ELIZABETH WARREN &  HER CHEROKEE HERITAGE

Elizabeth Warren, the Democrat candidate for the nomination of the party, made much ado about her Cherokee heritage until a DNA test showed she had no American Indian blood whatsoever.  However, I do think I know how it is she came to think she was part Cherokee.  I’ll illustrate from my own Cherokee heritage.

My great grandfather, an Irishman nicknamed Trick, served in the Texas 12th Cavalry during the Civil War.  At the end of the war he and some buddies fled to Mexico to keep from having to surrender their guns and horses to the Federals. After about two years of negotiation they were paroled and came back across the Rio Grande.  They were in far deep Texas far from home (Johnson County) with little wherewithal.

The affects of the Civil War caused a large shortage of beef in the North.  Cattle were worth only a few dollars a head but worth $40 a head at the railheads in Missouri and Kansas.  Trick and pals decided to round up a herd of those wild longhorn cattle that roamed all over south Texas.  They drove their herd north, not without dangers from the environment and hostiles.  About half way they successfully partnered with a Texas rancher with a much larger herd and drove them across Indian Territory into Kansas.  Trick worked for the rancher as a drover and scout on several other cattle drives.  Trick saw much of the rangeland in Indian Territory and knew it was good for grazing cattle.  He also became acquainted with the landscape.

Trick decided to finally return to home on his family’s land grant ranch in Johnson County near the small community of Egan.  There he met Lugaine, a part Cherokee young lady.  Her father was half Scot and half Cherokee.  Her mother was Cherokee. Her father was a Methodist circuit rider for the several communities in a surrounding five-county area.  It was at a church function that Trick was smote by the lovely Lugaine.  They married a few months later.

Since Lugaine was mostly Cherokee she was entitled to a ‘headright’ in Indian Territory.  A few years and two children later they gathered what little official identification Lugaine had and sent it to a lawyer in Talhequah, the Cherokee capital.  He specialized in processing legal claims for headrights that would legally entitle them to claim large acres of land.

A year went by and Lugaine had not heard from the lawyer in Talhequah.  She sent an inquiry to the Lawyer. (NOTE: Keep in mind this was in the 1870’s.  No Internet, no telephones, no copy machines, etc. There was telegraph, but it was sparse.) The reply that came back was the lawyer’s office had burned to the ground destroying all the paperwork  and unprocessed headrights, including Lugaine’s.  This so incensed Trick that he packed Lugaine and kids up in a covered wagon and crossed Red River into Indian Territory.  There he staked out a sizable homestead.  Thus, he was a ‘sooner’, illegals that came sooner than allowed by law.

After awhile and after considerable inquiry Trick and Lugaine learned that the lawyer sold headlights to the highest bidders, usually white people.  His office then conveniently burned to the ground destroying all evidence.

Elizabeth Warren’s ancestor, whose picture hung in a prominent place in their household, may have been the one white guy that bought Lugainie’s headright. Thus, Elizabeth’s claim to a Cherokee heritage.