I have to admit, I'm one of those people who supposedly has a Cherokee great-great-great-grandma. Although I've found evidence that actually supports this (old census records) I'm still skeptical. A lot of people say that they have Cherokee or other Native American ancestry and I'm not sure it's true. On the other hand, I don't want to sit over here denying my heritage if it's likely that the records are accurate.
So historically, how much mixing actually occurred? How likely is it that the records I found are accurate? Is there some reason that 200 years ago someone that wasn't might claim they were a Native American? If there is, is that what attributes so many people claiming a heritage that they do not have? I just wonder if it's something that at some point people decided was "cool" and they made it up or if it's something that was true and buried in family histories until it became socially acceptable after the Civil Rights Movement or something.
Thanks!
Historians will better be able to explain the whens and whys of Native Americans mixing with non-Natives, but here's some supplemental data from DNA testing company 23AndMe.
You can find the study online here (http://www.cell.com/ajhg/fulltext/S0002-9297(14)00476-5). There's a table partially down the page that breaks down the data very easily.
Another problem of finding evidence in the historical record is that if you track individuals over time through the census, their race changes. Census categories changed, census takers had different ideas about what constituted racial boundaries, and sometimes individuals would consciously shift their racial identity (either to "pass" as another person commented, to match that of their spouse, or to correspond with a community to which they had migrated). Anne Hyde's book Empires, Nations, and Families gives examples where people like Indian women married to Frenchmen and Californios of mixed ancestry inhabited several racial categories over the course of their lives.
Think of it the other way. Would someone who is mixed Native-American have a reason to actively conceal this, and "assimilate" with the white culture?
Answer: Yes. Racist attitudes with regard to Indians (or towards "Half-Breeds") were commonplace throughout much of American history, and are of course still present. Native Americans for the most part were not considered citizens of the US until 1924.
This who had skin white enough to "pass", and who concealed their Native ancestry may be termed "crypto-Indians".