# 9 REDBONES WERE INDIANS!

At least many of them likely were!

Now that you have picked yourself up off the floor (hope no one had one of those medic alert buttons you see on TV), we can discuss the issue. It will likely be a short issue, but who knows?

Although some of the family, through DNA research, appear to have married into Sub-Saharan families, you won't find it in genealogy research. At least not in your face -- straight out that cousin what's his name married a Black lady by the name of ......!

But it seems that this DNA research always turns up Indians in the blood line, and the family talks about that without any reservations. Of course, the old timers will tell you that being Indian in those days and even now in some places, was as bad as being labelled a Negro.

Nothing stopped Philip Goings from marrying an Indian woman and having mixed blood children and perhaps his father Stephen before him was married to an Indian woman and beyond that, at the moment, would be just pure speculation. But, they were mixed blood Indians all.

The Goings who left Mississippi/ Louisiana earlier on, Gipson Goings and James had no problem marrying into Indian families -- check the Oklahoma Indian Rolls. There are Goins/ Goings all over them.

To say or think that an Indian would never raise a hand against another Indian is Hollywood stuff that has been pumped into our heads for decades. There is no such tribe (or family if you will) called the Indian Tribe. Real Indians were not the dumb, benevolent, Hollywood speaking halting English types by a long shot. They didn't grow up in Denny's practicing their lines.

For &#*&$@, Ransom, Rueben and Seaborn were off chasing Comanches as Texas Rangers and Seaborn was killed by the Comanche in 1861. They were Choctaw Indians duking it out with Comanches, maybe even Quanah Parker for all I know.

Sorry, sometimes I get off on a rant. But to continue, my near Goins family, my 2 nd Great Uncles and Aunts, Ransom Goins, Sr, 1825-1916, and his brother Rueben Goins, 1837-1930 and Adaline Goins, 1838-1927, all had Indian spouses. Ransom Goins daughter's Nancy Alzenia Goins, 1857-1941, married a Chickasaw man, and Josephine Goins, 1861-1919, married an Indian man (Nephew of Cherokee John Ross). And there were others.

Now this story is not just common to my part of the family but to other parts as well -- you all know your Indian connections, and you all know your Redbone connections. It does not have to be all that complicated to see the picture.

So, Redbones were Indians and Indians were Redbones -- a good many of them I think. You can have all kinds of Gypsy theories, but Indians hung out with Indians.

Gary J. Gabehart (Mishiho, Mish-eh-ho)
Mishiho@aol.com