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From: Secret Underground Lair
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quote:
ORIGINAL: m10bob
Native Americans?............................Hmm......
During the American Revolution...one of my relatives, George Rogers Clark captured Fort Vincennes from the British and thereby gained the "Northwest Territory" for the Continental Congress. The Congress was bankrupt, so they gave a lot of land west of the Appalachions to veterans.
William Arnold Clark was in George Rogers Clarks' army, (and was one of his cousins).He was my great-grandfather, 5 times removed..
His son,(same name) was a member of Captain Tom Scott's Indiana Mounted Riflemen, and his unit fought at the battle of Tippecanoe against Native Americans (Miami, mostly)..This is considered by many as the first land battle of the War of 1812..
William's son Arnold, married a Piankeshaw,(member of the Miamis), and her father fought against her now dad-in-law at Tippecanoe..
This would be no stranger than if I had married a German girl..
So, the off-spring of Arnold Clark and Sofia Torman(Anglo name given to her)were 50% "native-American"..
This was still on the so-called prairie where nobody asked questions about race, but with the red man being moved west,(by force), the government gave the Miami's the option of going west(leaving Indiana), or assimilating and (magically) becoming white, and giving up all rights to consider themselves "native American"..
My family remained, (what better credentials to call themselves native Hoosiers, both indiginous, and whites who had captured Indiana for the nation?)
So, Robert Henderson Clark begat my grandfather, and by the time my dad came along, he never knew he was part "native-American"......
While my grandfather was still a dark reddish-brown skin, with jet black hair and a very prominant nose, and dark brown eyes, we never questioned why I was more "nordic", with blonde hair, blue eyes..
I still have the high forehead and prominent curved nose.
As an investigator with some time on my hands after DEROS, I started looking up my family tree and learned all these details, (and a lot more).
Few of us, (especially in America), can claim to be "pure" of any race in particular
My Uncle Paul did a bunch of geneaology stuff years ago. Seems we had a great-granny (Jeddy May[sp?] Owens) who was on the Dawson (or is it Dawes?) Roster, the list of Cherokee who were made to walk the Trail of Tears.
Course my Mom knew this stuff, having grown up with a half-Cherokee prostitute mother who died of alcoholism, though personally I never did blame her; what do you expect the half-assimilated, "half-breed" descendants of a once-proud refugee culture to be like after all? Noble and well-balanced?
So that is the relatively disadvantaged context into which I emerged. Never counted but I'd guess easily half my maternal relatives are either in prison or dead, mostly from suicide. But if you ask anyone I'm "white" and embody all the "advantage" that that label implies. No doubt that large fractions of Americans fit into a similar comparison.
Amazing how efforts to 'erase' bias and stereotype can actually emboss it a standardized Federal code.
Heh . . . and there he is, good 'ole Andrew Jackson staring up at me from the $20 notes in my wallet . . . yeah, "justice" can take a very long time to unfold.
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RE: Navy commemorating 1944 Pearl Harbor disaster - 
That was not my intent. And I see your point.
"No. No." 
"You flatter yourself sir!" 
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