NATIVE AMERICAN GENEALOGY

To Begin

• Collect all the names, dates, and places of your family heritage.

• Look for names, surnames, nicknames, relations’ names. All of these are necessary to find your ancestors. Look for locations which pertain to birth, marriage, death dates These pertain to any search.

Where To Look

• The best records are local records.

• Once you have a location and date, look in town and church records for birth, death, deed, tax, church and police/sheriff’s records. (known Indians were sometimes exempted from taxes)

• For Native records also see individual tribal or BIA records. Tribal contacts are listed elsewhere on this site.

• The 1892 Iroquois census is published as The Six Nations of New York and is one of the oldest Indian census.

• Another thing to look for are marriages with the same surnames. Often, other members of the same families marry. If you are lucky, there may be a history or biography written for some of your ancestors. This is especially true of local histories.

On The Internet

There are many web sites which aid in genealogical searches

There are pay sites like www.ancestry.com which will allow limited information through, as an inducement to sign up. The Mormon Church (Latter Day Saints) offers free searches at
www.familysearch.com. We highly recommend the work of Cindy Howell, who wrote the book on genealogical links. She may be found at www.cyndislist.com, where there are currently one hundred seventy nine thousand six hundred (179,600) web sites listed. All the above sites are found on cyndislist.