>> As a child growing up in rural Arizona, Ina Mapes remembers her mother as a highly discreet woman who rarely expressed her personal feelings except when it came to one particularly incendiary topic: Did Mapes’s father, a raven-haired lawyer, have Native American roots, or did he not? Mapes’s grandmother maintained that he had one-quarter tribal blood. But her mother wanted to hear nothing of it.
“My mother did not approve of Indians, and she insisted that my father was not an Indian,” said Mapes, 77, of Catalina, Ariz. “In those days, it was not a plus to be an Indian, not at all. She said that Granny, my father’s mother, was just making it up and she did not believe it.”
Mapes, a mother of four who volunteers in a clothing bank, is a second cousin to US Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren. The two women, who have never met, share more DNA than most second cousins: Not only were their grandmothers sisters, their grandfathers were brothers. Those brothers — a team of carpenters named Harry and Everett Reed who plied their trade in the Indian Territory that would become the state of Oklahoma — are believed by some family members to have roots in the Delaware tribe. Mapes, who said she was unaware of her cousin’s candidacy until contacted by a reporter, said she does not doubt her heritage.
“I think you are what you are,” said Mapes. “And part of us is Indian.”
(Harry Reed, Warren's grandfather)....
Both the Reeds and the Crawfords are identified as “white” on federal Census forms in the early 20th century that rely upon self-identification. While that may have been a simple statement of fact, they may also have been trying to obscure their ethnicity. At the time, the federal government was attempting to break up reservations by granting land allotments to individual Native Americans, pressing them to assimilate into white society and leave their tribal ways behind. The goal, as one officer bluntly put it, was to “kill the Indian and save the man.” Those who could pass for white — or convince the census taker that they were — sometimes did.
“If someone was not white, they were a little bit less of a citizen,” said Matt Reed, the curator of the American Indian Collections at the Oklahoma Historical Society in Oklahoma City, whose mother was a Pawnee Indian. “If you had darker skin, you were a lesser human. So, if your skin was light enough to pass as not being Indian, then you just passed as white and your life was a lot better off. A lot more people did that than you might think.”
.... Warren’s brother David, eight years her senior, calls the public controversy over the subject “a bunch of baloney.” He remembers relatives cautioning him when he played cowboys and Indians as a child. “My aunts said, ‘Be careful shooting the Indians because some of them are your relatives.’ ” But most shied away from the subject of the family’s heritage, Herring added, because “it wasn’t something you were proud of.” << --- Boston.com (September 2012)
“My mother did not approve of Indians, and she insisted that my father was not an Indian,” said Mapes, 77, of Catalina, Ariz. “In those days, it was not a plus to be an Indian, not at all. She said that Granny, my father’s mother, was just making it up and she did not believe it.”
Mapes, a mother of four who volunteers in a clothing bank, is a second cousin to US Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren. The two women, who have never met, share more DNA than most second cousins: Not only were their grandmothers sisters, their grandfathers were brothers. Those brothers — a team of carpenters named Harry and Everett Reed who plied their trade in the Indian Territory that would become the state of Oklahoma — are believed by some family members to have roots in the Delaware tribe. Mapes, who said she was unaware of her cousin’s candidacy until contacted by a reporter, said she does not doubt her heritage.
“I think you are what you are,” said Mapes. “And part of us is Indian.”
(Harry Reed, Warren's grandfather)
Both the Reeds and the Crawfords are identified as “white” on federal Census forms in the early 20th century that rely upon self-identification. While that may have been a simple statement of fact, they may also have been trying to obscure their ethnicity. At the time, the federal government was attempting to break up reservations by granting land allotments to individual Native Americans, pressing them to assimilate into white society and leave their tribal ways behind. The goal, as one officer bluntly put it, was to “kill the Indian and save the man.” Those who could pass for white — or convince the census taker that they were — sometimes did.
“If someone was not white, they were a little bit less of a citizen,” said Matt Reed, the curator of the American Indian Collections at the Oklahoma Historical Society in Oklahoma City, whose mother was a Pawnee Indian. “If you had darker skin, you were a lesser human. So, if your skin was light enough to pass as not being Indian, then you just passed as white and your life was a lot better off. A lot more people did that than you might think.”
.... Warren’s brother David, eight years her senior, calls the public controversy over the subject “a bunch of baloney.” He remembers relatives cautioning him when he played cowboys and Indians as a child. “My aunts said, ‘Be careful shooting the Indians because some of them are your relatives.’ ” But most shied away from the subject of the family’s heritage, Herring added, because “it wasn’t something you were proud of.” << --- Boston.com (September 2012)
