrative in my family was so “bad,” that a division opened up in our family. Those who believed and those who denied.

I am the daughter of one who believed  and was willing to claim the story. I remember it from the earliest years of my life. My father, whom I called Daddy, was a great fire maker, banjo picker, singer, storyteller and beer drinker. These talents usually came together four or five times a year when my uncles, aunts, and cousins would gather at my grandmother’s. The fire would signal the mothers to come out from the kitchen and the kids to settle down after the excitement of chasing fireflies. The men picking and tuning banjos and guitars promised a different kind of excitement, one that I can still feel stirring in my chest at the sound of a banjo and the smell of smoke. My cousins and I got to stay up late on these occasions, blind eyes were turned to us as we snuck sips of beer from our daddies and sips of lime daiquiri from our mamas. Soon the singing would begin.

Everything from Bobby Goldsboro and Roger Miller to Hank Williams and Johnny Cash was played, we hummed when we didn’t know the words. As the drinks flowed the music got messier, there was more humming and a general mellowing prevailed. It was then that the stories got trotted out. Against the background of soft strumming, Daddy told about the Cherokee Warrior Chief who led raids on southern colonists. His story was bloody and scary in my memory, the details vague except for the final statement always directed at me, his only child, “And that’s the story of your great-great-great grandfather.”

The days of my childhood were long gone when I started seriously researching my family’s genealogy. I always remembered that one story and that I might have Cherokee blood running through my veins, so I was ever on the look-out for the proof.

Five years ago, while on a cemetery expedition I found a memorial marker that read,
Nathan Ward
Sara (an Indian).


I knew them to be my fifth great-grandparents, I did not know she was “an Indian.” Soon after I discovered the division in our family. It seems that a living second uncle of mine was so outraged at the thought of “an Indian” in his family tree that he re-wrote history in his book. He did this with the support of many on his side who no doubt had heard the stories. I do not understand the depth of prejudice that would lead someone to deny their heritage. I have never been persecuted or discriminated against in any real way so I will reserve judgment of my uncle on this issue and I will not name him or the title of his book. I will, however, point out that he has perpetuated a mistake in our family tree by giving Sara an entirely different set of parents. He wrote the book about twenty years ago and it has been used as a reference for almost that many years. Further, he fought the historical society who placed the memorial marker in the old cemetery, he did not want Sara to be noted as Indian. The advent of records on the internet and the more recent DNA projects have proved that my uncle’s book at best is in error, at worst may be peppered with lies.

Last week through the magic of DNA, large scale genealogy projects and other documentation, I have discovered that Sara, my fifth great-grandmother was Naky Sara Tatsi Canoe Brown Ward daughter of Cherokee Warrior Chief Dragging Canoe. Daddy was right with the exception of a few greats. I have been telling anyone who will listen about this discovery. I have also been singing these lyrics over and over again, “Cherokee Nation, Cherokee tribe, so proud to live, so proud to die…” In my head, I sound just like Cher who sang my favorite version of this song. I imagine my dad singing along, minus the banjo.