WEB EXCLUSIVE   4/08
By Seteah Syncur’Ray

Like so many African Americans, I have been curious to learn more about the infusion of Native American blood into my family tree. What set of circumstances, I often wondered, led my African American grand fathers, like so many other black men during that period, to choose Native American women as their wives? I did some research on the subject, which provided some logical conclusions to many of my questions from a historical perspective. Unfortunately, what this research failed to do was allow me to experience this meshing of ancestral cultures on a personal level.

Because my parents conceived me so late in their lives, my grand parents were already deceased when I was born. As part of the great migration in the late 1940’s of black men and their families who moved up north from the south, in search of work within America’s booming industrial markets, my parents moved from Florida to Cleveland, Ohio. There they settled within the black Diaspora, which populated the east side of the city. When my siblings and I were later born, we were submerged into a thriving black culture that left little room for racial dichotomy. As a result, the only facts my siblings and I ever knew of our grand mothers were that they were both full-blooded, Cherokee Indians. My lack of travel outside of Ohio as a child growing up led me to conclude that Native Americans must therefore no longer exist. Perhaps, I reasoned, my parents decided that discussing the specifics of an extinct Native ancestry was too complicated a subject to explain to their children.

Eventually, I brushed off my Native ancestry as a segment of my history that would unfortunately remain unknown on a personal level. However, deep down inside, the questions and curiosities that only my Native grand mothers could have answered remained. I would have liked to have been able to actually sit down with these women and learn from them.

Many years later, in April 2000, I moved to Phoenix, Arizona. Unlike Cleveland, Phoenix is a very integrated and diverse city. The barbershops, soul food restaurants and juke joints that lined the all black, urban streets of Cleveland were replaced with palm trees, Indian fried bread stands and Mexican establishments, whose marquis were often times written in Spanish. Encounters with Native Americans, who occasionally spoke in their Native language, were common. Even though I was pleasantly surprised to see that Native Americans and their timeless culture thrived so well in the Grand Canyon state, by now I was well placed within a sense of blackness as being my sole identity, and as a result, was more focused on my career then Native culture.

By early 2002, I had become completely acclimated to Phoenix. I even found a nightclub to frequent on the south side of the city, which was similar to the clubs back home in Cleveland. It was here that I met a young lady by the name of Ellen, who would soon change an aspect of my life forever.

It was a Friday night and I was at the club. A song played that I wanted to dance to so I tapped the shoulder of a slender, longhaired female who sat with her back to me, and I asked her to dance. Initially, I thought Ellen was simply a light skinned sista, perhaps mixed, with naturally long hair. We hit it off that night and exchanged phone numbers. It was not until our first phone conversation that I found out that she was in fact, a full-blooded Native American. Her father, who was deceased, was a Muskogee (Creek), whose tribe had reservations in Oklahoma. Her mother, also deceased, was a mixture of Cherokee, Choctaw and Blackfoot.

Ellen and I began to date, and in doing so, I found an interesting parallel beginning to develop. During the early part of our dating, I remember thinking, is this how my grand parents met? My initial research many years prior had led me to theorize that the freedoms that marrying into Native tribes gave black men in collusion with whatever riffs remained between black men and black women, played the greatest roles in bringing my black grand fathers and Native grand mothers together. Suddenly, I was no longer sure.

After a month or so of dating, I met Ellen’s older brother, whose name was Robert. Robert was more of your traditional Native. He wore his shoulder length hair straight down the sides of his face, with a single part running through the top center portion of his scalp. He would also wear traditional Native jewelry and a headband. Our initial encounters where cordial but brief. Robert was deep into Native American culture and politics, and as a result, frequently incorporated these topics into his conversations. Despite this, Robert and I grew to be very cool. He kept me abreast of Native American affairs and customs, which I compared to African American social issues. This made for intellectually stimulating conversations between us. Soon Robert and his fiancée, a Navajo, began hanging out with Ellen and me on some weekends.

For the Memorial Day weekend of 2002, Ellen and I went to visit her two sisters and their families in California. On the drive out there, I admit I was slightly nervous about meeting her family for the first time. I honestly expected to meet a condescending, Native American clan, whose cultural awareness would make for an uncomfortable, a “Guess who’s coming to dinner” type weekend for me. However, when we walked through the front door of her sister’s home, we were greeted by a houseful of Ellen’s nieces and nephews, who except for their naturally long hair looked as black as I did. As it turned out, both of Ellen’s sisters were married to black men and had eight children by them and a slew of grand children.

As Ellen slowly led me through her sister’s home, towards the back den where the adults all gathered, I glanced up at the walls, which were hung with black-and-white portraits of their ancestors—most of whom were clad in traditional Native garb. As the images of high cheekbones, rifles and desert plateaus strolled proudly like a covered wagon through the lost trails of my humble psyche, I suddenly began to feel as if I were taking my first steps back in time, through my own family ancestry.

As Ellen politely introduced me to her sisters, I could not believe that I was actually experiencing this simple, monumental moment. How could I have ever guessed that my life journey would lead me into such a perhaps, identical replica of a family tree that eventually spawned me?   

The weekend shindig was wonderful. I was able to meet most of Ellen’s family who lived in California. We barbecued, and played cards and dominoes while listening to old school music and watching the children play in the backyard pool. Most importantly, I was finally able to experience a history that my research could have never brought to life for me. Although times are different now and questions still remain, I think I may finally have a better understanding of why my parents chose not to elaborate on my grand mother’s ethnicity--perhaps for the same reason that Ellen chose not to mention that her sister’s husbands were black. Maybe it just wasn’t necessary. Maybe my grand parents met the same way Ellen and I met, and not the social-political reasons I had earlier believed true. They fell in love and went on to rear a family, content to let their storied histories and ethnic differences quietly mesh into whatever culture it became. 

The highlight of my weekend was the fact that I was finally able to meet two Native women with strength and pride, who helped to continue a bloodline and raise a strong family not unlike my own. Through these two women’s faces, I had quietly pretended that I had met my grand mothers after all; and what outstanding women they were. I can finally say that for a fact now.

Now days, back in Phoenix, Robert is attempting to teach me his Native language. All I can manage to remember so far is one word. Ironically, it is the perfect word to remember on the occasions that I am invited to walk through their family doorway and into a past that I never thought I would be able to experience for myself. In fact, I remember often times asking myself years ago, what would I say to that hidden part of my history, if I could step back in time and be introduced to it. Now I know what I would say. I would say the one word that Robert has taught me that I can remember. I would say “Hensci”, which in the Creek language simply means hello.

The author is a freelance writer based in Phoenix, where he continues to research his Native American ancestry.