The Cherokee Princess Phenomenon, and Other Tall Tales of the West

I’ve yet to read the posthumously released work of R.J. Rushdoony on the subject of the American Indian, but Chalcedon Foundation and their adjuncts have not been the least shy about their objectives in the posthumous release of this work; they insist that this book overrides everything else Rushdoony wrote and said on the subject of peoplehood, thereby exonerating him of the charge of “racism.”

But as usual , in their zeal to repackage the man as his own antithesis, they miss the forest for the trees. They seem completely oblivious to the fact that such ethnological studies in and of themselves are regarded in all quarters as inherently “racist.” Ethnological studies of aboriginal groups – especially those conducted from without by Christian White men – conjure all the classic memes of the great White hunter/explorer condescending to “lesser breeds without the Law.”¹ No matter how much they may wish to cast him as a disciple of Franz Boas – denying the meaningfulness of race – they are only further securing his mantle as a father of modern Kinism.

Even if those who’ve collated Rushdoony’s notes on the subject, pushed to desperation, determined to pepper the work with politically correct addenda under the auspices of “editing” (and some knowledgeable men who have already read the work are saying this is precisely what was done), we all greatly look forward to his study on the subject.

But this essay is not meant to address the recent Alienist reorientation of the Chalcedon Foundation or their reinterpretation of Rushdoony. We here only take their pre-sale marketing of the book in question as an occasion to address a larger issue. That issue is, as both Mark Rushdoony (the son of R.J. Rushdoony) and Andrea Schwartz have mentioned in recent interviews, that upwards of 87% of Whites in America now claim Indian heritage.² To this end, they praise a segment from the book in which R.J. Rushdoony marvels at the majority of a White class claiming Indian heritage and even showing great pride in their claim. Whether or not we take this figure of 87% as an accurate average of those claiming such ancestry is rather irrelevant. The fact is that a majority of Whites are now claiming Indian ancestry.

This subject has been in the news a lot lately as Indian tribes, in their rush to the federal trough, have seen resources intended for Indians going to what are plainly White people. The Red man is beginning to call the bluff on all the “White Indians.” And the results are telling.

Longtime Indian activist, author, and ethnic studies professor at the University of Colorado-Boulder, Ward Churchill, had made a career out of his family lore of Indian ancestry. Despite both immediate and extended family corroboration of his Indian blood, a 2005 genealogical study found “no evidence of a single Indian ancestor” among 142 of his direct ancestors. But since such stories generally originate with a solitary member claiming an Indian forebear, and slowly expand to include the family as a whole, it was likewise confirmed that while Churchill’s extended family also claimed Indian ancestry, neither was evidence found of any such heritage on the part of any member of his extended family. The history of his entire extended clan was debunked.³

Another such case to recently garner national media attention is that of Harvard Law professor and Democratic Senator, Elizabeth Warren: she, like the majority of White Americans today, claims some Cherokee background. But the New England Historical Genealogical Society found no evidence of any American Indian lineage in her.⁴

Actor Johnny Depp has apparently made public claims of Cherokee and/or Creek Indian heritage, but all genealogical and DNA research of his line has proven otherwise; he was found to possess no Indian blood whatsoever. He was quite disappointed to find that he was just a vanilla White man.

Although, his genetic testing has come back with notation of the possibility that he may have up to 3/2048ths African heritage. Which is to say that DNA cannot actually confirm either the ratio or the likelihood of such a remote percentile as proof of real African descent.⁵

It’s the same story with Val Kilmer. He had always claimed significant Cherokee heritage, but all genealogical study proved him incorrect. He is, just as he looks, entirely Northern European.⁶

The fact is it would be easier to single out White actors who claimed no Indian heritage than to find those who do. And amongst those claiming Indian descent, very few upon genetic testing and genealogical research prove to have any such heredity.

This has been a problem in Hollywood for a long time. For instance, actor Iron Eyes Cody starred as an Indian in Western films from the 1930s into the ‘70s, was a champion of many Indian causes, and claimed to be a full Cherokee, but before his death it was revealed that he was actually the son of Italian immigrants.⁷

Obviously, there is some great social incentive compelling celebrities to distance themselves from any strictly Caucasian heritage. One great example where this social pressure was recently captured on film was in the on-air reading of Jessica Alba’s DNA test results. Alba, who is clearly a Mestizo, went on after that appearance to announce that she was “extremely disappointed” to find out that she is only 13% Indian, but 87% White.⁸ And the show host, George Lopez, had no reservations about openly mocking her for her predominant White ancestry, calling her “Farrah” and “Buffy.”

But this social pressure and monetization of minority status does not only affect celebrities and politicians. It now infects the whole society, top to bottom. In spite of over 80% of Whites in America reportedly claiming Indian blood, the 2010 census recorded 223,553,265 Whites in America and 2,932,248 Amerindians, yet only 9,009,073 are reported as being of mixed race. And remember, this statistic isn’t speaking just of those claiming mixed heritage between White and Amerind, but the total number of all mixed breeds in the country whatsoever. If this tally is even close to accurate, there is nowhere near 87% of the White population claiming mixed heritage of any sort, let alone any mixture with one particular race.⁹

Amongst actual Indians, this whole issue of blond-haired and blued-eyed Whites all coming to claim Indian descent is regarded with open contempt. They call it the Cherokee Princess Phenomenon – the growing family lore amongst Whites today claiming descent from some unknown and undocumented Cherokee princess. Though not every claim features Cherokee royalty, most do, it seems. And this is especially infuriating to Indians, because they have no historical monarchies! Princesses are out of the question.¹⁰

The famous Depression/Dust Bowl era photograph, Migrant Mother (1936), is of Florence Owens Thompson and her children. She was a migrant pea-picker born in Indian Territory, Oklahoma, and claimed to be a Cherokee Indian. Cases such as hers seem to typify the confusion. Her father’s name was Jackson Christie, and her mother, Mary Jane Cobb. Not only did she look quite Celtic; her parents also bore very Celtic surnames, as did theirs before them.

This image has been described as the quintessential photo of the Depression. This was the face by which Americans came to know the Depression era – a self-described Indian with an Irish face and blonde children in tow. And it is this era in the regions most affected by the Dust Bowl whence come the vast majority of claims of Indian background on the part of Whites. The people of the Mid and Southwest were hit particularly hard by the protracted economic collapse, and all this against the backdrop of the Burke Act of 1906, which amended the foregoing Dawes Acts of 1887 and 1891; this act of congress granted titles on individual parcels of land to Indians on the basis of Indian heritage alone. This and many more government set-asides would prove quite enticing to the thousands of unemployed and homeless White families. So many bedraggled and homeless Whites appear to have simply declared themselves Indians for a shot at government benefits discriminatorily allocated to the Red man.

While some of the expanding array of Indian benefits were restricted to only those who could prove tribal membership via the Dawes rolls, many had no such stipulations. Simply stating that one was half-Indian sufficed. This is still the case in many instances, such as those of Churchill and Warren referenced above, and it seems to be the foremost tributary to most of the baseless Cherokee princess stories, now common lore amongst the Anglo families of the Mid and Southwest.

Moreover, it is a matter of historical fact that interracial marriage and all miscegenation was illegal in all but a handful of states, where other races were altogether banned from White counties and towns by local ordinance, community covenants, and sunset codes. This is to say that there was neither minister nor judge in most states who would or could marry an Indian to a White up until the 1967 case of Loving v. Virginia. Even if some drunken Unitarian minister on the frontier had deigned to say words over a miscegenated coupling, all involved would have at the very least been banished from the loosest social orders of the day, and, more likely, tried after the fact for serious crimes – even capital offenses in some parts of the country. Such a union would have no recognition by law virtually anywhere. Yet all the stories of Cherokee princess great-grandmothers well predate the year 1967. Under these circumstances, it simply wasn’t possible.

But even if most of the American Whites claiming Indian admixture are doing so out of a combination of the Depression-era incentives and modern cultural Marxist programming, there is another aspect of the issue to be considered: according to the Dawes Act rolls of 1906, there were some officially recognized Indians who looked thoroughly European, such as this Cherokee girl. This presupposes that there really were some “White Indians.” But this is attributable to a couple causes: one is that White settlers, or criminals in hiding, were sometimes honorarily granted political asylum amongst the Indians. Another is that there was a significant remnant of Solutrean blood amongst certain tribes.¹¹

I suppose it would have been possible for a “White Indian” woman to assume a fake identity in order to wed a White man, but if this was done – defrauding both church and state on top of violating anti-adultery, anti-fornication, and anti-miscegenation law – the mixed house would have every incentive to keep the affair completely secret. But this of course, still begs the question as to whether or not those “White Indians” could really be considered Indian in any real sense.

Either way, the cognitive dissonance around this issue is all-pervasive, penetrating every moral and logical commitment. In point of fact, I once found myself embroiled in argument with a red-headed, blue-eyed, White Christian who spoke with a subdued but obvious British accent and insisted that the White race was meaningless on the grounds that he was an honorary member of an Indian tribe. When I asked what one had to do with the other, he explained that this tribal membership was so important to him, he even kept a tribe-issued card in his wallet to prove the association. Again, I asked how this invalidated the existence of White people. The White race, he assured me, was somehow rendered meaningless because Indians meant so much. And in his incoherent temerity, he even accused me of “heresy” for acknowledging the legitimate existence of the White race. Somehow, in his mind, that little card formed an ineffable covenant with another race and abolished his own.

His position isn’t actually a position. It’s just shame and willful stupidity. But it is illustrative of the confusion in this matter.

Over against this madness, we candidly acknowledge that no White man can swear beyond a shadow of doubt that his great-grandmother wasn’t raped by an Indian in the American West, or via some Blackamoor raid on a European hamlet eight centuries past. He may have no express reason to believe such things happened, but neither can he rule out the possibility entirely. Yet none of this changes what he is at this time. Even if it were provable that Whites in America are a thoroughly mixed breed, would it change the fact that they remain identifiable one to another, and to other races, as Caucasians? And would it change the fact that we have interests unique to us in our own lands or that those interests are held in common with Whites in other lands?

Certainly not. The possibility of ancient blemishes are no justification for the suicide of a people existing in the present.

The fact that Finland is said to have undergone invasion by Mongol peoples at one time, and that the Finns are now mixed in some degree with the Asiatic strain, has not made them Asiatics. Neither did the mass rape campaign against Germany in the wake of World Wars I and II at the hands of the Khazarian and Mongol troops of the Soviet reserves nullify the European character of the German. A people can survive a small level of admixture. But what is happening in America now with regard to the Indian question is that the tiniest possible (and unproven) admixture is said to somehow justify the displacement and annihilation of our people as a whole now.

This is the Alienist view which the Chalcedon Foundation has adopted in the wake of the passing of their patriarch. It is based upon half-truths, misunderstanding, obfuscation, and outright animosity for the continued existence of our people. No study critiquing or praising the relative maladies and virtues and of the Indian, and his admixture with the American, real or imagined in whatever degree, can in any rational way invalidate the existence of the White American any more than it does the Indian himself. If the Indian can be studied as such, he exists. And if Indians exist and are acknowledged to have any lawful identity as such, the right of self-determination, or any marginal degree of sovereignty within their bounds, so too must it be for the White man.

As Christians, we believe the trustee family spoken of by Rushdoony to be the biblical model for society, and this places an onus on each member of every Christian people to perpetuate their God-given heritage as the birthright of generations yet unborn. This was the way of our people until very recent times, and no amount of cultural Marxist revisionism, White guilt, or pulpit-promulgated Alienism will change that. 

Lakota chief Sitting Bull spoke poignantly in Christian terms for the continued existence of his people, and Christians have always acknowledged the wisdom of his apologetic for the life of his people:

Is it wrong for me to love my own?
Is it wicked for me because my skin is red?
Because I am Sioux?
Because I was born where my father lived?
Because I would die for my people and my country?
God made me an Indian.

Nowadays, however, though our neo-churchmen would yet applaud Sitting Bull’s advocacy for the Red man, they have ceased to extend any such equity to the White man. Astoundingly, they – Chalcedon among others – argue that the Indian’s legitimate existence abrogates the existence of the White man.

Alienists continue fostering social shame and stigma against the White race to the point that, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, a putative majority of our people in this land have dreamt up a new identity for themselves, as Indians. And they cling to tall tales of Cherokee princesses as a means of atonement for the social guilt affixed to their White blood.

This theory of expiation of White blood only by the blood of foreign races represents another gospel. We traditional Christians, however, will stand with Otto Scott, who argued that Christianity will continue its downward spiral in the West until we regain courage enough to revive and stand unapologetically by good words, such as “Christendom” and “the White race.”

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