How do you track down Choctaw and Cherokee Indian ancestry?

Question:

How do you track down Choctaw and Cherokee Indian ancestry?

I have family in Oklahoma and Arkansas that are totally unable to go very far looking into the ancestry of their family. Any help would be appreciated...

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: Maybe we are related? My mother has been doing our geneaology for the last 16 years. My Dad's side has Choctaw and my Mother's side has Cherokee. All of our descendants have been traced to Oklahoma and Arkansas. Some of the names the search came up with were anglo names due to missionaries baptising them - Martin and Miller being the most common. You should ask every living relative to give you as much information as they have about all the older relatives and where they came from. You should also know, that some Arkansans and even Oklahomans are not proud of that heritage so they lie about it or make up stories, which is too bad. Birth and death certificates, old Bibles have family history, old trunks in attics that are dusty and forgotten about. Good luck, it takes time and tenacity to get it pieced together because it really is like a jigsaw puzzle.