CONNECTING WITH MY NATIVE HERITAGE| NYTN Ep. 8

Added: 2026-05-17

[00:00:00]Maybe at some point in your life you were told you guys were Cherokee, especially if you have Southern heritage or mixed heritage, [music] you will hear this or you know, somebody was Native American but we we don't really have documents or it's based [music] on this picture, it's based on this story.

[00:00:16]I've gotten tons and tons of emails from so many of you [music] who have had that situation in their family tree. I'm not above Googling stuff, searching Reddit, searching any by any [music] means necessary to get a little breadcrumb to follow to find my ancestors. Get some more information on the real story because getting the real story is hard.

[00:00:38]So, I want to take you through some of my [music] documents in my family tree.

[00:00:43]Hi guys, this is a little bit of a different episode for me because we're going to [music] kind of chat and I want to take you through part of my family tree and I also I'm still using my Zoom camera. All my other really nice cameras and lights are still in the closet ever since I stepped away from really doing YouTube.

[00:01:02]I'm heartbroken about having to do that and just I don't know. I just haven't pulled out all my stuff cuz I kind of threw it in the closet in anger. So, I haven't pulled it back out. Hopefully this will be good enough and I also have my MHA mug, Melungeon Heritage Association. I'm going to be speaking at the MHA conference this year. I'm doing it digitally so if you can't make it to Virginia, I would love to have you join digitally as I will be there digitally and I can leave a link to that below so you guys can jump in with me.

[00:01:35]I want to talk about a line in my family tree that I've touched on a little bit.

[00:01:38]I know you guys have had a lot of questions about it. It's about this Native American side, finding Native American ancestry and kind of confirming things through paperwork and what a pain in the butt that can be for especially for families like mine that are multi-generationally mixed. A lot of us connected from the Finding Lola series where I was trying to find my great-grandmother Lola, her story.

[00:02:02]And as far as I had known at the time, she was Creole and had moved to New York and kind of tried to pass as white. And that's her dad's side. Her dad's side of the family is very Creole. Free people of color who were French and that seems to be his culture come from enslaved ancestors, like all of that. But her mom's side was hard and weird. And I want to kind of talk about that. Now, maybe at some point in your life you were told you guys were Cherokee, especially if you have Southern heritage or mixed heritage, you will hear this or, you know, somebody was Native American, but we we don't really have documents or it's based on this picture, it's based on this story.

[00:02:43]I've gotten tons and tons of emails from so many of you who have had that situation in their family tree or in their family.

[00:02:50]I grew up with that story, too.

[00:02:52]My Grammy had told me that she thought her mom was Cherokee, she wasn't sure.

[00:02:58]And that was just kind of it. She really had no more information until I started digging and I was able to connect with the Choctaw Apache tribe of Ebarb and I actually, the reason I was thinking about doing this video is because, I don't know, it's focusing Choctaw Apache Voices Volume 2.

[00:03:16]I am in this and it means so much to me.

[00:03:19]It says on the back it focuses on the history and culture of the Choctaw Apache tribe and some work from tribal members. There's paintings, there's stories. I had some poems that got included in here. And let me tell you, it it meant so much to me to have something like this that I can hand to my kids and be like, okay, you can continue doing this work later. Got something to give you.

[00:03:42]And so Choctaw Apache is a community from Sabine Parish in Louisiana. They're really a Choctaw Apache community of Ebarb and we're going to we'll get to that. And the reason most of you have never heard of them is part of the reason why I want to talk about it today. I want to give you a little context cuz I feel like if you hear Native Americans in Louisiana, you might be thinking of Houma or Chitimacha, which I do have descendancy from the Chitimacha, but they don't have an ability for you to enroll if your parents weren't enrolled and all of that. And my family clearly was not a part of anything. They were doing everything they can to pass. So, the Choctaw-Apache aren't really the first community that's going to come to mind and unless you're really deep in the genealogy world in Louisiana.

[00:04:25]So, where they are is Ebarb, it's in their name. And also, Zwolle is the bigger town nearby. And if you've never heard of these places, that's kind of the point. The reason that this community ended up there was there was a Spanish fort called Los Adaes. The Spanish had built it to keep the French out of Texas and this whole area, all different empires just fighting for this this land, this strip.

[00:04:48]And in 1773, the Spanish Crown gave it up and they ordered everyone to march to San Antonio. And the ones that survived eventually got permission to come back, but not to the fort, not to Los Adaes.

[00:04:58]They came back to land that was just kind of east where the fort was and that's the land the community has been on ever since.

[00:05:05]They are recognized by the state of Louisiana. They got recognition in 1978.

[00:05:10]And I don't know if they're pursuing federal recognition still. To me, that doesn't matter. It was just exciting to be able to connect with family and kind of get some more information on the real story because getting the real story is hard.

[00:05:24]So, I want to take you through some of my documents in my family tree. And I have a couple family trees. I have working family trees. I have ones that are cleaned up and I tell myself, "And this is going to stay clean." And it doesn't. It's like when you clean your junk drawer out and you're like, "And this is going to stay really organized."

[00:05:43]And then it doesn't. You know how that is. So, I have a ton of trees.

[00:05:47]So, I'll probably just pick one of the messy ones I know has a bunch of stuff in it that we can chat and go through.

[00:05:52]So, I thought that would be fun.

[00:05:55]Let's go do that right now. We'll do a share screen. So, this is Lola and we're going to look at this over here.

[00:06:04]So, these are her parents. Alphonse Perot Creole heritage French heritage [music] and we're going to do a whole episode on the Freedmen's Bureau because I found his I think it was his uncle maybe in the Freedmen's Bureau.

[00:06:22]And I thought that was really interesting. I want to show you some of those documents, those post-Civil War Reconstruction era documents [music] and maybe you have some of those in your family tree and you don't even know it.

[00:06:32]So, I'll show you those.

[00:06:34]But, I want to jump to her mom.

[00:06:37]This is Julia Victoria Simon. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to do some quick hops. [music] I'm going to just kind of take you to where that Choctaw Apache line is. Now, there's a couple of Choctaw Apache lines. Her mom, there's a million names here and I put all the names that are in the census. I just that's what I do, but their last name is Padia.

[00:06:56]Sharpeen Evelyn Goins and this is also part of my Melungeon family, the Goins family. But, Sharpeen [music] Evelyn Goins, I want to show you some of her records and then we're going to go back a little bit.

[00:07:12]So, Sharpeen is my fourth grandmother.

[00:07:14][music] I did a couple of videos showing how her and her family had been on the Dawes Roll and they were on and they were kicked off and they were on and they were kicked off and then it wasn't for lack of blood quantum. It was very political at the time and I don't know if the video is on Patreon or maybe it's still on YouTube, but you can go and look that up. So, this is her Her tribe [music] was Choctaw and her enrollment category was by blood.

[00:07:47]And I know that there's a lot of people talk about $5 Indians, people paid $5 to get on the Dawes rolls so they could get land, all that stuff. That may be true, but it was not [music] true for my family. Them getting kicked off is is pretty crazy and there were actual actually lawsuits court cases about [music] my family. And the discovery gave me so much information about them.

[00:08:09]Here she is. She's listed as half blood here. When I hear half blood, all I can think is the Harry Potter book The Half-Blood Prince.

[00:08:17]So, they they were enrolled for a while, but the card is really cool.

[00:08:23]And it says she was denied citizenship by the Choctaw and Chickasaw court.

[00:08:31]And just to say, this is the Choctaw Nation is different than the Choctaw Apache.

[00:08:37]And I'm sure there's [music] tons of overlap, obviously the surnames and things. And when she was on the 1850 census, she was actually listed as yellow Asian, which she was not. She was Choctaw. So, that's how she was listed.

[00:08:53]I want to show you her birth or I'm sorry, excuse me, her death certificate.

[00:08:57]And so, full name Eveline Padilla.

[00:09:00]But she's listed color or race, they just wrote Indian.

[00:09:03]Listed her father Jeremiah Gowens, which took me down a huge rabbit trail, which was amazing. And her mother her mother's last name I'm going through Sharpsteen.

[00:09:14]So, this takes me down my Melungeon line. The Drakes, the Gowens, the Abshires.

[00:09:22]But we're going to go backward now and so my third great-grandfather Alberto Simon, and then they end up [music] pronouncing it Zieman in Louisiana.

[00:09:35]He is the son of Juan [music] Simon and Marie Juana Cordova. And Cordova is one of the main last names in the Choctaw Apache [music] tribe. And this and so is Procella. Her mom was a Procella, her father was a Cordova. And [music] one of the things I literally did when I was researching was I was typing in these last names into Google. I kid you not. And their names and just with with Louisiana or with Texas.

[00:10:02]And I realized that [music] family in this area at this time with the these last names and based on where they live, census records, all of that, I was like, "Oh my gosh, they're part of the Choctaw [music] Apache tribe."

[00:10:16]And so I don't have all the stuff on here because I keep a lot of my stuff in folders, not on the tree. But [music] this is really cool. So the Procella's are one of the main families that I found from Los Adaes.

[00:10:29]This was kind [music] of one of the big keys that helped me unlock >> [music] >> that connection to the family that I came across when I suddenly put all the pieces together. But I'll show you on here. I was [music] looking for core family names. I have a lot of these last names in the family, but I saw Procel, [music] Procella, Patty, Padia. I was like, "This is my family." And I had some other [music] things too that made it really exciting to be able to put the pieces together because I had we had the DNA, had the haplogroup, had the surnames, [music] but then when I interviewed my cousin Audrey, she told me about the Matate Imano. Let me just type [music] that in so you guys can see.

[00:11:11]Now this [music] is not our Matate Imano. I do have a picture of ours.

[00:11:15]But my family has a Matate [music] Imano who was my great-grandmother's sisters because she stayed in Louisiana, so [music] she got it. And it look kind of like this.

[00:11:25]I'll open it up.

[00:11:27]Look kind of like this.

[00:11:30]Mano Spanish [music] for hand and the matate is the the larger surface there and was used for grinding the corn [music] before it was cooked to make tamales. My cousin Audrey had said that she believed that this came [music] through Texas from Mexico to the family in Louisiana, which makes total sense. [music] That is one of the lines of travel that we see historically. [music] Uh we see them going through Los Adaes and into Louisiana.

[00:11:55]Deeper into Louisiana. [music] And so it was kind of incredible because then I found out that the Chocktaw Apache community of Ebarb one of their main things is they [music] make tamales and they have the town Zwolle and they come Zwolle tamales. And so my gosh, like all these little pieces of the family story were there trying to pull all [music] these threads and breathe them really tight and and make sure they don't get lost. I was super excited about this. Again, a lot of my documents aren't on here. They are in folders on my computer. But Nacogdoches, Texas, there is a road called El Camino Real, which is the King's Highway, the King's Road that connected Nacogdoches to Natchitoches, Louisiana, where my family ended up [music] most recently. Even if your family has been in a spot for a long time, it doesn't mean all of the ancestors have been in that spot for a long time, you know. So this is this is my great-grandmother's maternal [music] line. And I had been studying her paternal line because they had such a deep history in the Creole community, but her mom's side took a little bit more work. The Creole community, I feel like way better records and [music] the Catholic Church did such a great job of preserving things like that, but from my the maternal side, it was more difficult. The Catholic Church was still there. [music] My family went through the Spanish missions. Some of my family are buried at the missions still in San Antonio. It was [clears throat] a little bit more difficult to track things down. And I don't know how much of that was just that that was her mom's [music] culture and not her dad's culture. I've wondered that. I don't know. Or if it's because they were kind of like [music] in not only was it her dad's culture, but they were living in the place where her dad's culture was from. But, this was super exciting to me to be taking all these little pieces and trying to figure it out. I am not above Googling stuff, searching Reddit, searching any [music] by any means necessary to get a little breadcrumb to follow to find my ancestors.

[00:13:55]That's why being [music] in this book, this Choctaw Apache Voices book was so meaningful. Actually, I just want to read one poem in [music] here cuz I feel like it's really relevant.

[00:14:03]It's just a couple lines that I wrote.

[00:14:06]And it's called [music] Your Children.

[00:14:09]It says, "Ancestors, they follow you silent as shadows until the day they rise and show themselves [music] in the faces of your children."

[00:14:18]So, I just want to encourage you wherever you are on your journey looking for your ancestors that they're with you.

[00:14:25]And they're with us.

[00:14:26]And when [music] I look at my kid and you know, see their features or the way they're they move or the way they talk or or things like that, I do believe that we're seeing so many parts of the [music] past that have just stayed with us and continue to be with [music] us.

[00:14:43]Hopefully, it was fun just kind of digging in a little bit to this. And I will leave a link to their book.

[00:14:50]I think the money goes to support the tribe. I'm not sure. I don't get it, but it hopefully goes to them. So, I'll leave links there if you want to grab that. Otherwise, we'll talk soon.