The best Grandparent story ever told...

 I am 1/16 Cherokee.

     In a previous story I told you about the time I spent a day with Grandpa John and his Ham radio. It was in this same space that he told me a story. It was a wild and fantastical account and I will tell it to you now.

     As the story goes, my great-great Grandmother was a baby when she traveled in the back of a covered wagon to Oklahoma. During this wild rush for land in Oklahoma,  settlers faced tough conditions with plenty of Chaos.

    Somewhere along the way, her parents, my Great-Great Great Grandparents died. My Great Great Grandmother, a baby at the time, was taken in and raised by a Cherokee tribe. She married a Cherokee, and had a child, my Great Grandmother. That person would be 1/2 Cherokee. That made my Grandpa John 1/4 Cherokee, my Mother 1/8 Cherokee, and me 1/16.

     My Grandfather looked Native American. No question about it. I wish I had a picture of his parents. My Aunt Kay and my Mother were both told over they years that they looked like they had Native American blood. My Aunt Nancy did too.

     And now...

     I have told this story many times over the years, and I really do recall Grandpa telling me that the Indians scalped and killed the parents of the baby in the wagon, but as I did some research, I realized their desths were more likely a tradgic accident. 

     I have also been known to exaggerate for the sake of good story, so I often told people in the telling that my GG Grandmother was taken into the tribe and married a great and handsome Indian Chief.  (This could be true.)

     But now, as I write this story down for the first time, I have thought long and hard about the story Grandpa told me that day. The truth of it. And I have done a bit of research into the Cherokee Indian tribe.'

     I found that they were mostly peaceful people. I also learned that the deaths during the Oklahoma land run were mostly from accidents, sickness and fights over the Cherokee land.

     And so now I'm now rethinking that moment in Grandpa's story. And this time,  I'm picturing a young, handsome, (soon to be Chief) riding by on his horse when he hears a tiny cry. And as he searches the wagon crash, he finds a tiny girl who appears to have survived. It appears to him also, that her parents had not. 

     I'm thinking that this young strong warrior climbed off his horse, picked up the little child, and took her home. Maybe he waited for her as she grew beautiful. Maybe he loved her.

     And,  as I pieced together this story again, I

saw how my past ties me to something bigger. More mysteries that I'm still unraveling.

I am 1/16 Cherokee.

*Apparently there are some ancestral Cherokee's that have red hair and blue eyes because of visits from Vikings. People believe they were landing on the southern coast of America before Columbus and traveled North. And... I'm pretty sure I have one of those.