One month shy of her 100th birthday, Helen Lamon passed away, surrounded by family who thought they knew her complete story. She had lived through the Dust Bowl, two world wars, and the invention of television—but the story she carried most carefully was one she never told.
I never got the chance to know my great-grandmother, but my mom and dad tell me I was at her funeral when I was just four years old. To her friends, husband, children, and grandchildren, Helen was just a middle-class white woman from Oklahoma. Sure, she never talked about her childhood and had never returned to her home state, but that wasn’t too strange, right? Wrong. The scope of Helen’s story widened the second my parents found discrepancies in the Oklahoma and California censuses, nearly a decade after Helen’s death. What seemed like a clerical fluke quickly became an intriguing narrative that had been lost to time. As my parents dug deeper and deeper into my great-grandmother’s past, they found more pieces of Helen’s story that unveiled who she was.
Secrets Across Borders
On the 1910 Oklahoma census, when she was just six years old, one word encapsulated Helen’s identity: Indian. But by the time she reappeared a decade later in California records, that word had vanished. For the rest of her life, she would be listed as white on every government record.
As my mom and dad tracked Helen’s movements across the country through government documents and newspaper articles, they saw pieces of Helen’s identity that she had left behind on her journey to a new life. Helen was born in 1904 in the Oklahoma territory. This, we knew. What we didn’t know? She was a registered citizen of the Cherokee Nation. Not only that, but her mother and aunt had attended the Cherokee Female Seminary—a boarding school, funded by the US government, designed to assimilate Indigenous children into American society.
Somewhere between her childhood in Indian Territory and her adulthood in the West, Helen slipped into a new identity. The transformation was quiet, bureaucratic, and invisible in daily life. Neighbors, coworkers, perhaps even some of her children would never have suspected that Helen was Native American. Why did she hide her Cherokee identity? Unfortunately, we will never know for sure, but the historical context of her life lends some understanding.
The Trail of Tears
First, we have to understand how Helen’s family ended up in Oklahoma. The area most Cherokee people used to live in is now Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, and North Carolina. But after US President Andrew Jackson signed the 1830 Indian Removal Act, thousands of Cherokee, Choctaw, Seminole, and Creek people were violently marched west. Their destination? A region that had been deemed Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma. Over 16,000 Cherokee men, women, and children were forced to leave their homes, and around 4,000 of them died on what would later be known as the Trail of Tears. Helen’s ancestors were among these refugees.
Deals Made in Blood
Decades later, in 1887, the US government landed another devastating blow to Indigenous communities. Many tribes had been using their land communally, as they had done for hundreds of years back in their homelands, but this traditional way of life came to an end. Through the Dawes Act, the federal government forced tribes to parcel out bits of land to each member of their nation. To receive land, Natives had to “enroll” in their tribes. The US government would then assign each newly enrolled person a number and blood quantum—a practice that proved to be deeply problematic. Through blood quantum, Native Americans were stripped of their humanity. Their quantum, or percentage, of Indian blood was recorded and used as an identifier to measure how “white” or “non-white” they were. Indigenous people were reduced to their genetic makeup, just like purebred dogs or horses. Like animals, Native Americans were branded with the amount of “Indian blood” they carried. This practice continues today as new Indigenous children are born, enrolled, and assigned a number and blood percentage.
Helen in a New Light
About 17 years after the Dawes Act, Helen would be born and designated as #222 of the Cherokee Nation. She couldn’t choose her number or her blood quantum, but because of her light skin, she could choose to leave behind the “Indian” brand when she moved west. In the early twentieth century, being Native American in the United States meant being marked—by poverty, by stereotypes, by discrimination in housing, jobs, even marriage. Opportunities closed quickly when a census taker’s pen branded you as “Indian."
For many, passing as white was a form of survival. To bury an Indian identity could mean access to education, property, safety, or simply the ability to move through the world without harassment. For Helen, passing as white opened the door for her to go off to college when her dad’s cotton gin began bringing in steady income. Leaving her home, family, and Indigenous identity meant that she could start a new life—and she did—but it came with a price.
Helen never told her full story, never taught her children Cherokee words, never spoke of her mother’s nor her aunt’s experiences at the seminary. Generations grew up unaware. When she died in 2004, my family mourned her without ever knowing the full truth of her life.
Census records, enrollment lists, and fragments of history revealed what Helen had erased in life. She had been born a Cherokee citizen, a girl whose family’s names appear in tribal rolls, a child of a Nation that survived removal, allotment, and assimilation.
Her Legacy
Now, over 100 years after her birth, Helen’s legacy is being rewritten. Her descendants have uncovered the truth she could not share. The census records tell a story she never voiced, one of transformation, loss, and resilience. And while she took her Native identity to the grave, those who came after her are bringing it back into the light. For those who retrace her path—from Oklahoma’s red earth to California’s golden horizons—the journey is not just across miles, but from obscurity into illumination.
—Ellie Bradley
Sources
www.okhistory.org
www.education.nationalgeographic.or