User:Nelawrence531/sandbox

I am honoring my possible Tslagi (aka Cherokee) heritage by creating this user page. For too many years, after the arrival of the English colonists at Jamestown, the Cherokee peoples did not have a written language and nothing other than oral history passed down until Sequoyah created the Cherokee written alphabet in 1821. Thus, all accounts of Matoaka's (Pocahontas) life have been focused primarily around articles written by people who were NOT of American Native heritage and anything other than the written word was largely discounted as folklore or hearsay. It wasn't until Sequoyah developed his "talking leaves" in 1821 that the full truthful tribal history started to make its way into the Pocahontas narrative. I note also that it wasn't until around 1970 and the release of films such as "Little Big Man" starring Dustin Hoffman and "Dancing With Wolves" with Kevin Costner that it became "cool" to acknowledge and honor any Indigenous American heritage. It has long been the custom of the US Government to regard the indigenous peoples as "children" and couldn't make any decisions on their own without "guidance" in their affairs. As a result of the interference, many people were afraid to freely admit their Indigenous Native American heritage. As of Nov 2016, my family tree posted at Ancestry contains over 74,000 names in my efforts to try to find my link back to the Bollings and Rolfe families of Virginia.