Way back in the early days of "new world exploration", there were a lot of Frenchmen who came to this hemisphere to work the forests.  These French lumberjacks brought their axes, their saws, their big woods boots and probably checkered flannel shirts.  What they failed to bring were girls.  That lack began to manifest itself after a bit and the obvious solution was the Stephen Stills solution:  "If you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with".  In short, they married (or at least teamed up with) the breeding stock of the local Indian tribes.  But for whatever reason, they chose to give their brides new names.  Anyone who has chased French ancestry through Montana or the Dakotas has found that Jean-Luc and Pierre are more likely to be married to Sally or Martha than to Marie or Celine...and when you find that it is a sure indicator that Sally and Martha are actually Tall Cloud and Lily Pond.  If you find, as I did, that you have several generations of this in your direct lines, you have a significant percentage of Native American blood in you.  I have known this for a long time and apparently, so have a lot of other folks.  But one group you would think would be very up on this is surprisingly ignorant:  The Bureau of Indian Affairs.  Here's how I know:

In December of 1971 I got out of the Army and moved to Phoenix to be a civilian, something I had never done before.  Every morning I was up searching through the newspaper looking for which places I would go to and put in my job applications.  Someone mentioned to me that there was a new junior college being built on the east side of town, just inside the Indian reservation,  and they were looking for all manner of trades and workers and drivers.  I would have to apply at the Bureau of Indian Affairs.  So I did.

Recently many people are discovering what us folks in the Southwest have known for a long time:  The reservations all across the USA are autonomous organizations.  They have their own police, courts, laws, and punishments.  Getting in a jam on the "Res" can put you in a world of hurt.  Working on the Res can put you in harm's way.  But I needed a job.

I filled out the several pages of application and waited patiently for better than three-quarters of an hour until I had the opportunity to speak face-to-face to the Personnel guy.  He was whiter than birch bark, which will be relevent in just a sec.  He looked over my application.  He nodded here, hmm-ed there, and finally told me that I was just what they needed.  I was glad to hear it.  Then he told me that there was just one small problem...I didn't seem to be an Indian.  It seems that in order to work on the Res for the BIA, you had to be at least 1/8th Indian.  I started to be disappointed but then I remembered the family legend and explained about Sally and Tall Cloud and how when a half marries a whole you get a three-quarter and that bleeds down to a little less than a half in a couple generations but throw in another half or ever another whole...well, he was soon as confused as you are.  But he allowed that such a story could be true and all I needed was to produce tribal records to verify my claim. 

It was impossible.  To the best of my knowledge, no records were kept;  we couldn't even prove what their names were.  Mr BIA was sorry, but I had to produce proof (where none existed) or I couldn't work for the BIA.  So I gathered up my DD 214 with my impressive military history, my resume', my letters of recommendation, and everything else I had brought along with me and stood in front of Mr White-as-new-snow BIA's desk...right there under the huge portrait of Uncle Sam captioned "UNCLE SAM IS AN EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER".  Unless you want to work on the Res, I guess.

So I missed out on a job driving a truck moving dirt and gravel around the reservation in support of building the new JC for about $4.00 per hour.  Instead I found a job at the Arizona School of Driving; paid on a silly scale based on 15 hours of instruction per student and la la la...then on to Associated Grocers unloading box cars at $4.00 per hour or so...then to RC Cola delivering soda pop for $2.50 per hour and finally to United Metro, driving a belly dump for 6.06 an hour...where I was called upon to deliver sand, gravel, rocks, and asphalt to the edge of the Res on the east side of town where a new junior college was being constructed...like Saint Waylon used to say, "What goes around, comes around".  whatever that means.  I sure wish I could have seen the white boy at the BIA office again, just to give him a shrug and a quizzical look.