How do i find out what type of Indian i may be or how much Indian blood i may ha

Question:

How do i find out what type of Indian i may be or how much Indian blood i may have?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: From personal experience, I have two parts of my family tree involved in the Mohawk-Hudson River Valley regions in the French & Indian and Revolutionary War era. The problem is being "half breed" was the worst thing you could be, and accepted by neither side, so you end up with no surnames for those ancestors, just the "rumour". Whether the Indian was male or female, on the "friendly" or "hostile" side is unknown. All I do know is that those members never spoke of their last name and moved around quite a bit, and had dark features. Then with the dislocation of tribes to reservations in the West, it makes the trail even colder. Plus after the war tribes got broken up and members drifted all over, Tuscarora, Delaware, Abenaki, Mohegan and Mohawk living in the same towns. If this is on the male side of your family there is some hope of DNA haplotype group matching, father-son genotype tracking so you could compare with different tribes. Unfortunatly my Native American connections are on my maternal grandparents side, hopefully someday they will have a DNA tracking program figured out for all branches of the family tree. Until then you have to go by geographic location and hope a census record mentions the head of household and the age matches the vital statistics of a person noted as being "Indian", finding gravestones and church records help. Proving oral tradition is very difficult. Plus, if you are going back as far as mine are, it's not enough percentage to officially qualify you for any benefits (I think it's 20 or 16%?)