re: What percent Native American are you? Which tribe?

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My mother-in-law claimed Cherokee lineage. When my brother-in-law did a 23 and me test earlier this year, it showed no Native American genealogy, and all Northern European. The mother-in-law was disappointed.

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As far as I know, my own family has no Native Americans, but when my daughter did a 23 and me DNA test, she showed more Native American DNA than my son in law, whose genetic background definitely contains some NA. It must come from my wife's side somewhere.

My son in law is verifiably part Cherokee and can trace lineage to the Dawes Rolls, however, that ancestry is far enough back that his DNA test shows less than 1% Native American.


In all honesty, if your ancestors are from southern Appalachia, there's a pretty good chance your grandmother isn't lying about her NA ancestry. After the frontier battling ended, the immigrant Scots and Cherokees banged like rabbits. Probably moreso than any other native/immigrant groups. But once you're six or seven generations away, the DNA from a single ancestor becomes within the margin of error of the test.