Europeans with Indigenous American Ancestry?

[ali.]

Preface by saying I don't give DNA tests much credibility. My dad, an Englishman of entirely English and a little Irish heritage, often comes up with small percentages of Native American ancestry. We always assume it's just noise and to ignore it - but I have seen Europeans before come up with some bigger chunks of Native American DNA, so it got me thinking.

Hypothetically speaking - If a European, living in Europe, from centuries of exclusively (known) European family were to come up with a larger portion of Native American DNA, where might that come from? We all hear about European Americans with some Native ancestry, that's to be understood, but where would this come from in actual Europeans? I have heard about some men from the Scottish Islands taking Native Canadian wives and bringing them back to Scotland in the 1800s. I imagine maybe some Iberians may have Native ancestry as well if women were brought back from Central/South America.

Any Europeans here ever shown up with this kind of dna and found out where it came from?

[Galium]

If you google for 'Salford Sioux' you will find a possible explanation, maybe not in your father's case, but for at least some of them.

Rootschat thread from 2008:

https://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=296911.0

[melba_schmelba]

Preface by saying I don't give DNA tests much credibility. My dad, an Englishman of entirely English and a little Irish heritage, often comes up with small percentages of Native American ancestry. We always assume it's just noise and to ignore it - but I have seen Europeans before come up with some bigger chunks of Native American DNA, so it got me thinking.

Do you mean on the GEDMATCH admixture tests (Eurogenes etc.) or the main DNA providers? If the former, I would say it probably isn't that reliable. My mother did show some native american on 23andme, but that disappeared in an update - but 23andme was supposedly changed to concentrate on ancestry in the past 200 years so it may be because of that. It is interesting what you said about the Scottish men returning from Canada with native american wives - I had wondered this myself having looked into the Metis, but I am not aware of any actual account of a native american woman living in Scotland, if you know of some, please add a link.

[Ruskie]

How small is your father’s small percentage?

The others who have had bigger percentages - how big, and have these percentages changed over time?

[melba_schmelba]

How small is your father’s small percentage?

The others who have had bigger percentages - how big, and have these percentages changed over time?

On 23andme, it was very small 0.1%! On GEDMATCH

various calculators

Eurogenes K13
Amerindian 0.84%

Eurogenes EUtest V2 K15
Amerindian 0.21%

Dodecad World 9
Amerindian 0.76%

HarappaWorld
American 0.63%

MDLP World-22
Mesoamerican 0.49%
South American Amerind 0.17%

My mother has many Quebec matches, but I don't know if this is because she has a lot of French ancestry or she has a Quebecois ancestor specifically. Quebecois are believed to have 1.3%+/-1.3% native american ancestry
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0065507

[Ruskie]

Thanks Melba, but I should have been clearer - my question was directed to Ali. 

[ali.]

Ironically I am from Manchester and so have heard of the Salford Sioux! I believe a grandchild of one of the Sioux men who remained lives in my neighbourhood, but to my knowledge my Salford ancestry doesn't contain any Sioux

I will try and find a record of the Scottish Islanders who had Canadian wives. I believe they were fur trappers or something of the sort.

For my dad's ancestry (on 23andme) it fluctuates anywhere between 0.1 all the way to 5%; so not much really. Likely just noise for me.

[Zaphod99]

Ali, going back to your original comment, do research the difference between DNA for ethnicity and DNA for cousin matching. It is widely accepted that that it is in its infancy for ethnicity matching due to the relatively small number of people globally who have been tested.  The day anybody finds fault with DNA for cousin matching, the whole concept will probably have to be scrapped so it is well researched.

Zaph

[susieroe]

I've shied away from asking about this because I understand people don't place much reliance on ethnicity results.
I have the opposite problem. My g'great grandad (born 1805 at Great Wigston) was a gunner in the RA and married and married a girl in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She was born in 1810 (family Bible) but I haven't found a baptism. It has always been understood that she was Native Canadian and oral evidence confirms it IMO. I have a section of DNA at 5.9% that would fit but My Heritage give it as Greek and South Italian. That really threw me! I've concluded that extremely few people from that area and ethnicity have had a test with MH and they've plumped for what this "rogue" DNA might be.
I've also read somewhere that some European ancestry can show up as North American as it shows similar traits, but I'm not clued up on DNA to comment on that.