My only citizenship is United States -- and Oklahoma. I love Oklahoma. DNA testing says I am more Caucasian than anything else, but I am tri-racial -- including African American and American Indian.
Through genealogical evidence, my Indian blood is through Cherokee and Catawba or Pidmont Catawba (Saponi, Occoneechi, Monacan, et cetera), and possibly Chickasaw, but possibly not as well. People related to me by marriage DID marry into the Chickasaw. I can trace my first ancestor in Oklahoma/Indian Territory back to soldiers at Fort Gibson, through a family that also helped organize the first protestant church in both Arkansas (predating Dwight Mission by 3 years) and Oklahoma. Those Wayland ancestors who were at Fort Gibson in 1832 were part of the 1st Dragoon Expedition to visit the Comanche/Kiowa/Wichita in 1834, the first government to government contact between these Plains Tribes and the government of the United States. Ironically, that first meeting took place 15 miles (about) from where I live now). In 1872 we came back to Oklahoma to stay, this time in Sequoyah and Le Flore County, when Jeff Richey married Josey Brown, my great grandparents. We later moved to the Chickasaw Nation where we were living at the time of statehood, but we never enrolled or signed up for Dawes. I can document all of the above.
One ancestor lived in the first known Melungeon settlement and in fact I am beginning to think my ancestor coined the term "Melungeon", which is a French word that means "we mix or mingle" -- even today. I have recently learned that ancestor was born in Tipperary, Ireland and was an official of the Church of Ireland whose ancestors had come from South of London, England (Henry Wayland). Henry's grandson was clerk of "Stoney Crek Primitive Baptist Church" where the word "Melungeon" is first known to have been used, and having been descended from Churhc officials, was well educated, might have known French. It was the "clerk" who wrote the minutes where the word was used, and that clerk was my relative. Sme Melungeon researchers ar convinced my Nevil Wayland Sr's (son of Henry, father of the church clerk) wife was Kezziah Gibson, of the known Menlungeon Gibson's, who can be traced back to the "Piedmont Catawba" and were known to have been tri-racial from early colonial times. I suspect this is the source of my African ancestry as well.
Otherwise, I am English, Scots-Irish, German, and God only knows what else. I want to be honest, so I can say most of my "proof" of Indian ancestry is through an autosomal DNA test. I am still searching. My Wayland's/Richey's married my Brown/Guess's in 1872 and we have been mostly in Oklahoma ever since. We have lived near Indian peoples while remaining separate, for generations -- mixed bloods marrying other mixed-bloods, it seems, always assimilated, and never quite one thing or the other, racially.
That's who I am. I still live in SW Oklahoma.
Vance Hawkins
