Hello, Ken
Thanks for offering your two cents. Muddying the waters seems inevitable when discussing the complexities of Cherokee ethnic identity and/or citizenship in the Cherokee Nation during the Civil War era. I suppose it's even more complex today. At one time the only thing that mattered was whether or not your mother belonged to one of the clans.

With my own Gentry ancestors apparently none of them were citizens of the Cherokee Nation, perhaps because they left the east in 1817 and moved to what became Arkansas. We do know that Samuel Gentry Heffington (who may have been in Moses Frye's Cherokee Battalion, according to E. Starr) is shown on the 1869 Cherokee Nation census as an intermarried white--even though he may have had some Cherokee ethnicity. He was a citizen Cherokee because he married Sarah Caroline Harnage, who was a citizen Cherokee herself, and a member of the Treaty Party community located at Mt. Tabor, Texas.

I have a follow-up question for you about possible relationships between the Texas Cherokees under Duwali/ Richard Fields and the Mt. Tabor Cherokees of Rusk County, Texas.

It seems more appropriate to have that conversation directly, beyond the walls of this excellent venue.
Thanks.

Wado,
Patrick
pynewood@npgcable.com