Elizabeth Warren's 'ancestor rounded up Cherokees from their homes for the Trail of Tears'... but she brushes off claims



The great-great-great grandfather of Elizabeth Warren - who has long claimed to be part Native American - was not married to a Cherokee but actually rounded them up for the Trail of Tears, it has been claimed.

But the Senate hopeful has dismissed the embarrassing reports as 'politics as usual', and has brushed off calls for her to prove she did not use her questionable heritage to further her law career.

The denial comes after an article on Breitbart.com claimed Warren's ancestor Jonathan Crawford was a member of the Tennessee Militia who rounded up Cherokees from their family homes.

Scrutiny: The University of Pennsylvania is the second law school to promote Elizabeth Warren as a minority faculty member as reports surface that she identified as Native American

He then apparently herded them into government-built stockades at Ross's Landing, the starting point of the Trail of Tears - along which as many of 6,000 Native Americans died - in January 1837.

Crawford was apparently part of a volunteer militia between 1835 and 1836 under Brigadier General R. G. Dunlap.

These troops were responsible for forcing - often without violence - Cherokee families from their homes in Georgia, North Carolina and Tennessee, the states they had lived in for generations

Previous reports had claimed Crawford's wife, O.C. Sarah Smith Crawford, had been noted as Cherokee on a marriage certificate in 1894 - a claim Breitbart.com rubbishes in its recent article.

Instead it said she was listed as 'white' in the 1860 Census, and ' was most likely half Swedish and half English, Scottish, or German, or some combination thereof'. Cherokee was not listed on the wedding certificate, it adds.



Kin: Warren, bottom left, was born in Oklahoma City in 1949 to Donald and Pauline Herring. It has emerged her great-great grand uncle once noted his mother as Cherokee - whereas she had never claimed this

Roots: Previous reports had claimed Warren, pictured as a girl growing up in the 1950s, was 1/32 Cherokee as her great-great-great grandmother was. She said her Cherokee roots were 'family lore'

It had previously been reported that one of her sons, William J. Crawford, had first made the claim his mother was Cherokee on his 1894 Oklahoma Territory marriage license application.

'Neither O.C. Sarah Smith Crawford, Jonathan Crawford, nor any of their seven other children, apparently ever claimed [she] had Cherokee heritage,' article author Michael Patrick Leahy writes.

It adds that Jonathan Crawford did probably not join the Army troops that travelled with the Cherokees along the Trail of Tears but he did join the voluntary militia again, which fought the Seminole Indians in Florida. Records show he was in Florida for six months from November 1837.

Paul Reed, a Utah genealogist who is a fellow at the American Genealogical Society, said primary documentation supports these claims.

'Jonathan H. Crawford did serve in the Indian wars,' Reed told the Boston Herald . 'He is listed as serving in the company that rounded up Cherokees.'

Claims: After Warren joined Harvard Law in the 1990s, she listed herself as a 'minority' professor



Horror: But now it has been claimed her ancestors actually forced Native Americans from their homes and onto the Trail of Tears, leading them from the South to Oklahoma after the Indian Removal Act of 1830

Yet on Tuesday, Elizabeth Warren refused to comment on the latest reports while U.S. Senator Scott Brown claimed she had used the questionable heritage on job applications.

THE TRAIL OF TEARS

After the Indian Removal Act of 1830, Native Americans were rounded up from their homes in North Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee and into government-built stockades. The removal included members of the Cherokee, Muscogee (Creek), Seminole, Chickasaw and Choctaw nations.

They were forced to give up their land and migrate to Oklahoma - a journey known as the Trail of Tears. The migrants faced hunger, disease, and exhaustion on the march, which was accompanied by troops. As many as 4,000 of the 15,000 Cherokees died on the route, with total deaths believed to be more than 6,000. By the end of the decade, 46,000 Native Americans from the southeastern states had been removed from their homes, opening 25 million acres for white settlement.

'I think what this is about is Scott Brown trying to change the subject,' Warren said, the Boston Herald reported.

'He just wants to find a way to talk about something else, and I think it’s wrong. I think this is why people are turned off on Washington politics.'

Warren has been criticised for claiming an ancestor was a Cherokee without documentation.

She also listed herself as a 'minority' law professor in a professional directory in the 1990s.

Former executive director of the National Congress of American Indians Suzan Shown Harjo said it was infuriating that Warren identified herself as part Cherokee without the proper paperwork.

She said: ‘If you believe you are these things, then that’s fine and dandy, but that doesn’t give you the right to claim yourself as Native American.’

In the 1990s, when Harvard Law came under fire for having a poor diversity-hiring record and a faculty dominated by white male professors, the school widely publicised Warren's alleged Native American roots.



Demands: Sen. Scott Brown has said Warren needs to prove she did not use her heritage to further her career

Refusal: But Warren, pictured on the campaign trail last year, brushed off the new claims as 'politics as usual'

In 1996, school paper the Harvard Crimson quoted a Harvard Law spokesperson saying that 'of 71 current Law School professors and assistant professors, 11 are women, five are black, one is Native American and one is Hispanic.'

Warren’s aides said the candidate does not remember mentioning her Native American heritage to anyone on the Harvard Law School faculty before her hire in 1995.

She was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma in 1949, in the lower-middle class family of Donald and Pauline Herring.

The youngest of four children, Warren became the first member of her family to graduate from college and then went on to get her law degree.

After taking a leave of absence from Harvard Law, she was selected to lead the National Bankruptcy Review Commission in 2008. In 2011, she helped design the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

That year, Warren announced she would run for the US Senate to unseat Republican Scott Brown.