When searching for Native American ancestry the first tendency is to try to determine if you or someone in your family looks like a Native. This tendency can certainly lead you down the wrong path in your search. Yes, there are some physical characteristics that have been labeled as “Indian”, but over the years and with the mixing of the races, finding purity in physical appearance can be very difficult.  Also, with television and movie portrayals of Natives looking very Anglo-Saxon in their skin tones many have been fooled to think that Natives were only white or almost white in pigmentation or skin coloring. This is another stereotype. Don’t believe it! 

When I asked a Cherokee elder what is the skin color of Natives, he stated, “Natives are the color of the soil”.  

In other words, they come in all the colorings –deep rich black as the Alaskan soil, chocolate brown as the Connecticut soil, copper red as the Alabama soil, caramel as the Arizona soil, tan as the New Mexican soil, and every color in between.  Remember Natives are/were “people of color”!