Sort of made sense

"The natives used to kidnap white children all the time and raise them within their own tribes," said a woman I chat with in the Y locker room.  A Mormon, she seemed to have a lot of knowledge about such practices because, as we know, the Mormons collect genealogical data on everyone. 

We were talking about her husband, with whom I swim, who is preparing to go to Ireland to seek out his roots.  I told her that as an adoptee, I had done the "23 and Me" DNA tests and found my background fairly boring and predictable.  "English, Irish and a bit of Northern European," I explained.  But I also said I had expected a dash of native DNA in there because when I found my birth family, my great uncle told me that his grandmother had been raised on the Tyendinaga Reserve in Napanee.  "She spoke no English, smoked a pipe, had no teeth and when her husband died, she moved right back to the reserve to be with her people," he told me.  Right then and there, I thought I had native blood in me.  When the DNA came back, it was zero.     

Frankly, looking down at my blue-white skin when he told me, I was a little shocked.  However, he was very matter-of-fact about it and said everyone in the family always accepted this woman as a Mohawk native.  For a while, in the locker room, I started to think, "Oh, that's it!  My ancestors were kidnapped and raised as natives!  That explains everything."

Except it didn't.  Had my great-grandmother been raised as native, would she not have had an earlier generation that had co-mingled with the natives?  If so, she would have had some native blood in her.  Had she been the first white child kidnapped into that tribe?  If so, then yes, she would have been pure Caucasian and I would not have any native DNA, which I don't. 

So, the mystery remains.  Was she white and raised by natives?  If so, that would explain why my great-uncle told me she was native.  Maybe she was kidnapped as a young child in the late 1800's?  Why not?  So, I am technically a "white native". 

Wow!