President Trump has made demeaning people into a cruel art form. One of his victims is Senator Elizabeth Warren. He calls her Pocahontas because she says one of her ancestors was a native American. He should talk. His Grandfather ran a whorehouse in Alaska! I sympathize with her because her and my family stories are similar. She hasn’t had a DNA test to support her family’s oral history but I have and mine is puzzling.

My paternal side has been traced back to a minor Viking leader in Northern Germany (now) around 777. We do not know who his parents were because no records exist. We can trace my line through the Viking conquest and settlement of Britain to the immigration to Virginia in the late 1600s. Apparently that ancestor practiced primogenitor and gave his extensive landholdings to the oldest son. The other son’s family grew up poor and illiterate but one boy fought with Francis Marion, the Swamp Fox. For this service he received land in Southern Illinois.

After the war his wife died leaving him with three young sons. Somehow on his way west he acquired a Cherokee wife named Sarah. He and the boys may have been illiterate but they were smart enough to bring a very literate Native American into the family. They settled on the pension land and a few generations later I was born.

Now that was the family history for almost two centuries. If it were true the second wife would not have had any part of my gene pool. The family was always proud to claim a smart Cherokee as part of the family tree even if not directly related.

Today one can spit into a vial, send it away with a check, and find out for sure. My genes say I have the right amount of Native American genes to know that John and Sarah Johnson had at least one son of their own.

As a boy I had over a hundred cousins thinking the story of having an Indian twig in the family tree was as far as it went. My DNA says the sons from the first wife have a great history. My DNA says a part of me is Cherokee. To honor her I drive a Jeep Cherokee.

Senator Warren says her great grandmother was an Indian. Some people are happy with the family legend and don’t want to wreck a nice story if it isn’t true. So whether or not she has a few drops of Indian blood or not should not be meat for someone with Trump’s character and morals.