Native Heritage Project

News travels fast.  One of our blog subscribers, Joy, recently sent me a link to a new blog that’s just a few months old, Fourth Generation Inclusive.  I’ve already found a couple of things involving Native heritage to repost and I will in the upcoming weeks.

As you know, many people who carried Native ancestry, especially if they were mixed, were lumped in with mulatto and sometimes, simply listed as colored or negro, especially if there were only two choices and those choices were white and “something other.”  The would always have been the “something else.”

The Native Heritage project is only listing individuals who we find documented as Native, in some way or other, including designations such as mustee, but Lisa Y. Henderson includes a lot more in her very interesting historical blog about North Carolina’s free people of color.

Anyway, I hope you’ll subscribe and enjoy.  I have.  Great job Lisa and keep up the good work!!!

Yep, there’s a gene for these traits, and more.  The same gene, named EDAR (short for Ectodysplasin receptor EDARV370A), it turns out, also confers more sweat glands and distinctive teeth and is found in the majority of East Asian people.

This is one of the results of the National Geographic’s Genographic project.  This mutation found at location rs3827760 on chromosome 2 occurred about 35,000 years ago.  It apparently has conferred some advantage to its carriers, because it is found in the majority of Asian people today.  We don’t exactly know why that happened, but maybe ancient male Asians preferred thick haired, small boobed and sweaty women.  Or maybe those women survived when women with more body fat (yes, boobs are fat, sorry guys) and who could sweat less perished.

This New York Times article discusses the experiments performed to verify that this gene in fact does confer those traits.  The scientific article itself is available in the journal, Cell although it’s behind a paywall.

Want to know if you carry this trait?  If you’ve tested with either Family Tree DNA or 23andMe, you’re in luck.

Download your raw results file and open the file using any tool.  Generally, a spreadsheet or Notepad will be your preferred methods.  Then using the search function of the tool you’ve selected (ctl+f for Notepad or Excel’s find function) search for rs3827760.  You will see two letters comprised of either T, A, C or G.  If you have a G shown for either letter at this location, then you carry this particular mutation.

If you carry this mutation, you’ve probably already headed for the mirror.  You’ll know already if you have small breasts, if you’re a female, believe me.  You may never have thought about thick hair shafts, which isn’t to be confused with lots of hair.  And your level of sweatiness is just what it is.  I’ve never even considered that there were different sweatiness levels.  But what about Asian teeth?  Well, that trait is called sinodonty and here’s a nice wiki article and another nice article, with examples, here.  If your teeth are shovel shaped, meaning the backs of your upper 4 teeth are shaped like a spoon as opposed to straight, then you have this trait.

So are you wondering what this might have to do with genetic genealogy?  Well, if you carry this gene, then you obtained it from some Asian ancestor.  If you’re in America and not of Asian ancestry, then there are pretty much only two routes.  One would be Native American ancestry and the second would be the population or invasion of Europe by Asian groups, such as the Mongol Hordes and the Huns.  Your genealogy will have to be your guide as to which source contributed this gene to your ancestors, and ultimately to you.

Oh yes, and one last thing, this mutation isn’t the only one involved in at least some of these traits, specifically the teeth.  I don’t carry the G and I do have some of the Asian teeth characteristics.  I don’t have thick hair shafts which makes sense since EDAR is primarily associated with this trait.  And, well, I’m just not discussing the boobs and sweaty traits (and my husband is utterly forbidden to comment)…..TMI:)

Twenty-seven miles west of modern-day Salisbury, North Carolina, Fort Dobbs is located in Iredell County.  In 1756, colonial Governor Arthur Dobbs commissioned the construction of the fort to protect Piedmont settlements during the French and Indian War (1754-1763).  At that time, Fort Dobbs was North Carolina’s only frontier fort; all others were on the coast.

Captain Hugh Waddell led forty-six soldiers in constructing Fort Dobbs so that colonists could be protected from possible French, Cherokee, and Catawba attacks.  Francis Brown and Richard Caswell were sent by the Legislature to inspect Ft. Dobbs in December 1756.  They reported that the fort was a “good and Substantial Building . . . it contains three floors, and there may be discharged from each floor at one time and the same time about one hundred Musketts.”

The drawing depicts Fort Dobbs and you can read more at the following link.

http://www.northcarolinahistory.org/commentary/37/entry

On February 27, 1760, the Fort was attacked by the Cherokee.  What follows is Hugh Waddell’s letter to Arthur Dobbs describing the attack.

Colonial and State Records of North Carolina

Letter from Hugh Waddell to Arthur Dobbs [Extract]

Waddell, Hugh, 1734?-1773

February 29, 1760

Volume 06, Pages 229-230

[B. P. R. O. Am. & W. Ind. Vol. 72.]

Extract of Major Waddell’s Letter 29 Feby 1760

In Return to your Excellency’s News I shall give you a little nigher home, for several Days I observed That a small party of Indians were constantly about the fort, I sent out several small parties after them to no purpose, the Evening before last between 8 & 9 o’clock I found by the Dogs making an uncommon Noise there must be a party nigh a Spring which we sometimes use. As my Garrison is but small, and I was apprehensive it might be a Scheme to draw out the Garrison, I took out Capt Bailie who with myself and party made up ten: We had not marched 300 yds from the fort when we were attacked by at least 60 or 70 Indians I had given my party Orders not to fire until I gave the word, which they punctually observed: We recd the Indian’s fire: When I perceived they had almost all fired, I ordered my party to fire which We did not further than 12 Steps each loaded with a Bullet and 7 Buck shot, they had nothing to cover them as they were advancing either to tomahawk or make us Prisoners: They found the fire very hot from so small a Number which a good deal confused them; I then ordered my party to retreat, as I found the Instant our skirmish began

——————– page 230 ——————–

another party had attacked the fort, upon our reinforcing the Garrison the Indians were soon repulsed with I am sure a considerable Loss, from what I myself saw as well as those I can confide in they cou’d not have less than 10 or 12 killed and wounded, and I believe they have taken 6 of my horses to carry off their wounded; The next Morning we found a great deal of Blood and one dead, whom I suppose they cou’d not find in the night. On my side I had 2 Men wounded one of whom I am afraid will die as he is scalped, the other is in a way of Recovery, and one boy killed near the Fort whom they durst not advance to scalp. I expected they wou’d have paid me another visit last night, as they attack all Fortifications by Night, but find they did not like their Reception.

To His Ecy Govr Dobbs.

http://docsouth.unc.edu/csr/index.html/document/csr06-0063

Thanks to Sharron for the Hugh Waddell letter.

This is Part 2 in the series, “The Autosomal Me.”  Part 1 was “The Autosomal Me – UnRaveling Minority Admixture.”

Every Sunday, I write something called a Sunday Story.  I’ve done this for years.  I send them to my kids and I delude myself into thinking they read them.  I’m really writing them for my grandkids someday and hopefully, some as yet unborn descendants I’ll have that will care about finding out about the life and times of their a-few-greats grandmother who lived along with the dinosaurs in the last half of the 1900s and first half of the 2000s.  I know, I’m optimistic.

I decided that perhaps I would share this weeks Sunday story with all of you.  This way, I know that at least someone will read it.  Actually, aside from my husband, it’s my daughter-in-law who comments the most often.  So welcome to my Sunday Story!  You are all honorary cousins!

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I know that a great deal of what I do with genetics is lost on my friends and family members.  That’s OK, because it’s very specialized.  However, I wanted to take a little bit of time to share with you an aspect of the genetics I work with that I think is very beautiful in both a literal and a spiritual way.

The point of genetic genealogy, of course, is to learn about our ancestors, who they were and our connection to them.  There are various ways to do this, but most of the time it’s through various matches to other people who share a common ancestor either recently or perhaps further back in time.

Of course, therein lies the rub – how long ago are two people related and who was their common ancestor?  Some people who carry minority ancestry are at a distinct disadvantage, because the testing that provides matches and ethnicity generally relies on amounts in excess of 1%, which equates to about 6 or 7 generations.  While many of us know that we carry minority ancestry, we would be hard pressed to say that our “pure” Native (or other minority) ancestor fell into that 6 or 7 generation bracket.  Six or 7 generations equates to about 150-175 years before our birth, or about 1775-1800 for most of us.  By then, many Native people were already admixed and many already lived outside of a traditional tribal unit.  Some people carry Native heritage from multiple lines, but since it comes from multiple ancestors, it too is often quite fragmented, so it doesn’t really improve the situation much unless some of those fragments happen to fall together to make larger segments.

Therefore, we are looking for very small amounts of admixture that often don’t show on traditional tests, or if they do, it’s in miniscule amounts.

Enter chromosome painting.

Without going in to boring detail, I’ve recently been working with a new methodology of identifying these fragmented and very small segments.  I am using several chromosome painting tools.  I’ll be blogging soon enough about how all of this is done, but I just wanted to share with you a couple of beautiful pieces of DNA, through which our ancestors are speaking, and we can see them, in a manner of speaking.

On the graph below, which is my chromosome painting of one a small part of one of my chromosomes on the top, and my mother’s showing the exact same segment on the bottom, the various types of ethnicity are colored, or painted.  You can see that both of us have a primary ethnicity of North European, shown by the teal.

The grid shows location 120 on the chromosome.  Think of this number as a house number on a street.  It’s numbered so we can keep track of where we are on the chromosome.  For genealogy purposes, the smallest segment normally considered as relevant is 7 mb or marker segments long.  Each tick mark equals one segment or address, so a segment 7 mb long would be from 120-127 which takes you right over to the legend.  As you can see, the primary ethnicity has no problem reaching way beyond the contiguous 7 threshold, but the minority ethnicity would not be counted because it’s too small.

However, by the very definition of what minority ancestry is, these small segments are not only present, providing critical information, they are essential in our search and very informative.  Let’s see what they are saying to us.

First, let’s talk for a minute about ancestry.  There is no line in the sand very often between populations.  There are generally only degrees of difference.  So in the case of Native American, which is yellow on this chart, we also expect to see it “drift back in time” by being found in conjunction with Siberian (putty), South Asian (red) and East Asian (emerald green).  Native Americans were not dropped from alien spaceships, they evolved over time from these other Asian populations, so we would expect to see some of their genetics in Native American people.

So let’s take a look at what we do actually see in the DNA.

The first brightly colored segment in the top band is mine.  It includes Native American (yellow), South Asian (red), a big chunk of East Asian (emerald Green), a little bit from the Caucus (ginger) which is the Middle East area, and a piece of West African (light green).

There are two messages from the ancestors in this piece of DNA.  First, this segment absolutely, positively does NOT come from mother.  We can see this clearly because she has nothing but North European (teal) in that section of her DNA.  So, this little gem came from Dad.

The second piece of information is that the ancestor who provided this DNA to Dad was very likely admixed, Native and African.

Of course, if you’re thinking ahead at this point, you’ll be asking, “Which one of your Dad’s other relatives has this same segment?” because, yes, that’s exactly how we will tell which of his lines contributed the Native ancestry.  But you’re getting ahead of the story, and well, that is a story for another time.  This story today, is about the direct messages of the ancestors and the beauty of our DNA itself.

Let’s look at the next segment of minority DNA.  It starts about location 123.  Mom’s is much more pronounced than mine and much richer.  This tells us that I didn’t receive much of Mom’s.  Instead I received mostly North European (teal), along with some East Asian (emerald).

Mom has almost a perfect Native segment here.  By perfect, I mean we find a progression from Native back through time through all 4 categories I would expect to find.  I consider this entire segment “Native” because it indicates Native heritage.  You can see the emerald green (East Asian), putty (Siberian), red (South Asian) and yellow (North American Indian and Arctic) nestled together with no other minority ancestry in close proximity.  This means it’s not part of a different kind of Asian segment.  Remember, part of Europe was settled by the Mongol Hordes and the Huns, so we do see Asian and western Asian DNA in Europe, along with DNA from the Caucus, but we don’t see isolated segments like this, with just eastern Asian DNA and Native American.  So this little beauty is the perfect Native indicator, positively, even though it is only about 4 segments long.

Now take a look at my DNA in that same region in the top row.  It’s kind of hard to see the emerald green against the teal, but I only inherited the East Asian (emerald) segments from Mom.  Of note, however, is that I also have an East Asian (green) segment that Mom doesn’t have.  My East Asian starts about 122 where hers doesn’t begin until 123.  So good old Dad contributed a bit here as well.  Again, we know this because Mom only has North European at that segment.

And now of course for the kicker.  Your DNA looks this same way.  How boringly teal it is, or how beautifully rainbow multi-colored depends on how much minority ancestry you have, from how many different lines, and which of your parents you received it from.

I hope you can see why I’m so excited to be developing this new technique to work with highly fragmented DNA to find our ancestors.  They are there, they have a voice, and they are speaking to us.  All we have to do is figure out how to listen.

I am simply in awe of the beauty of this technique, literally as well as figuratively.  While I certainly understand and appreciate logically that matching other people means we’re related, there is something awe-inspiring and tangible about being able to see the painted graphs and view the layers of ancestry nestled together, life forces reaching through time, protecting that DNA with its precious message for us over many generations.  All this time, just waiting for us to be able to understand the most personal message from our ancestors, delivered, from them, in our genes, to each of us.  This is the voice of our ancestors.

If you would like to take a DNA test, click here.