now let me get this right?

[j r]

are the blackfoot and cherokee a subgroup of the saponi? i'm new at this and i am still learning. two of my grandmothers wwere native american. on my father's side, cherokee and on my mom's side full blackfoot. i am black. or should i say i am an admixture of races. african.
european (brittish, irish)
indian (cherokee, blackfoot) but it is so sad the way that black people's history gets swept under the carpet. i get so frustrated i could cry.

[Linda]

Hi, JR, I believe the Blackfoot were a subset of the larger Saponi Confederation of nations, or what was called the Yésah. Some believe that the terms Blackfoot and Yésah (Saponi) are interchangeable. The Yésah confederation were Siouan

The Cherokee are from the Iroquoian language group, unrelated to the Ÿésah. It gets very confusing because the word Cherokee was mis-used in the 19th century to label all kinds of Indian descended people. Some say it was a way of designating someone as a "tame" Indian, not at war with the U.S. during the years of the Indian wars out west.

A lot of people these days are keeping an open mind about ancestors who called themselves Cherokee. Oftentimes there will be evidence of them being from another tribe.

Some people think the same of the term, Blackfoot, but I don't believe that's true. I think when enough of us surface and put our family stories together we'll be able to show a real origin to this identification.