How do you trace your American Indian heritage?

Question:

How do you trace your American Indian heritage?

my aunt traced our ancestory back supposably to Geramo she has died and we can not find the records how do you go about tracing them back

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: Geronimo was of the Chiricahua Apache (as was Cochise). Unfortunately, the Apache have been quite enigmatic and are difficult to trace. However, if your Aunt is from Geronimo's line, her records would almost certainly be available.

Try the Chiricahua Alliance site at http://www.chiricahuaapache.org/... They may be able to steer you in the right direction to get started in.

This site has a bit of the culture and history: http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/cultural/nor...

You can look them up on Wikipedia and other sites, but the best thing to do is contact them directly. Just remember, not everything you find will be true; unfortuanately with Native geneaogly, most of our heritage was known only by stories and songs, no one wrote them down and when the government stepped in and wrote it down, 99% of the time, they screwed it up. If they couldn't pronounce or figure out how to spell a Native name, they changed it to a "white" sounding name that may or may not have been close to what the person's name really was.

For the poster who has Cherokee heritage, I'm including Cherokee links for you as well.

These are the links to the three Federally Recognized Cherokee Tribes in the United States. There are a few legitimate "state recognized" tribes, if you're interested in their information, let me know and I'll get it for you.

The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians use the 1924 Baker Roll for their ancestry purposes. Their website is at http://www.nc-cherokee.com

The Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma uses the Guion-Miller and Dawes Rolls for their ancestry purposes and their website is at http://www.cherokee.org

Then you have the United Keetooah Band of Cherokee Indians (also in OK) . I'm not as familiar with their ancestral requirements but you can visit their site at http://www.unitedkeetoowahband.org...

I'm also giving you a couple of genealogy groups here in Yahoo! that might be able to give you some help in your search.

In the Cherokee Genealogy Community, in the bookmark section, there are links to nearly every tribal roll (Cherokee and otherwise) available online.

There are a lot of great people there who are more than willing to give you a hand.

Good luck and peace to you!

Beki

Cherokee Genealogy Community http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cherokeege...

Native American Indian Genealogy http://groups.yahoo.com/group/naig/...

There's also:

Cyndi's List http://www.cyndislist.com/native.htm...

WWW Virtual Library - American Indians
Index of Native American Genealogy Resources on the Internet http://www.hanksville.org/naresources/in...

Online Native American Indian Genealogy Records & Databases http://www.genealogybranches.com/nativea...

Access Genealogy http://www.accessgenealogy.com/native/...