08/07/2026
Have you ever had such a hardcore identity crisis that you seriously considered exhuming your dead ancestors? I am not entirely sure this is the correct platform to post this on, but I am relatively new to most forms of social media. I grew up isolated, homeschooled, and mostly off-grid. Please try and stick with me.
Imagine living your whole life with a certain cultural identity. Igbo, German, Laos, Seminole. Most people can imagine that pretty easily. From a young age, you know, at least vaguely, who your people are, right? Ponder with me a second, if you will, on how often you find yourself researching your own ethnicity? Not your family tree, but your like cultural identity. If youāre Scottish living in Scotland, you probably arenāt spending your evenings trying to figure out who the Scots are. If youāre Apache and raised within your tribal community, you probably arenāt googling around to see what traditions your people recognize. Hell, if youāre a modern American you probably arenāt researching what Americans live like today.
Now imagine becoming an adult, leaving your hometown, and discovering that according to the rest of the country, your heritage, what you have lived your entire existence knowing yourself to be, doesnāt exist outside your small community.
Everything your grandparents told you, everything your parents called themselves, everything your neighbors understood about who you were, just entirely unheard of outside your holler. For the first time in your life, you start searching for historical acknowledgment of your people, only to find a single newspaper clipping about your own grandmother, and nothing more.
Hi, Iām Beatty, and Iām Redfoot.
Do you know what that is? Iām not really sure I do anymore lol.
At one point in history I think we were called āIndiansā, at least this is what I was told.
Iām not an enrolled member of a federally recognized Native American tribe, (nor does my autosomal DNA point to India) and I am aware that the word Indian, was often a misnomer applied to citizens or descendants of a federally or state-recognized tribal nations. Redfoot is not that (trust me I checked). Historically, the term āIndianā was used much more broadly. Across the eastern United States, many multiracial communities like the Carmel Indians, Melungeon Indians, Lumbee Indians, and countless other mixed-ancestry groups were locally known as āIndianā long before modern systems of tribal recognition existed. Us Redfoot, as I have always understood us, are a multi-generationally mixed, tri-racial isolate. Now I was told, that one of these three races was Indigenous, but I am not so sure that is true. If it is, the tribe is unknown or extinct at present day. I was always told we were White, Black, and "Indian". I believe today that the American Indian was highly unlikely.
Redfoot is the word my family has always used to describe our tri-racial heritage. To be clear, this is just the historical identity of my kin, passed from one generation to the next through family, neighbors, oral tradition, what have you. Whether or not that identity appears in government records isn't going to change the fact that it has existed in our homes for generations, so please don't come at me invalidating or disrespectful, I have enough of an identity crisis happening as it is.
My Grandmother was Beatrice Kilborne, she descends from a lot of the common Melungeon names and families youāll find in the Clinch River area of VA and TN. Vanover, Riddle, Bunch, Yates, etc. She married my grandaddy Stanfill who descends from many of what I understood to be Redfoot names in the Big South Fork region. Blevins, Troxell, Mounts, Duncan, etc. However, the only surviving document that mentions the Redfoot people *at all* is a single newspaper article out of Whitley County, KY. Maybe I am just falling short in my research on accord of my own errors and lack of internet knowledge, or maybe all other Redfoot history is oral history alone. I don't know, and that's what I'm trying to figure out.
I guess I should stress that it isnāt uncommon for the small communities in the BSF area to have been lacking in physical records. Grandaddies side of the family lived some time in Blue Heron, a now defunct town whose history persists today entirely due to oral recollections alone. I guess, it is just very invalidating and identity shaking to suddenly not have any idea of who you actually are. My culture and my community have always been a large driving factor in my self image and identity, and learning that we donāt exist outside our own community really rattled me.
Nobody has much for answers that satisfy my craving to understand my ancestors more, in fact, the vagueness I got from the only family I still maintain contact with just drove me to obsess over finding the truth even harder, and no, my appearance didnāt give me much for clues, I look pretty ambiguous and can pass for really any ethnicity depending on my hair or how I wear my makeup.
Eventually I did submit a saliva DNA test, and ended up with even more questions. My DNA suggests I predominantly descend from Early colonial Americans, both Black and White and also a substantial chunk of Southeast Asian DNA. None of this brought me any closer to understanding my distant history or ancestors. There is claims of coming from the Carribbean and escaping slavery, but thats lore for another day.
I have many notable matches with surnames like Creekmore, Crabtree, Marcum, Boyatt, Slaven, King, Cox, Stephens, Duncan, Wilson, Kidd, and Ross. Many of these names existed throughout my community growing up, and also claimed the same "Redfoot" heritage, which leads me to believe that many families with these surnames may also be Redfoot people. It seems my grandmother started her life in Melungeon territory, but officially migrated back to Redfoot territory as an adult, her family seemed to migrate back and forth between these two regions, the Clinch River and the Big South Fork, pretty regularly throughout the generations. Iām not sure what led to my grandparents final relocation in to the Big South Fork, but I have been given lore about it all my life. That's for another day as well.
This is mostly a personal rant more than anything else, but if any of this resonates with you, please tell me about your Redfoot family.
