Always eager to try technological advances, I took an autosomal DNA test to see what that would tell me. One of the tools that you can use on Gedmatch tells you your admixture: the regions where your ancestors originally came from who contributed to your DNA. The methods to calculate this are still very much under development, but I find it fascinating. Many people put a lot of trust in the results and think they will point to a country of origin. But sometimes they are just plain wrong.
My DNA results: 1.15% Native American
Using the Eurogenes K 13 algorithm, which I have read is appropriate to use when you’re of Western European descent like me, I checked my admixture. And there it was. I’m 1.15% Native American. My calculated percentage of “Amerindian” (as it is called by Eurogenes) is as high as 7.1% on chromosome 5 and 5.6% on chromosome 8.
Breakdown of admixture per chromosome
Had I been an American genealogist, I would have been jumping for joy since this confirmed the family story that my great grand-mother was a Native American princess.
But I’m not from the US and there is no family legend. I am from the Netherlands and none of my ancestors ever set foot in the Americas until after I was born.
I’m 99% Dutch, with all of my great-great-great-grandparents born in the Netherlands. My other DNA results proved that there were no non-paternal events in the last couple of generations. I have been able to trace most of my ancestors 10 generations back on the male and female lines and they are all Dutch, with the exception of two German branches and some French Huguenots going back to the 1500s and 1600s, plus a noble bastard line in the 1200s that traces to royalty throughout Europe, long before Columbus ever set foot on a ship. In other words: there is no way that I actually have Native American ancestors.
The ‘Chromosome painting’ shows where these segments of so-called Amerindian DNA can be found (the blue segments in the picture). It quickly becomes clear that most of these segments are in ‘noisy’ areas with a lot of different ethnicities showing. I suspect that the algorithm doesn’t know what this DNA is and makes different guesses for adjacent sections, leading to the false Amerindian result.
Chromosome painting showing my admixture
Still an art, not a science
My mother also took a DNA test and her admixture results show 0% Amerindian, so these ‘false positives’ must come from my father’s side. My father came from a very isolated community, where almost nobody ever moved in since around the year 1000. I have been able to trace all of his ancestors ten generations back, and they all come from within 10 miles from where he was born.
It’s possible that that side of my DNA has some characteristics that are not found in the rest of Europe. Many of the algorithms for determining admixture use very small reference populations, which probably did not include anyone from my father’s village. Since their isolated community may have preserved or introduced mutations that do not occur elsewhere, that might explain why the algorithm could not make sense of the DNA. Admixture analysis is evolving rapidly, but as Judy Russell put it: “it’s not soup yet”.1
Lesson learned: don’t put too much trust in admixture results
I hope that sharing my experiences with admixture tools has shown you that a little suspicion goes a long way. If your paper trail says one thing, and your admixture results say something else, check the chromosome painting to see how solid the blocks are on closer inspection. DNA doesn’t lie, but our interpretations sure can be incorrect!
Sources
- Judy Russell, “Admixture: not soup yet,” blog post, The Legal Genealogist (http://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog/2014/05/18/admixture-not-soup-yet/ : accessed 27 June 2014). Hat tip to Jennifer Zinck who pointed out on Facebook that Judy wrote about this related topic on her blog.
About Yvette Hoitink
I know in your case it probably is the isolation that occurred in your father’s village. My husband on the other hand, was surprised to find that he has Asian blood. His background is Polish. Both maternal and paternal grand parents were straight from the old country of Poland. Come to find out, the Mongolians invaded Poland several times and spread their DNA around. It is fascinating stuff. It is amazing how humans get around!
Isn’t it fun to learn about our deep ancestry through DNA testing?
There is an amazing book series (historical fiction) about Genghis Khan and his Mongolian empire written by Conn Iggulden that I highly recommend: the Conquerer Series.
I finally found one part of my Native American history. What I found interesting is the British government deported the French father and 1/2 French 1/2 Native American child back to France from Nova Scotia, Canada.
This grandmother, married in France, had 2 children before being given passage back to the America’s. She left those children in France, where they eventually married and had children.
There are 3 documented family stories of French and Belgium family being deported after living several generations in Canada.
So, to me, it’s completely feasible that you could have Native American blood.
I have been reading original Jamestown records which mention people requesting to take their indian servants and slaves back to England with them. It also mentions much intermarrying among the whites and and Indians. many of the original explorers may have also brought back women as wives. Dutch occupation of Indonesia also brought some Asian DNA into the mix. I think that sometimes complicates native American false positives. I really am not very knowledgeable about it. What is really confusing is the different results you can get from different admixtures on gedmatch, (eurogenes, MDLP, etc. I was lucky enough to find my native American lines through plain hard work, going through relatives one at a time.
Is it possible your French Huguenot ancestor came to Virginia then returned to the Netherlands? There were many at the falls of the James River. They intermarried with Pocahantas’ tribe. If any of your relatives are Bernard, Burton, Chastain, Amonette, Du Puis, Gullet, etc. this may have happened.
No, there’s no evidence of that. I’ve traced all these French lines back to before there was a settlement in Virginia. None of the other DNA tests pick up Native American, so this is just an artifact from the algorithm.
You have Northern Native features. The Dutch occupied, traded and bought land from the Mohawks and other Algonquian speaking tribes for over 40 years. The Durch are the knly peoples that were peaceful with the Native Americans. It is very well known here in the US that those Dutch in New Amsterdam intermarried with the Northern Tribes. I have Durch and Native ancestry. And I have traced my family tress to the Lenne Lenape and Mohawk Nations. Some of those mixed deacendandts returned to the Netherlands with family when the Dutch returned and some stayed in America such as in my case. I would not rule it out. I can only trace one of my ancestors to the Netherlands and severa of my lines to Native. Yet Gedmatch Genesis Eurogenes V2 K15 gives me 97% Northern Dutch. I see it jn for face. You are very much Native American my friend.
?Only 1% ,which even if it were true would be too far back to affect someone’s physical appearance,yet you think someone can have “native features” ???
Native Americans and First Nations were also taken as slaves and servants back to Europe, so I’m assuming their DNA is still thereand has spread over the centuries
Chattel slavery was illegal in the Netherlands. I’ve never heard any stories about Native Americans brought to the Netherlands as servants either. Do you have any documentation for that? I would love to learn more.
Personally, I think the chances of the algorithms being wrong are much larger than the chance of such an unlikely event to have occurred, ending up in my family tree without documentation, and leaving a DNA trail that can be detected ten or more generations later.
But mixed Native American and Dutch children, some of which, did return to the Netherlands with their families. Some stayed on in America. If you would email me I would be happy to give you my Gedmatch Genesis and we couldcompare chromosomes. I know which of my chromosomes my NA falls on comefrom my mothers and from my fathers lines.
Youtube Dutch Slavery: Suriname Slave Registry published online in the Netherlands.
Also, remember L’anse Aux meadows was a settlement for 200 years and people were trading and going back and forth so that admixture could be affecting you as well
Yvette, I found your latest DNA results article very interesting. I am certainly no DNA expert, especially for what time period your results could cover. That being said, it must be remembered that between 25,000 and 10,000 years ago migrations took place from northeastern Asia to America and also during this period there were migrations back from America to Asia. We also know that the Vikings came to America around 500 years before Columbus however, it is believed that the Vikings did not mix with American Indians. There are also some who believe that a small number of Europeans may have come to the east coast of America during that 25,000 to 10,000 years ago period by following animals along the ice cap. This is believed by a very small number of archeologists and has not been proven. They believe this because of similar tools, spear points, mound constructions, and facial features of some eastern coast American Indians. It would be interesting if it could be found out that this small percentage of American Indian could be from one of the back migrations to northeastern Asia or possibly an ancestor that followed the ice cap thousands of years ago.
Great observations. It would be amazing if chunks of DNA that old got preserved in that isolated village. The area is still called the “Achterhoek” [Back Corner] today.
Yvette,
I want to let you know that your blog post is listed in today’s Fab Finds post at http://janasgenealogyandfamilyhistory.blogspot.com/2014/06/follow-friday-fab-finds-for-june-27-2014.html
Have a wonderful weekend!
Cool, thank you! Honored to be listed among so many great blogs! Have a great weekend too.
Yvette,
This is so interesting to me! I have done admixture DNA tests, too, though my results have made sense to me. But I have a friend who continues to be disgusted with the illogic of his results and I think your experience may reassure him that he’s not mistaking things.
I have a different friend, though, who is enjoying her own interpretation of her Native American genes. While she and her parents have obviously lived their whole lives in North America, all four of her grandparents were from Finland, so the Native American percentage in her admixture is baffling. She has decided that perhaps Native Americans are distantly connected to the Saami in Finland, so she likes thinking she is part Saami. I won’t show her your blog post. 🙂
Hi Yvette,
I am a De Groat, original surname was De Groot, but after my grandfather’s genernation the spelling changed to De Groat, I don’t know why, but I am African American, Native American, and European, and other after DNA testing. My people extend back to when the Dutch formed New Netherlands. I just wanted to let you know during my research of my own genealogy of my 7th great Grandfather Joost De Groot, I found that many Native American slaves were brought to the Netherlands just as they were brought to other European Countries, so maybe there is something in your genealogy history you don’t know about. I have had two DNA test from different labs, but that have pretty much shown the same results. As like you I have wondered where all those 3% to 4% come from that I do not know anything about, and wonder how I could have this DNA, but I have come to the conclusion that there is a lot that we do not know about our ancestry. We only know what we have been told by our families, but maybe that is all that they knew. If my parents were alive to let them know what my DNA results showed, they would not believe it. We knew about African, Dutch, Native American and other European ancestry, but, my DNA came back with 4 or 5 ethnicities we knew nothing about and they showed up in both DNA test.
I wondered if you had Finnish ancestors distant also. Heh. Aren’t the admixture results supposed to be unreliable if they are below something like 2%? Either because of randomness, or because whatever caused the results are remnants from many thousands of years ago?
I do not have any Finnish ancestors that I know of. I have some Swedish and Norse ancestors in the 10th century, through a noble bastard line, so there may be a Finnish connection that I am unaware of. Fascinating.
I have been told since I was a child of our American Indian Ancestry ( Algonquin )
Wasn’t I surprised then at 23 and me only a tiny bit showed up but also Finnish ,
Never heard any talk of Finnish in the Family
I am reading. Vikings came into Newfoundland approx 800-900 AD and came in contact with the Beothuk tribe. It us written in the books that they took a Beothuk woman back to the Scandinavian country s. Beothuks ate maritime extint; Algonquin is desended from them it is said. My mother is from Newfoundland and carries Artic native and native American about 4-5% on Gedmatch and I am wondering if this could point ti Beothuk or what tribes this is? Di you have some insight on this?
Yvette, I am so glad you posted this! My dad has consistent Amerindian DNA in every single DNA test he takes (0.85%-1.33%–I have roughly 1/2 that amount in my tests, very small but there). I originally had him do the Ancestry.com DNA test and then uploaded to GEDmatch.
I have no explanation for this. He is mostly English/Norwegian/Swedish/Dutch/German/Irish. We’re American but have zero stories on Native American ancestors. I am an American so of course I’d love to have my Cherokee or whatever ancestry lol, but I don’t think that is what is happening. Whenever I can refine the Amerindian further on GEDmatch it is always Arctic (and about equal amounts Siberian). Almost zero North Amerindian (0.09%) and no MesoAmerican/South Amerindian. I’m thinking he either has a Saami ancestor somewhere or this is just a reflection of a deep Arctic common ancestry between Native Americans(Arctic), Saami/Scandinavians, and Siberians??
Hello Yvette,
I really love your website, thank you so much for share these things. I’m Brazilian, but my maternal ancestors are, in majority, Dutch.
This post made me very astonished. I loved your final phrase: “DNA doesn’t lie, but our interpretations sure can be incorrect!”
Just for curiosity: Do you have any Jewish ancestry in your family? Any possibility for that?
It’s because I’ve been reading some things about some connections between Hebrews and Native Americans. For example: There is a DVD entitled “Lost Civilizations of North America”, this production claims that DNA testings have shown a positive match between certain Native Americans and inhabitants of Holy Land from over 2000 years ago (There is an article about it called “Native American Jews? A Fulfillment of Prophecy?” By HaRav Ariel Bar Tzadok)
I think all this is very interesting, and I guess the definition of the Native American DNA stays a mystery.
No, I do not have any Jewish ancestry that I know of, either in the documents or in my DNA matches. I have several Dutch matches but also many matches with early American colonial roots, which makes sense because of the Dutch presence there.
Yvette, did all of your other GEDmatch ethnicity admixture runs reveal about the same amount of Native American, or was it just on the K13? Thanks!
I am descended from the extinct USA East Coast Lenni Lenape tribe.
Zero trace of Native American in my Ancestry.com test.
I was surprised to find instead….FINLAND !
Could the connection be that Scandinavian explorers contributed their DNA
to my indigenous peoples, long since decimated by European invasion.
Small numbers of Native Americans survived a forced migration to the Western United States
from which the Native American DNA samples were drawn. My tribe is extinct,
unavailable for DNA sampling, so I am “related” only to the Finn-fathers !
Lenape are not extinct.
We are Still HERE.
May I propose an explanation? While it may be true that you can account for everyone on your family tree for ten generations back (although it seems you cannot exactly – not by what you said) – I know that being Dutch, you may have had some sea-faring ancestors like some of my own. I am American. My father came from some of the founding families of New York. My mother’s Irish ancestors arrived in the 19th century. But I just found out I had enough Native American ancestry to have had a full-blooded Indian 7th great grandparent around 1700. My father’s family was on Long Island in the 1630’s (and all over the rest of New England). But there are some ancestors where the female does not have a surname available. No family trees supply one, in a time when American females were proud of their founding fathers and went by their names in the records for the most part. There is an “Abigail” in a community with not that many English or Dutch women, at the end of Long Island in what is today the Hamptons and also the reservation of the Shinnecock tribe, co-existing. Could she be the source of the Indian genes?
Now imagine, as in your case, the family decided to go back to Europe. Some of them did in my family, returning to Europe but leaving a few offspring behind, maybe the eldest son. Suppose a man brought his younger children back home, he had an inheritance to claim (could be small, middle class, but still). Others did this and brought back children from India and the Caribbean. It happened. In fact Robert Ballard, the submarine explorer who discovered the Titanic, discovered that through his New York Dutch ancestors he had inherited genes from New Guinea – Indonesia. Kind of a shock for him, but he accepted the science and then tried to find out the pathway. That is how I feel about being part Native American. I imagine that men are men wherever they go, and if they do not bring back wives, their children sometimes turn up. Somehow, I am more likely than not to be from a group of people who spoke Algonquin and were smart enough to pass on their genes through the dominant families of the time and place where they had most likely lived for thousands of years. This is probably not just a false “blip” but maybe an explanation for some notable gap in the record.
Oh, and one more thing about the name “Abigail” that I have found in my family record on that side twice, and without a surname attached in either case: the word itself is a stereotypical name for a servant girl, in the English language at that time The first known use of it as such is recorded in 1671, according to the online Merriam Webster dictionary.
So a native woman can have been in the household originally as a servant and been “christened” with such a name although she really was called something else by her own people. That’s my clue for now. I have no idea if it will explain my Native American genes.
Actually, Merriam Webster is conservative in the use of “Abigail” for a servant girl dating only from 1671 – maybe that’s more about widespread use. It also cites a play by the Restoration playwrights Beaumont and Fletcher who may have introduced this stereotype Abigail character = servant girl. They wrote in the first part of the 17th century.
I do not mean to say this is the actual source of the Christian name for an Indian girl who married or lived with a white man (under common law marriage she could become legal at some point). There may not yet have been anti-miscegenation laws, and in any case, American traditions seem to privilege unions with Native Americans so that people express pride in them. To me this indicates that some higher status whites had Native American ancestry in the early period. I am sure there are whole academic papers on the subject. In my case, it comes down to genetic evidence and gaps in an otherwise very well-documented genealogical record which might be supplied by who the near neighbors and hunting/trapping/fishing partners were in what was then a frontier. The Hamptons, that is!
I’ve been able to trace most of my ancestors ten generations, not all, because I have some mystery lines on my mom’s side. But my mom has 0% Amerindian on the same test (Eurogenes K 13), so any Amerindian must have come from my dad’s side. I have been able to track all of my paternal ancestors back ten generations and most of them back further to the early 1600s. They all came from the same area, in a circle of ten miles around the house where he was born in Winterswijk on the Dutch/German border. They were farmers, the nearest port was a day’s travel away and most of them never even left the village in their lives. From studying the history and archaeology of the place, I know that the farms in these areas have been worked since at least the 8th century and I would not be at all surprised if my family descends from these early farmers. I have no reason to believe that anyone from the Americas, or a descendant of theirs, would have come to that village between 1492 and the early 1600s.
I would love to find out that I had such exotic DNA, but in my case, I simply don’t see how that could be.
Why would a Native American girl marry an illegal immigrant and invader to her forefathers homeland, and proceed to cut off ties to her tribal community? I also doubt that native Americans were allows to be part of New England society at those times, especially after King Philips war. I also doubt this indian girl would take some foreign founding fathers last name because she was ” proud of her founding fathers”. Maybe your test was wrong or your ancestors were Mongolian hordes.
http://sciencenordic.com/dna-links-native-americans-europeans
Perhaps this link could provide some answers. I have tested through familytreeDna. It has me at 8% Native American, which is the range for people on the Caribbean, but also 8% Finnish/Siberian which was a total shock for me. Gedmatch has me at 12% Amerindian. That article makes a lot of sense since I have no known Finnish or Scandinavian ancestors in7 generation. .
Hey Evette, I thought your post was interesting, but not the first I heard of this. I have been doing research for ten years on Ancestry and Genealogy. I man that I touched base with from Europe also was from a small village and he had NA dna. One thing to remember is borders changed with invasions many times so just because your family was born there doesn’t mean you will have the sames genes. The Golden Hordes genes are still present in Europe which is probably why you have some NA results, from ancient Dna spread through invasions. Here is a great map that I tell people to look at when talking about being one single Nationality. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecpIa7erMtI
I am pretty sure I have Dutch ancestry, as my family were early settlers in New York (17th century), and although Long Island was divided into English Long Island (where the Foster family settled) and Brooklyn (which was Dutch), early in the process the intermarriage of these Protestants began once the English acquired New York from the Dutch.
In a recent test at 23andme, it appears that I have a lot of British ancestry but some ambiguous Western European, with relatives in Belgium and the Netherlands as well as Germany. I am pretty sure this comes from a German immigrant grandmother’s family, but it could also come partly from earlier Dutch ancestors (given some first names for boys in the family like “Van Wyck” and other clues, I’d put money on it).
Now here is the connection to your article: it appears that I may have had a Native American ancestor about six or seven generations back, which appears on a long part of one chromosome.
Let us imagine Dutch people who left New York after having been there for a few generations. Perhaps they were not pleased with the English take-over. This could be historically evaluated. They could even have gone to the Dutch Caribbean for a time, before wending their way back home. At this point they could have acquired mixed race ancestry. They might have returned to some village and who knows, the parents could have lost the thread of the story — sent their children off somewhere as apprentices or whatever. It’s so easy to lose family history, if you think about it. So it isn’t necessarily true that someone’s father from a remote village has no Native American ancestors, given that his country was one of the key settlers of the Atlantic coast and that in the very early days, Indian squaw women (at least for some of the English) might have meant the difference between survival and death. It may be that Dutch settlement was more controlled and paternalistic, but somewhere, especially with intermarriage with the English, other genes have a possibility of having gotten in.
In my case, I realize that family tree and genealogy are two different things. Sometimes they are in a neat parallel, sometimes there are gaps. You can fill in almost every blank if you are descended from early settlers in America, but there will be lots of women, for instance, who appear on scene with no surname, have a few children, and then are heard from no more. I think we all must allow for the unknown factors, and not discard information which does not seem to fit our preconceived ideas of our orderly ancestors (which they weren’t any more than we are).
Gosh, sorry, I can see up above that I already wrote you about this. Must be that it’s Halloween and all the little trick or treaters here have me jumping up and down from my laptop (still Oct 31 here).
Very Important observations about keeping an open mind. Although the odds are perishingly small of being descending from abducted Native Americans, we also need to remember they were brought to Europe in the 17th century as slaves and as curiosities by colonists.
I would not go calling NA women Squaws. That’s offensive. If you don’t believe me, say that in a room of Native Amer. woman.
In 1600’s Sweden formed a colony in America and named it New Sweden. With those settlers were lots of Finnish people who settled on the borders of Delaware, Pennsylvania and New jersey. Finnish and native americans did get along very well as they both were nature/forest people who didn’t have strcit rules for owning the territory like say British or Dutch had, but instead had belief that nature belongs to all. Finnish also were hunters and dressed many times in animal skins like native americans. Both also had something else in common, sauna, or sweat lodge which brought them closer together when trading and negotiating. Eventually there was intermarrying between the tribes and Finns. Finnish people interacted mostly with Delawares or in the other name Lenni-lenapes.
It is told that during the first indian wars late 1600’s, raiding indians did not destroy Finnish villages, but let them be in peace.
This is quote about Finnish i found:
The coming of the Finn has rocked the north woods country. He is today what the red man was two centuries ago, the exotic stranger from another world. In many ways the popular myths surrounding the Indian and the Finn run parallel. Both derive from a shadowy Mongolian stock – ‘just look at their raised cheek-bones and slanting eyes.’ Both possess supernatural stamina, strength, and tenacity. Both drink feverishly and fight barbarously. Both practice shamanistic magic and ritual, drawn from a deep well of folk belief. Both are secretive, clannish, inscrutable, and steadfast in their own peculiar social code. Even the Finnish and Indian epics are supposedly kin, for did not Longfellow model ‘The Song of Hiawatha’ on the form of the Kalevala?
Fascinating, thank you for sharing.
Tommi V
Thank you so much for your comments.
I have a Pukko knife made by K. Wahtera
of Toijala…somehow this came down to me
from my Lenape ancestors !
Would love to know more. Please stay in touch
with me at lynngillikin@gmail.com
Why even post? All you did was spew a bunch of sorry old stereotypes? Native Americans are not closely related to Mongolians, nor fins. Europeans have in contact with Mongols a far lot more the the Native Ameticans, (ghengus khan). Besides that Europeans , Fins and Mongolians were not even around when the Native Americans settled the two continents of The Americas, 40,000 years ago, Native Americans were already a isolated breeding population.
Being wise in our own opinions without Supporting facts can make for entertaining comments which are hopefully ignored.
Why even post? All you did was spew a bunch of sorry old stereotypes? Native Americans are closely related to Mongolians, or fins. Europeans have in contact with Mongols a far lot less than the Native Ameticans, (ghengus khan). Besides that Native Americans were not even classified when the Europeans , Fins and Mongolians settled the two continents of The Americas, 40,000 years ago. Only then were Native Americans classified an isolated breeding population.
Hi I’m in the UK and have just come across your blog. I have some Germanic ancestry (Anglo/Saxon YU106). I often come up with some “Native American” in my results, albeit around the 1% mark. I also have higher percentages of Finnish or Baltic on some calculators. All my ancestry over the last couple of hundred years is in the UK. I actually match up very closely with some people in the Netherlands.
I have seen it suggested than this “Native American” could be Hunnic influence which I understand isn’t that uncommon amongst Germanic peoples. Some Germanic tribes had close associations with the Huns. I have a pet theory that my Y U106 (Z326) could have a connection to the Longobards, who certainly had connections to the Huns ( but I’m no DNA expert) regards, John
I.m sick of this native american nonsense.. Unless u have more than 2% amerindian ancestry component u don’t have any natively american ancestory. North west europeans typically carrythey from 0.4 to 1% amerindian component. This is from deep shared ancestry on the eurasian landmass from before the native american colonisation of the americas,> 10,000 bp.
Amerindian and other components, such as west asian, entered into western europe in the late neolithic from the pontic step/ iranian plateau. They were the first horsemen in europe and introduced indo european languages. Typically irish score 1%, norwegians 0.9 ,brits 0.8, germans 0.6 a.d french basques virtually nil. Interestingly basque is an non indo european language.
Last year I called Ancestry, and had a long conversation with them regarding their advertisements for Native American DNA. Ancestry does not have any USA-based Native American reference data, just Canada (North America) and South America – this is what they mean when they advertise “Native American DNA”. If one is a descendant of the US Southeastern states Native peoples (say Cherokee or Creek, for example) and are testing their NA DNA, it will not show up in Ancestry or any other DNA test, yet. Until enough of the Cherokee Nations population (et al) agrees to be tested as a reference group, we cannot know. The ancestors of Cherokee Nation included US Southeastern tribes, which were rounded up and marched away from the region almost 200 years ago, many perished during the removal. Those who stayed (usually women marrying white men) were assimilated into their community. This information was relayed to me personally as I was curious about their tests. A family member’s (with known Creek ancestry) results came back with no NA DNA, which prompted me to call. Her great-grandmother was Creek, from Georgia, and even had a Creek name as well as her American name. All other relatives go back to the 1500s in England, Ireland, Nordic, scant German, the odd result is West Asian, which I think is the Native DNA, possibly. Ancestry does not have the ability to sample true ancestral populations, but say they are working on it. Just sharing my experience.
No hun. Southeastern US Natives cluster with the Native samples on DNA panels or East Asian. North, Central, South, Indigenous Americans have more in common among each other. If you have Native American ancestry from the Cherokee or The Creeks by now, in 2017 it should be showing if you have it at least within five generations.
Hello, I am also Dutch and live in the Netherlands. And 25% Indonesian. In my DNA result 0,9 % Native American DNA showed up, I am really wondering why and how this can be. Cannot find any explanation for it.
Native Americans descend from Asians who came to America via the Bering Straight. This can make Asian DNA look like Native American DNA and vice versa. So I imagine your Native American DNA is really Asian DNA. Also, at 0.9%, it could be just noise.
Hi, my ancestor Conrad Lammerse came from Amsterdam. He was born in 1680. I show Frisian ancestry via Gedmatch reports just behind English and Irish. I am trying to determine what the Lammerse name could be ie Lamerson, Lamersen, Lamberts, Lammers etc. Trying to figure out origin(German, Frisian, Dannish etc). I am U106 haplogroup The original name shows up in a variety of ways including Conradus Lammmerse Lamberts, Conrad Lamberts, etc. Any thoughts on this surname? Thanks James Lomerson
Lammerse is a patronymic, a name derived from the father’s name; in this case “Lammert.” That name in several variations is common throughout north-western Europe and doesn’t give much of a clue as to origins. The name “Conrad” points to Germanic or Scandinavian roots since that name is less common in the Netherlands. It could be that his father’s first name was Lammert or Lambert, or that the name had become hereditary in an earlier generation and that his father was named Lammerse as a last name.
Have you considered that perhaps one of your ancestors traveled somewhere where there were Native Americans and she became pregnant by one of them without anyone ever knowing what she had done or, probably, the case was silenced as it usually happened in that kind of situation.
My ancestors were in small villages in the Netherlands. They were dirt poor, many of them are who were forbidden to leave the area so they would not have traveled. There were no Native American men to get pregnant with. The chances of an algorithm failing are much, much larger than me actually having a Native American ancestor.
Hello,
I’m Dutch as well.
Most of my ancestors, say 10 generations back, are from the Dutch-Belgian border between the cities of Antwerp and Bergen op Zoom and from the nearby Island of Goeree-Flakkee (fathers side) and from my mothers side most of my ancestors are from the villages north to Bergen op Zoom en the nearby island of Tholen.
My Y- dna is J2a L70, and my fathers line goes back to about 1400 in the Antwerp region; besides some people who are from the same area, through ftdna-data comparison, I found out, likely, to be distant related to a Russian Jewish family and some Spanish folks, who, I guess, descend from Jewish Conversos.
The Ducy of Brabant is known for Jewish presence in te middle ages (13th and 14th century).
I also did the complete dna test and was surprised by the outcome, being 96% European, 40% (!) of Scandinavian descend, although I knew Vikings had visited the area around Antwerp. 23% British Islands. 12% Greek-Italian wasn’t that surprising, cause I read about the Italian troops of Spinola visiting the area in the 16th and 17th century Dutch-Spanish war. Besides, lots of my direct family members do look more Mediterranean than Western European.
Most surprising however was the 1% Native South American DNA and 2% Finnish DNA I seem to have, and the fact that I didn’t seem to have ancestors from the Iberian peninsula.
The foreign ancestors that I did find were soldiers, from France, Switserland and West Germany, who came to garrison town of Bergen op Zoom in the 18th century.
Bergen op Zoom and the surrounding villages are known to have been visited bij foreign troops and soldiers and intermarriage with local people since the beginning of the Dutch-Spanish war, from mid 16th century untill the 19th century. Sometimes even the number of soldiers in foreign regiments trancended the number of local people.
It is possibly that one of them soldiers was of party of Native American descend and the Finnish DNA could be from a Viking ancestor.
Still I think the explanation by Yvette does sound more reasonable to me.
Additionally:
There is a family from the Goeree-Flakkee island with the surname Phernambucq and they descend from a family that came from the town of Phernmabucq, located in 17 th century Dutch Brazil. I have ancestors from Goeree-Flakee and the bordering Zeeland provence, from where already from late 16 th century many people travelled to and from South America; Suriname, Brazil and the Dutch caribbean Islands. So hypothetically some of them could have carried native American dna.
What it could be picking up is the fact that you descend from the same people who’s ancient ancestors crossed the bridge into America. before there was such a thing as counties of written word. I believe that is where mine comes from. The up close DNA is all European yet the ancient stuff shows about 1% Amerindian. Though I do have some Dutch ancestry through the Kellers of New York. But I think that would show up differently. I match the child found in Montana in the earliest Amerindian DNA.
Though as we find more and record their DNA a different picture may evolve. It is all rather interesting.
I checked Eurogenes and lo and behold, I also seem to have Amerindian ancestry.