This has been adapted from the FAQ page on /r/IndianCountry under question 10, of which I am the author. It should be noted that this trope is actually linked into larger contemporary sociopolitical issues that Native Americans face today, so this post slightly touches on that.
No doubt, many of us have heard the story about how "great-great grandma was a Cherokee princess." This is a common family tale/tradition in many households in where a claim is made that some distant ancestor was either full or part Cherokee (or sometimes another Tribe) and that, due to a fire at the court house, a flood, or being a hidden secret, documentation/community ties have been lost and all that remains is the legend.
The reality is that those who make this claim are usually wrong. There are several reasons for this. However, let's first establish the validity of this notion.
It is entirely possible for someone to possess Native American ancestry and for it to be undocumented (though this possibility decreases when we consider the Cherokee, as they are arguably the most well documented Tribe in the United States). Besides the fact that many are not required, either by regulation or historical circumstance, to keep documents of their lineage, Native Americans have been subject pedigree recognition and documentation for centuries now. But this doesn't mean every case is well preserved. Tribes located east of the Mississippi sometimes have a more difficult time proving their ancestral connections than those further west simply due to a longer exposure to colonialism. So it can be true that an individual has American Indian ancestry and can be true even in the case of those claiming Cherokee blood. Gregory D. Smithers, Associate Professor of history at Virginia Commonwealth University and author of The Cherokee Diaspora,^1 states:
Therefore, it is understandable that the ones who make such a claim to this group of people could be right. However, most cases are either false or complete distorted, resulting in little validity to the claim overall. And here's why:
There was no such thing as a "princess" in the Cherokee culture. This is a common misconception.
As colonization swept westward in North America, settlers began to include this tale as part of their family traditions for various reasons. While it is true that the Cherokee adopted the tradition of marrying outside of one's tribe and, because of colonialism, spreading out across the country, Gregory D. Smithers (quoted above) continues (bold is mine):
But after their removal, the tribe came to be viewed more romantically, especially in the antebellum South, where their determination to maintain their rights of self-government against the federal government took on new meaning. Throughout the South in the 1840s and 1850s, large numbers of whites began claiming they were descended from a Cherokee great-grandmother. That great-grandmother was often a “princess,” a not-inconsequential detail in a region obsessed with social status and suspicious of outsiders. By claiming a royal Cherokee ancestor, white Southerners were legitimating the antiquity of their native-born status as sons or daughters of the South, as well as establishing their determination to defend their rights against an aggressive federal government, as they imagined the Cherokees had done. These may have been self-serving historical delusions, but they have proven to be enduring.
He goes even further into this particular aspects in this recorded presentation.
Kim TallBear, an enrolled member of South Dakota's Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate tribe and an associate professor at the University of Alberta who studies race, genomics and Native American identity, elaborates more on the problematic nature of this. She states (bold is mine):
Another prominent reason people make a claim to Native American heritage and some mythical status of royalty is simply the exotic factor. In our day and age, the melting pot the United States has become causes many people to look for an identity in order stand out. Because Hollywood and the media have grossly romanticized Native cultures, many tend to look for something to relate to in this regard, whether there is something there or not. This has been true for many years and, as clearly demonstrated, non-Native's have incorporated erroneous ties into their family traditions.
So what does all this prove? While there is some validity to the possibility of one possessing Cherokee blood or an ancestor, most cases are usually false. If there is some truth to it, it does not necessarily make them Native American. Or a princess. Or a Native American princess.
Edit: Some words.
Footnotes