Can someone help on how to find out which ancestor of mine was native american, and what tribe?

Question

I sent out my ancestry DNA a couple days ago but it will be a while before I receive the answers, in the meantime I have been searching for months of my family tree, mostly winding up at dead ends. I am mostly stuck because my grandfather, the one we believe the native American comes from, did not know his parents, so I cannot further his branch. Is there anyway I could get some help or advice? I have children of my own and I want to know myself and for them about our heritage so we can become educated and well versed on our past. Thank you so much!

Comments

Taylor, are you aware of the Native American Project on WikiTree?

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Ancestry DNA is only an autosomal test and not the most accurate one out there especially if looking for Native American heritage.  They do not provide a chomosome browser with the test to view why you match with certain cousins.    When you get your results upload for free to gedmatch.com where you can compare your DNA to the ancient bone kits of Native American's Clovis Anzik and Kennewick Man chromosome by chromosome.  Also use Admixture model k9b or Puntdial to see percentages, keep in mind sometimes if you show a trace of Amerindian then Arctic, Oceania, Siberian and some Asian can also count in the totals. No DNA test can ever tell you a tribe.  However, if you have overlapping centimorgans (segments of DNA) with the ancients and with other cousins that are in a tribe then most likely that is the tribe your ancestor was from.  See a series of articles on using your DNA by Roberta Estes all about Native DNA and using Ancestry DNA and Gedmatch called dnaexplained.com

Answer 1

Have a direct maternal line descendant of your grandfather's sister take an mtDNAPlus test from Family Tree DNA.

It is a bit hit or miss but you are betting that the Native American ancestor was on your grandfather's direct maternal line.

Don't count on learning the tribe (yet) because relatively few Native Americans in the U.S. are willing to DNA test.   This can be overcome because a good number of U.S. citizens of European and African decent have stories of Native American ancestry.  If more of them had mtDNA and Y-DNA tests then it would be a great benefit to Native American history.