A Guide to Finding Your Indigenous Ancestry for People of Mexican and Chicano Descent
For most people who take a DNA test and find out they have Native American ancestry, the next question tends to be: how do I find my Native American tribal affiliation? I’ve written this guide to help you navigate through the tremendous number of resources available and hopefully help you find the answer to that question.
Considerations
It is crucial for anyone navigating this territory to understand that Native American tribal affiliation is a tremendously sensitive issue for many reasons. First, Natives across North and South America tend to be community-based. This means that membership in that particular tribe requires one to actually live in that community. Often times, people trying to find their tribal affiliations do not fall into this category. As a result, you must tread lightly here. Here is an example: on my mother’s father’s side, several of my great aunts insist that my mother’s father was a full-blooded Yaqui. Based on my research thus far on the topic, I haven’t found anything definitive to prove this but by triangulating methods, I’ve determined it is very likely. It would be a tremendous error if I were to go around saying I am Yaqui however because I know nothing about that community. Claiming Yaqui without membership would probably anger a lot of people and would eliminate any opportunity I would have to learn more from people who have membership as Yaqui people. The Yaqui people on both sides of the border have specific criteria one must meet to be considered a member.
Second, Natives have different criteria for membership. Imagine you are very excited to find an ancestor who is Apache and let’s say that person is your 2nd great grandparent. Most likely this is not enough documentation to join most Apache tribes however the Fort Sill Apache do enroll people who can prove at least one 2nd great grandparent is Apache from the region. Most Northern Native American tribes require at least one grandparent, one great grandparent, or one great great grandparent to be considered for enrollment (1/4, 1/8, 1/16). Other tribes use “tribal rolls” for membership. For membership in these tribes, one only needs to show that a Native person who appears on tribal rolls is also found in that person’s family tree. As you can imagine, it is very possible that many members of northern Native American tribes especially those requiring 1/16th blood quantum or tribal roll membership have very little to no Native American DNA at all (read more about this in DNA inheritance 101 below). This is a big reason why one must not solely rely on DNA.
For Native tribes south of the Mexican border, it is a very different situation. Natives north of the border were subject to a colonial regime that largely sought to exterminate them, whereas the Spanish colonial regime south of the border rather sought to exploit natives for their labor by assimilating them, which in turn led to a higher rate of indigenous DNA being passed into the general non-indigenous populace in Mexico than in the US. In addition, it is common for people who live in a Native community south of the Mexican border or whose recent ancestors lived in Native communities south of the Mexican border to have close to 100% Native American DNA. In Mexico and other nearby countries, Native membership is determined by the community one belongs to rather than blood or lineal descent. This practice existed in Pre-Columbian times where the name of the tribe was usually linked to the altepetl (or city-state) one lived in. If I were to go to a Yaqui community in Mexico and tell them I am Yaqui, they would likely be very confused.
Third, two dynamics exist depending on where you reside. North of the Mexican border, Native Americans are romanticized and it is not hard to find White Americans who very proudly claim to have Cherokee ancestry. Although they are romanticized, they are simultaneously ignored as if they exist only in the past as the “noble savage”. South of the Mexican border, Native Americans are very poorly treated. It is prevalent in Mexican families to consider light skin beautiful and dark skin ugly. This is due to the caste system that has been in place since the Spanish conquest whereas people with more European blood are valued more than people with less European blood. As a result, few people embrace their Indigenous ancestry because it affects their upward mobility in a very real way. This can make it very difficult to find tribal affiliations south of the border but it is not impossible.
Fourth, sometimes tribal affiliations are found however there is no longer a distinct community which maintains that identity. This happens whenever a tribe endured genocide, warfare, or high mobility and assimilation. Many people with ancestry in Mexico for example can trace their family tree to the Mexica (commonly known as the Aztecs, read why in the DNA inheritance 101 section below), the most powerful tribe in Mexico at the time of the arrival of the Spaniards. However, since there is no longer a Mexica community in Tenochtitlan, one can’t become a member of that community. For example, I have found Mexica, Tepaneca, and Tlaxcalteca ancestors in my family tree however the native communities of Tenochtitlan, Azcapotzalco, and Tlaxcala no longer exist because they were absorbed into modern Mexico cities. Fortunately, a modern identity exists for Nahuatl speakers (the Mexica, Tepaneca, and Tlaxcalteca were all Nahuatl speakers): Nahua. I can therefore just say I have Nahua ancestry. Again, I need to be careful with my wording because if I say I am a Nahua, I may be challenged since I do not live in a Nahua community. Tread lightly whenever possible and always respect the boundaries set by Native communities.
Lastly, if you are able to afford a DNA test in the first place, you likely live in a city and your ancestors have likely lived in cities for multiple generations. Often times advice is given to find the tribes living near the city because you are likely related to them. There is research that supports this however this is not always the case. My brother-in-law’s family is from Chihuahua however when he began building his family tree, he found that his mother’s family actually migrated from Mexico City to New Mexico in the 1500s and then moved to Chihuahua after the Pueblo Revolt. As you can imagine, he has found a lot of Indigenous ancestry from Mexico City and also New Mexico. As a result, if your family has lived in cities for many generations you will likely have many different tribal affiliations.
DNA Inheritance 101
Native American DNA inheritance can be summarized with this seemingly paradoxical statement: Kennewick Man (an ancient Native American who died about 8,000 years ago and whose remains were studied extensively) is the universal ancestor of every single person who has Native American DNA yet most Native people today do not possess any DNA from Kennewick Man. Read that again if you need to please. “Every time an individual has a child, exactly half her DNA is copied into that child. Every time she has a grandchild, a quarter of her DNA on average goes into that grandchild. On average you can expect 1/8th of your DNA to end up in each great-grandchild, 1/16th in each great-grandchild, but it could be more or less. And so on until the likelihood of a literally zero contribution to a given descendant becomes significant (Ancestors Tale, page 38).” Therefore, those people who do possess DNA from Kennewick man, likely only have a tiny fraction of a single DNA letter from him because he lived so long ago.
As you begin building your family tree you will quickly find that people who live in the same regions as you are likely your cousins. I for example found that my brother-in-law is my 5th cousin and we were able to find the exact ancestors we have in common. This is because both of our families are from Chihuahua and New Mexico. If you work long enough on your family tree you will inevitably find rampant incest. In most cases, its not close incest but 2nd-4th cousin incest and probably your ancestors had no idea they were actually related just as I had no idea I was related to my brother-in-law! This is actually good (for us, not so much for them) for two reasons: 1) it decreases the number of ancestors you need to sift through, and 2) it increases the likelihood that DNA from any particular ancestor is preserved. For example lets say that Motecuhzoma Xocoyotzin (commonly referred to in genealogy as “Moctezuma,” the last tlatoani or emperor of Mexico-Tenochtitlan) happens to be your 13th great grandparent on your dad’s grandmother’s line. The DNA you inherited from him will be a very small amount because he lived 500 years ago. However, if you find Motecuhzoma Xocoyotzin in multiple lines of your family tree, the DNA inherited from him will be a much higher amount. DNA analyses in modern biology have revealed that it takes a surprisingly short amount of time for one person such as Kennewick man to become the universal ancestor to every person in a region such as North and South America: about 2,000–3,000 years! This means that if you follow the family trees of all Native Americans 2,000–3,000 years in the past, everyone will have the same ancestors. This is what makes Native Americans one big family in the first place.
Knowing that, please don’t go around proclaiming Native Americans are all the same because you will be sure to anger many Natives who greatly value their tribal sovereignty over unity with other Native groups. It can be maddening at times, but that’s just the way it is. Again, tread lightly. In any given location of smaller size such as Mexico for example, it takes a remarkably shorter time for one person to be the universal ancestor of everyone in that region and in approximately 350 years, we can expect that Motecuhzoma Xocoyotzin will be the great grandfather of ALL Mexicans. This of course means that there should be a very large number of Mexicans today who can count him as their great grandfather (likely upwards of 75%)! Don’t be surprised if you find him in your tree as his lineage is very thoroughly researched. This is an important trend to note: it’s much easier to find parts of your tree connected to prominent historical figures than it is to find parts of your tree connected to less prominent historical figures (Source).
Genealogical Societies
My journey searching for my tribal affiliations began a few years ago. I was very frustrated because my ancestry DNA test came back as 41% Native American and I also possess a Native American mtdna haplogroup (C1b) however I had no idea which tribes I descended from (for more on mtdna haplogroups, click here). On a whim, I sent all my known grandparents names on my father’s side to the New Mexico Genealogical Society because the only thing my father knew was that his family came from New Mexico. I was astonished when a worker at the New Mexico Genealogical Society e-mailed me a family tree of my father’s grandmother’s side going all the way back to the 1600s! Contacting a local genealogical society should absolutely be your first step as they have researched multiple family trees and have a wealth of documentation to back up their work.
Social Media Groups
Many genealogical societies also maintain social media groups. Joining these groups for your specific region is a great step that will help you build your family tree and find tribal affiliations. Again, this is because most people from a particular region are probably cousins due to how genetics are dispersed. Here is an interaction I had with a member of the Chihuahua State Genealogy Group:
As a result of this interaction, I found a cousin, and also expanded my family tree on my mother’s side about 200 years in the past. My mother’s family always said that our grandparents were Spanish, Portuguese, and Basque and I was able to confirm that using this strategy. Although it may be counter-intuitive, finding your European ancestors is absolutely crucial in the search for your tribal affiliations. This is because once you’ve identified your European ancestors, you can easily narrow down the lines in your family tree where your Native ancestry comes from. On my mother’s side for example, it turns out that her mother’s parents are European and her father’s mother is also European. Considering I inherited a Native American mtdna haplogroup from my mother, I can then firmly identify her father as the source of my Native DNA on her side. As I stated earlier, this aligns perfectly with my great aunts’ claim that her grandfather was a full-blooded Yaqui. This would make me 25% Native on my mother’s side which means my father’s side has a much higher percentage of Native American DNA. My next step is to test my father’s DNA to confirm that. This corresponds to the family tree I have built on my father’s side that contains great grandparents from several different tribes. Members of genealogical groups tend to have access to additional resources such as books and articles that can help you find your ancestors as well.
Ancestry
I am often asked which DNA company is the best. For those searching for tribal affiliations, Ancestry is the best by a huge margin. What makes Ancestry so great is that the company has existed for a very long time and before DNA testing became popular, Ancestry specialized in helping people build their family trees by allowing them to access their giant database of ancestral documents. Many Ancestry users have thousands of people on their family trees due to the plethora of resources available to them through Ancestry. When you take an Ancestry DNA test, Ancestry automatically compares your DNA to its members. It then gives you a list of your cousins in an area of the website called “DNA Matches”.
You will find you literally have thousands of cousins, all related to you in very different ways. Since most people on Ancestry also have linked family trees, you can look at their trees and find your common grandparents. This makes growing your family tree so much easier. For example, you might find your common 4th grandparent but the other person’s tree has their parents and grandparents whereas yours does not. You can add those names to your own tree since you know you descend from the same line. Ancestry also allows you to contact other members in case you have clarifying questions. Most people are happy to meet cousins and learn how you are related to each other. Lastly, Ancestry has created an algorithm that analyzes the DNA and family trees of you and all of your cousins and tells you the exact names of the ancestors you both have in common. This is a huge time saver! Other companies also allow users to include family trees however none are nearly as robust as Ancestry.
Triangulation: Other Tools
In social science, triangulation refers to the combination of different research methods in the study of the same phenomenon. Triangulation is crucial in genealogy work because unfortunately you will encounter false positives. I once found a link to Motecuhzoma Xocoyotzin in my family tree only to find that his supposed daughter “Ines” did not even exist! Ancestry sometimes gives you ancestry hints whenever it thinks it finds one of your ancestors. These ancestry hints appear as green tree leaves. Upon clicking on of the ancestry hints, ancestry added Luiz Nanacipactzin to my tree as my great grandfather. Luiz Nanacipactzin was the last tlatoani (many historians consider leaders after Cuauhtemoc to be “puppets” of the spanish crown) of Tenochtitlan. After triangulating with the sources below, I determined that he is indeed my great grandfather which added a Mexica line to my tree.
Gedmatch — Once you receive your DNA results, your next step should be to upload the results to GEDmatch. Most people who are serious about genealogy have a GEDmatch account and the website contains many powerful tools. If for example, you find you share great grandparents with someone else based on your family tree you can do a one-to-one comparison to compare your genes to confirm that you both also share the same DNA from those ancestors. Here is a tool that tells you how closely related your parents are:
Geni — Geni is a website that like Ancestry, focuses on family trees. The layout makes it very easy for users to add information and documents and I have been able to find several tribal affiliations using this website. Because it is user-driven, it is very important to triangulate any information you may find here with other sources to ensure the information is accurate. Here is some really cool information I found about my 10th great grandmother Maria Pascuala Bernal:
Family Search — This website is operated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and is considered to be one of the best genealogical resources for people with ancestry in Mexico.
My Heritage — This website is very similar to Ancestry and has an impressive library of documents available for research.
** Update 7/1/21 **
Since I wrote this article I have made several updates to my family tree and I wanted to share my progress because I’m sure it will be helpful information.
When Triangulation is Not Good Enough
It turns out that sometimes triangulation is not good enough to say with 100% certainty you are related to someone. I mentioned in the original edition of this article that I discovered I was related to Luiz Nanacipactzin. I was pretty confident in this find because many people across many platforms also had him listed as their ancestor. Once I posted about him in the Mexican Geneaology facebook group (an absolute gold mine by the way) I was met with skepticism because I didn’t have any supporting documents. So I researched as much as I could about Luiz Nanacipactzin and I realized they were correct. Across all of the genealogy websites, not one person had a supporting document to connect Luiz Nanacipactzin with their ancestors. Based on my research there is no documentation that Luis Nanacipactzin even had any children in the first place. Of course, this doesn’t mean its not still a possibility but going back to my original rules (which I broke out of excitement), be careful not to start claiming stuff until you have legitimate evidence to back it up.
How to Find the Supporting Documentation
You may be wondering “ok, where can I find documentation then?” It turns out the best online tool for this is Family Search. Before you start working with it I should warn you about two obstacles you will probably encounter: 1. although many documents are digitally transcribed, important details such as Indigenous affiliation are usually not so that means you will have to learn how to read Spanish handwriting (as it appears on the actual documents) most of which is very sloppily written and 2) you will likely find that the names of many of your ancestors can vary considerably from document to document.
A few months ago a Facebook friend, Juan Zapata, discovered he had considerable Indigenous ancestry through a DNA test and he began looking into it utilizing Family Search as his main tool. Juan quickly became obsessed after he found one Indigenous ancestor after another eventually reaching 64 total Indigenous ancestors (he breaks this process down in a video here: https://youtu.be/inzRvXtQyDk)! Now this is where the research methods of Juan and I differ: I had the advantage of descending from New Mexico where a lot of the work is already done for me since the family trees there are very well-researched whereas Juan was doing all of the work on his own. While I work on my family tree maybe a couple of hours a month, Juan has estimated it has taken him 700 hours of research to progress to where he is now!
As a result of his research Juan is now Juancholoa. In the course of his research, he was able to find several ancestors with their indigenous affiliations written in the documents! It turns out that his Indigenous ancestry is a mix of Guachichil and Tlaxcalteca (you may remember I also have Tlaxcalteca ancestry. Just a quick note that the Tlaxcalteca travelled with the Spaniards to many places after the Spanish Conquest even as far away as the Phillipines so don’t be surprised if you also find Tlaxcalteca ancestry in your family tree) Juancholoa is a Guachichil name Juan discovered along the course of his research. Besides a name he also reached out to a Guachichil community in Mexico and is now working with them to help revive and preserve Guachichil traditions. Juancholoa’s journey is a testament to the power of learning how to research on your own and also having a tremendous amount of persistence and patience.
I’ll echo one more word of caution from Juancholoa’s story when it comes to claiming Indigenous ancestry. Many people assume that since they are from a certain place, they are automatically related to the Indigenous people who live there now. This is not a terrible assumption as a Harvard genetic study did show the Mexican participants were most closely related to nearby Indigenous groups. In Juancholoa’s case, the Indigenous people he is related to did not live in his home state of Coahuila but rather Nuevo Leon and San Luis Potosi. Remember, our ancestors did move around and if I would have assumed my Indigenous ancestors came from New Mexico I would have been completely wrong since all of the Indigenous ancestors I have found so far came from Central Mexico instead.
How I Used Juancholoa’s Research to Get Unstuck
Many times during the course of his research, Juancholoa got stuck because he could no longer find any connected ancestors. This is incredibly demoralizing but as long as you are persistent, you should be able to push through most barriers. For me, I was stuck on both of my great grandfathers on my fathers side. The name of one of my great grandfather’s as my family currently knows it is Rumaldo Gonzales. While the New Mexico Genealogical society was able to give me a robust family tree on my great grandmother’s side (Rumaldo’s wife), unfortunately they had no information about Rumaldo’s parents.
I reached out to Juancholoa and told him about my problem and he gave me an incredible strategy that he had found along the way: if you can’t find information for an ancestor, research their siblings and other relatives. This turned out to be the strategy I needed to break through my dead-end. Once I started looking up documents for Rumaldo’s children, siblings, nephews, and nieces, I discovered that his name is spelled Rumaldo, Romaldo, Romualdo, and Romulo across many different documents! Once I discovered that discrepancy, the flood gates opened again and I have been able to build his side of the line of my tree all the way back to the 1500s. Using that same strategy I was also able to build the tree of my other great grandfather (Edward Cordova) as well. Not only did I build my tree but I also found some amazing pictures of my great grandparents, one of which looks exactly like my dad. Once I have time I plan on looking into the documentation to find additional Indigenous ancestry.
A Summary of My Indigenous Ancestry So Far
While Juancholoa has found 64 Indigenous ancestors, I have found 5 (all women!). Again, this is mostly due to the amount of time we have both devoted to building our family trees and also to the fact that the lives of my Indigenous ancestors were well-documented because of the historical circumstances they lived in (many were the early founders of New Mexico). Whereas Juancholoa can tell you the Indigenous affiliations of his ancestry, I can tell you that but also a little more detail about my ancestors’ lives as you’ll see in my documentation below:
Tlaxcalteca Ancestry
Mexica Ancestry
Nahua Ancestry
Beatriz de Los Angeles
I extracted seven references to Beatris de los Ángeles described as India Mexicana in 1631 and 1632 from Archivo General de la Nación, Inquisición, t. 372, exp. 16, folios 5r, 6r, 7r, 8v, and exp.19, folios 26r and 30r.
In March 1631, fray Estevan de Perea described Beatris de los Ángeles as “mui ladina y españolada,” being very acculturated to Spanish society and language.
There is yet no information from records of 17th-century New Mexico that identifies the names of the parents of Beatris de los Ángeles.
I doubt Luiz de Santa Maria Nacatzipatzin, who died 1565, and María de la Cruz de Santa Maria Nacatzipatzin were her parents.
Hopefully, someday a record for Juan de la Cruz and Beatris de los Ángeles can be found that names their parents. I recommend searching the books for Castas for the various Mexico City Churches. There were very likleymarried sometime between 1599 and 1610 in Mexico City.
If the husband of Beatriz de los Ángeles was indeed the name man named Juan de la Cruz, native of Barcelona, who came to NM in 1598, he was single at that time. He would have married upon a return trip to Mexico City. Unless,he was a different Juan de la Cruz who came with his wife to New Mexico after 1598 and by 1613. The eldest son of Juan and Beatris, who was named Pedro de la Cruz, was born circa 1608–1610.
Cuauhtiteca ancestry
Maria de Villafuerte — Cuauhtiteca
Francisco Lopez as stated on page 54 in The Origins of New Mexico families, a genealogy of the Spanish colonial period by Fray Angelico Chavez.
María de Villafuerte, born in the latter half of the 1500s, was a highly acculturated Mexican Indian woman from the Pueblo de Cuatitlán, then located just north of Mexico City. Cuatitlán, also spelled Cuautitlán, is popularly known as the birthplace of San Juan Diego, the humble Mexican Indian man to whom the Santísima Virgen de Guadalupe appeared in 1531. It is not surprising to learn that her grandson, Cristóbal de Anaya Almazán owned a painting of Virgen de Guadalupe, indicating a personal devotion to La Guadalupana on his part. Cristóbal was also an encomendero in New Mexico.
By Jose Antonio Esquibel’s profile
Feel free to reach out to me at mexicauprising@yahoo.com if you have any questions or want to share success stories
