Finding My Roots

Growing up my mother's family told us we were part Cherokee. I never thought much about it although it puzzled me that beyond declaring we were they never expounded or shared anything else. As I grew older and did some genealogy I found discrepancies with this. The area that the ancestors were from didn't match up to the ancestral territory of the Cherokees. I don't doubt we have Native American ancestry, just not Cherokee. What few pictures I saw of my mother's family left little room for doubt that they had Native American bloodlines. The facial features and even their coloration fit. What didn't fit was none of them came from or even lived in the right area of North Carolina to be Cherokee. All lived in the coastal area, just a few miles from each other. Years later while living in Oklahoma my wife and II visited a Powwow at Anadarko. We went to a museum there and talked to one of the Curators. He asked me what tribe I came from. When I told him my family told us we were Cherokee he chuckled and said "Everyone wants to be Cherokee, because it's popular to be Cherokee!" he explained that because of the infamy of the "Trail of tears" anyone who might be Native American jumped on their band wagon. He told of the different celebrities who helped popularize this and told me to find out who my people really were. That search lead me to my hometown area with it's much forgotten people, the Weapemeoc and the lesser tribe the Pasquatank. This is my heritage. below are links to a map for the Ancestral Territory of the Cherokee and the description of the Weapemeoc home lands. More specifically we are of the Yeopim tribe from the north east comer of North Carolina and bordering Virginia.

Ancestral Cherokee Territory
Weopemeoc Details