I have some thoughts on all of this subject. I was very interested to hear Chevdove elucidate on the Black Foot Indians. My father told us his mother, who was not married to his father, was a native American woman. I had no reason to doubt this because there was big portrait of her in a round ornate picture frame, that hung in my parents' bedroom. Because this picture was not in color i can only deduce that her skin color was medium tone, being neither dark nor light. She had an abundant crop of hair that was probably black in color, and wavy rather than straight in texture. It was styled in a long braid that was twisted in a knot pinned in the center of her forehead. She had high cheekbones, thin lips and a well sculpted nose and almond-shaped eyes. She was beautiful. This picture hung in that room all during my childhood, and me and my siblings referred to her as "our Indian grandmother". My grandfather who was born in Missouri and grew up in Kansas. a territory he left as a young man in his 20's to seek out his fortune in Chicago even before the "Great Migration" which started around 1915. He had married another woman and still lived in Chicago and would come to visit us from time to time during the years he was alive. He, oddly enough, was light complexioned, had freckles and nappy red hair. Anyhow. i seemed to have remembered him once saying about my dad's mother, the woman he had not wed, who was about 5 years older than him and had died young, was a Black Foot Indian. This stuck with me as a kid of about 8 years old because, in all of my childish innocence, i wondered if she had black feet. But in my mindless youth, i never paid much attention to anything my parents had to say bout their forbears. Fast forward many years when i came to realize the importance of tracing my roots. In doing research about my family tree, i saw that the Indian tribes that inhabited the area in Missouri and Kansas where my father and his people were from, were of the Osage nation, and i thought that was probably the tribe my grandmother was from, and that i was confused about my "black foot" memories. But, maybe she was a Black Foot who migrated to Kansas from nearby Nebraska where Chevdove placed some members of the Black Foot tribe. To me, that makes my grandmother more special because according to Chevdove, this tribe put up a fight when it came to government intervention. 😡
Also, my hair which started out as being a sandy reddish color and frizzy in texture, eventually turned brown and become quite bushy. However, as the years continued to pass, the texture of my hair continued to gradually change becoming thinner and quite silky. Now in my 80s i have long straight white hair (which i tuck under styled wigs when i go out because it is thin on top. ). Also a dentist once told me that my teeth had unusual characteristics that he'd never seen before but these traits were possibly native American in origin. 😬
My late brother-in-law, who was married to my older sister, was another example of someone whose hair nappy hair changed texture as he aged, it being almost straight at the year of his untimely death at age 50. He was a very exotic looking man. Tall, slender, amber in color, a long narrow face, a keen acquiline nose. It's so weird that my tall, slender 14-year-old great-grandson looks the same way altho he and this brother-in-law are in no way related; never even knew each other. Ironically, this grandson's other great-grandmother on his father's side obvious has native American blood lines... She actually looks like an Indian squaw in her old age, complete with long braids.
So tell me, do i sound like a person who is full of self-hate? Like somebody who is lost and wants to be white?? Like somebody who should be riveted on Africa? When y'all talk about this "self-hate" thing, leave me out. i am, who i am and have no problem with this. And, i like all of my different blood lines, including the Scotch-Irish ones. i especially like my alien, Type "O" Rh-negative blood. 👽
OK. I'm done.