Mixed Race Studies

The Mayes

Chronicles of Oklahoma
Volume 15, Number 1 (March, 1937)
pages 56-65

John Bartlett Meserve

The saga of the Cherokees, from the dawn of their arrival in the old Indian Territory down to the present, is emphatically one of constant change in their social, economic, and political lives. The influence of the adventurous white men who intermarried and cast their fortunes among the Indians was very pronounced. The mixed blood descendants of those soldiers of fortune in numerous instances achieved wealth, distinction, and leadership among the Indians and strongly influenced their tribal life. Numerous families of prominence grew up among the mixed blood Cherokee Indians. These families, while none the less proud of their Indian blood, were and are today, capable, in many instances, of tracing an ancestry back to some early white colonial ancestor of more or less renown. The intermarriage of these families provoked a sort of aristocracy in the social and intellectual life of the Cherokees and today among them are families of the highest culture and refinement. They may have been clannish to a degree, but probably inherited this trait from the Scotch with whom they were largely intermarried. The Cherokees have their “first families” and most charming they are indeed. It is worthy of note that the Cherokee Nation had no principal chief of the full blood after the days of the adoption of its constitution in 1827. Its political affairs, after that time, were managed by shrewd, mixed-blood politicians bearing white men’s names and speaking the white man’s language and frequently, with scarcely enough Indian blood to evidence itself in their features.

The Adair family was outstanding among the Cherokees. Two brothers, John and Edward Adair, Scotchmen whose father is reputed to have achieved much prominence in England during the reign of George III, came to America in 1770 and engaged in trading operations with the Indians and ultimately intermarried among the Cherokees in Tennessee. John Adair married Ga-hoga, a full blood Cherokee Indian woman of the Deer clan and his son, Walter Adair, known as Black Watt, was born on December 11, 1783 and became an active character among the Cherokees. Walter Adair married Rachel Thompson, a white woman, on May 13, 1804 and died in Georgia on January 20, 1835. Rachel Thompson was born in Georgia on December 24, 1786 and died near what is today Stilwell, Oklahoma, on April 22, 1876. Nancy Adair, a daughter of Walter and Rachel Adair was born in Georgia on October 7, 1808, married Samuel Mayes on January 22, 1824 and died in what is today Mayes County, Oklahoma on May 28, 1876 and is buried in the old family cemetery on the Wiley Mayes place some seven miles east of Pryor, Oklahoma…

Read the entire article here.

Perspective on Mixed-Blood Natives: The Silence of Indian Country

Native News Network
Native Condition: Analysis and Opinion
2011-09-22

Mike Raccoon Eyes
Eastern Band of the Cherokee
Quallah, North Carolina

SAN FRANCISCO—Cherokee culture was steeped deeply into the great Meso-American pyramid temple cities as early as 800 AD. When the Olmecs, Toltecs, Mayans and Aztecs were moving from north to south deep into Mexico and Central America. They quickly absorbed and embraced building their own great pyramid temple spiritual cities they had observed and seen in the great Cherokee cities of the Southeast.

Cherokee intermarriage to both the Mexican and Central Americans would become the norm for the next 300 years. The mixed-blood Cherokees would hold a high place of honor within the Meso-American world of Mexico and Central America. For the mixed-blood Cherokee of the time were the priests, prophets, engineers and administrators, who were the elite of running the new spiritual pyramid temple cities of both Mexico and Central America. Without the mixed-blood Cherokees, the great pyramid temple cities in Mexico and Central America would cease to run, much less function.

The Cherokee started having intergenerational marriage with the Europeans in the early 1700s. Many Cherokee bands and families were quick to see the economic benefits of having trade, land and business dealings with Europeans. In a sense this could be viewed as a classic Cherokee version of the ‘hang around the fort Indians’. However this story was not true for the majority of mixed-blood Cherokee people of that time.

The preference of mixed-blood Cherokee men of the time was to marry European or other mixed-blood Cherokee women. Their children and grandchildren would follow suit. The new generation of light-skinned mixed-blood bourgeoisie Cherokee would wash their hands of and renounce the traditional ways of Cherokee culture and Spirituality.

However, there was another side to the mixed-blood Cherokee people that has been neglected and treated with silence. The story is that of the traditional mixed-blood Cherokee that retained their cultural and Spiritual identities…

Read the entire essay here.