The New Era of Native American Heritage: European Genocide, and the Genetic Science of Survival

THE

NEW ERA

OF

NATIVE AMERICAN

HERITAGE:

European Genocide, and

the Genetic Science of Survival

MILTON CAMPBELL

©

Copyright 2022 Milton Campbell.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

ISBN: 978-1-6987-1315-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6987-1316-8 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6987-1317-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022919249

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CONTENTS

Preface

Acknowledgments

CHAPTER I

Classification of Indigenous Populations of the Americas

Classification of Native American Families in the Eastern United States

Discerning Asians from Native Americans

CHAPTER II

The Enslavement of Indigenous Populations and Genocide in the Americas

The American Indian

The Enslavement of the American Indian in the New World

The Theft of American Indian Land in the New World

Genocide and the American Indian

CHAPTER III

Genetic Ancestry Testing and DNA Terminology

Maternal Inheritance of Mitochondrial DNA

DNA Links Native Americans with Europeans

CHAPTER IV

Native American Families, the Lumbee Tribes, and the Oxendine family

The Sanderson Family

George Franklin Spaulding

Some final questions

CHAPTER V

Great Americans of Mixed Ancestral Heritage (1852–Present)

CHAPTER VI

The Historical Mitchell Field Cemetery

Bibliographical References

PREFACE

Native North Americans and their history from colonial times to the present day have been a topic of discussion and study by nearly every ethnic group and nationality around the world. It could be said that the Native American has been cast and recast, interpreted, reinterpreted, and misinterpreted more than any other ethnic group throughout modern history. The Anglo-centric perspective remains the most widely adopted way of looking at Native American civilizations. It is still widely accepted as positive that white colonists discovered the North American continent and, because of their racial superiority, supplanted the less developed, savage native inhabitants. Even the seemingly more Native American–friendly interpretations of history still cast them as a conquered, victimized, and oppressed minority, oversimplifying them as uniformly dignified, peace-loving people who lived harmoniously with nature.

Historians, and those who interpret the past, are inevitably a product of the social, cultural, and political issues of their time, as well as their education and echelon of society. Fortunately, as societies evolve, responsible historians have been prompted to reconsider these long-held assumptions within the context of a more evolved and diverse perspective. Even more importantly, however, in the last several decades, historians of Native American descent are finally enriching the field of North American history by adding the vital dimension of their long-absent native voices. Native Americans themselves are at long last being invited to participate in interpreting and researching their own ancestral colonization.

North American Native history is as complex as the history of any ancient civilization and dates back thousands of years. The peopling of the Americas has been the subject of extensive genetic, archaeological, and linguistic research; however, numerous questions remain unresolved. For instance, did the settlement of North America occur by means of a single migration or multiple streams of migration from Siberia? Generally accepted historical theory postulates that more than fifteen thousand years ago, the settlement of the Americas occurred during the ice ages by way of a land bridge, Beringia (the Bering Strait), that connected Eurasia and the Americas. Modern genetic research has given us a new and exciting lens through which to interpret Native American migrations and civilizations.

Data from Native Americans and Siberian groups that genotyped 365,000 single-nucleotide polymorphisms show that Native Americans descend from at least three streams of Asian gene flow, and most descend from a single ancestral population that we call First American. [1] Genetic diversity in Native Americans has been analyzed through a single locus, the mitochondrial DNA or the Y chromosome. Native American genetic history is often complicated, however, by widespread admixture with European and African immigrants since 1492. [2] DNA testing of Native American serum, plasma samples, and artifacts has been able to confirm that Native Americans were in existence more than ten thousand years ago on the American continent. This evidence, in addition to excavated villages and ruins, continues to prove that these communities were nowhere near as savage as our more antiquated historians have suggested. In other words, science is telling us a different story than imperial and colonial revisionist history ever did.

I have focused my research to include four regions (inner and outer Coastal Plain, Piedmont, and Blue Ridge) of North Carolina where Native American tribes have struggled for generations for survival and recognition at the state and federal levels of government. Some of these tribes have been successful in obtaining state recognition, and others have achieved federal recognition as a sovereign nation. All North Carolina Native American tribes are striving for federal recognition and sovereignty. This important designation allows them to govern themselves, making, executing, and applying tribal laws and imposing and collecting taxes to benefit their own communities. [3]

In the pages to follow, I will explore how DNA evidence continues to reveal new insights into North Carolina’s Native American ancestral origins. I will also address the untold story of Native Class Identification, one that many Native North Americans are not even aware of until they try to apply for tribal membership. Finally, I will focus on the extraordinary history of the Mitchell Field cemetery in Columbus County, North Carolina, thought to be one of the earliest Native American cemetery sites in the United States and one that remains largely unexplored and undocumented.

The guiding principle of this book is to give the Native Americans of North Carolina scientific and historic data to assist them in self-defining their ancestral history. I hope to both amplify Native American voices and affirm them in the context of science. It is my greatest wish that this work will help North Carolina Native American communities to continue to interpret themselves, understand their unique place in human history, and claim sovereignty over their own ancestral narratives and tribal nations.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to take this opportunity to express my thanks to everyone who has been instrumental in making this work possible. I am grateful for and indebted to Mrs. Kate Tusbata and Ms. Blake Hill-Saya whose advice made this book all the stronger, in spite of both having a very busy schedule. I want to thank Marjorie Phifer, the granddaughter of Nashville Moore and Lillian Jacobs Moore, who aided in data collection; Mr. Luke Alexander for his collection of rare historical documents on the Mitchell Field Cemetery; and Mr. Wendell Campbell for his graphic design expertise. My thanks to Mr. Varun Gudapati, a Duke University biomedical student, who spent hours entering data into Microsoft Publisher. Special thanks to the Benjamin and Edith Jacobs Spaulding descendants for providing me with family historical records in Bladen and Columbus counties. Though my name will be put down as the author, all historians know that a manuscript reflects the work of a multitude of historians. I am indebted to the state of North Carolina for the outstanding colonial history record kept in the Department of Archives and History in Raleigh, North Carolina, and the University of Pembroke for their well-preserved Native American records from pre- and postcolonial periods.

I owe more than I can express to the descendants of Benjamin and Edith Spaulding who have encouraged my writing and who have listened for years to my oral and written stories about indigenous populations in America. I was told by Margaret Kennedy Goodwin to write it down because nobody will tell the truth about your oral history but you, because they haven’t experienced it. Finally, my greatest appreciation goes to my grandmother, Mattie Spaulding Campbell, who raised a motherless child at one year old. Without her knowledge and her love, none of this would be possible. She understood the struggle not only of Native American people but of all marginalized peoples in this world.

CHAPTER I

Classification of Indigenous

Populations of the Americas

The largest population of indigenous people in North America is in Mexico (70 percent) with the smallest number found in the United States (1.5 percent). In Central America, Honduras has the largest indigenous population (97 percent), followed by Panama (90 percent). Nicaragua and Belize also have a substantial indigenous population (74 percent and 51 percent, respectively). The Caribbean has only two countries with a large indigenous population, and those are Puerto Rico, with 84 percent, and Trinidad and Tobago (80 percent). In South America, indigenous populations are present in Paraguay (97 percent), Ecuador (90 percent), Bolivia (85 percent), and Peru (82 percent), with a smaller percentage of indigenous people located in Colombia (59 percent), Uruguay (8 percent), and Argentina (3 percent). [4]

Within the United States, there are 573 federally recognized indigenous tribes generally referred to as Native Americans. In each of the fifty states in America, there are several native tribes that are state recognized but are not universally federally recognized. Most native tribes of the Americas have established their own membership rules, and potential members are subject to mandatory requirements. [5]

The indigenous people of Mexico were a vast and rich network of civilizations in the Americas that flourished for thousands of years prior to the arrival of the Spanish