How to Check the Family Heritage for an Indian Background
- 1). Ask your parents and grandparents what they know about your possible Indian background. While many families have a traditional tale of a long-dead Indian ancestor, Native Americans were persecuted and discriminated against, and many elders refrain from talking about their heritage for fear of recrimination. If your elders are reticent about their heritage, ask instead where their parents lived and seek dates of birth, marriage, and death of their parents and grandparents instead of focusing on their background.
- 2). Determine the state where your family lived during the time the Indian Rolls were taken. Depending on the state of domicile, Indian Rolls were taken between 1790 and 1940, so you will have to match dates and places before narrowing your search to specific people. For example, the Dawes Rolls were taken between 1898 and 1914 and contain the records of the Five Civilized Tribes: the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Creek, Seminole, and Choctaw nations. Because these tribes were relocated from east of the Mississippi, most of the people lived in Oklahoma during the period the Dawes Roll was taken.
- 3). Match your ancestor information to the Roll, searching by name and age to pinpoint the person or persons in your family who are listed on the Roll. Most Rolls may be accessed from a library computer or online; see the National Archives link in the Resources section of this article. Keep in mind that women may have been listed under their maiden name rather than their married name.
- 4). Document your heritage using birth, marriage and death records to prove the person listed on the Roll is your ancestor by blood in order to prove your Indian background.
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