Nadene Goldfoot
The Old Testament must have been popular reading once upon a time in the 17th and 18th centuries, for people born then investigated whether the American Indians were the lost tribes of Judah. Their conclusions were both a Yes and a No. No one could prove either way, so it became a hot topic. James Adair, an Irish trader who lived among the Cherokees for 40 years, decided that the Indians were one of the lost tribes and wrote 70,000 words on the subject at a time when printed words were dear.
The supposed connection between the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel and the Native American nations of North America gained support during the 18th century with the increase of European exploration of the continent. James Adair (1709-1783), was one of the earliest to believe in a connection between the Ten Lost Tribes and the various Indian tribes of North America, a theory that he formulated in his History of the American Indians (London, 1775). At the same period, this theory also received the support by Charles Beaty, a missionary to the territories west of the Allegheny Mountains, who detailed it in his Journal of a Two Months Tour with a View of Promoting Religion among the Frontier Inhabitants of Pennsylvania, and of Introducing Christianity among the Indians to the Westward of the Allegheny Mountains, (London, 1768).
His evidence were their division into tribes; their language and dialects; their festivals; feasts, and religious rites; their absolutions and anointings; their laws of uncleanness; their avoidance of unclean things; their practices of marriage, divorce, and punishment for adultery; and their ornaments.
Others who held similar view like Adair were Gregorio Garcia in his Origen de las Indios de el Nuevo Mundo in 1607; Bartolome de las Casas, Thomas Thorowgood in his "Jewes in America" in 1650 and 1660, John Eliot in his Conjectures, Manasseh ben Israel, Cotton Mather, Roger Williams, William Penn, Charles Beatty in The Journal of Two-Months Tour in 1768.
The Indian tribe most likely thought of as one of the Lost Tribes was the Cherokee because they were inheritors of a dignity beyond their rather simple means and even referred to themselves as the "principal people." their lands were the center of the Earth in their history stories. All else radiated outward from there.
Naturalist and social historian, William Bartram, reported on them. "The Cherokees in their disposition and manner are grave and steady; dignified and circumspect in their deportment; rather slow and reserved in conversation; yet frank, cheerful and humane; tenacious and determined in their councils, honest, just and liberal, and are ready always to defend their territory and maintain their rights.
They were a clean people, when compared to the white English, German, and Scots-Irish settlers drifting in, infiltrating their territory, most of whom were satisfied to bathe in autumn and not again till spring. The Indians "went to water" often, considering water, the sun, and fire to be 3 holy gifts of the Great Spirit.
The color of their skin was a copper color and they were proud of it, referring to Europeans as "ugly whites.". They happened to be lighter than their Indian neighbors, the Creeks, Choctaws and Iroquois. They were lithe, tall, erect, and without noticeable deformities. Their spoken language was musical and was punctuated by guttural breathy breaks. The men enjoyed ball games, hunting and warfare. Warfare was their favorite activity and occupied much of each winter.
The discovery of the American continent with its various populations generated among the Jews and the Christians alike a number of speculations about the supposed Israelite origin of the American Indians. The Spanish bishop Bartolomeo de Las Casas (1484-1566), a fervent defender of the rights of the native nations of the Americas, forwarded a theory according to which the American Indians were descendants from the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. The same idea was advanced by some English missionaries. Thomas Thorowgood is his book Jewes in America, or Probabilities that the Americans are of the Race (London, 1650) strongly supported the idea of relating the American Indians to the ancient Israelites. Although Thorowgood’s theory was disputed soon after its publication, among others by members of the clergy, it nevertheless did not lose its attractiveness for other seekers of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel who continued to raise new ideas and speculations in support of the Israelite origin of all or part of Native American nations in both the Northern and Southern American continents.
David Reubeni, a 16th century Jewish adventurer, managed to be received by Emperor Charles V in Regensburg along with the false messiah Solomon Molcho (1500-1532), and claimed to represent a relative of King Joseph who ruled over the tribes of Reuben, Gad and half Manasseh. Molkho was born in Portugal as a Marrano and became a royal notary. His imagination was fired up after meeting with Dqavid Reubeni in 1525 and he had himself circumcised and made his way to the Levant where he became immersed in Kabbalistic study. Going to Italy, he made a profound impression on Pope Clement VII, who welcomed him in the Vatican and protected him from the Inquisition.. He came to consider himself the messiah. The inquisition finall got him and he was burned at the stake.
David Reubeni eventually died in a Spanish prison in 1538, but his extraordinary story prompted Abraham ben Mordechai Farissol (c.1451-c.1525), the first Jewish author to mention the newly discovered American continent, to dedicate an entire chapter of his tractate to the subject of the Ten Lost Tribes – (Igeret Orhot Olam, Venice, 1586).
R. Manasseh ben Israel of Amsterdam (1604-1657) in his book Mikve Israel (Hope of Israel, London, 1652) brings the testimony of the Portuguese crypto-Jew, Aaron Levi (known as Antonio de Montezinos), who claimed to have encountered during his travels to South America (Ecuador, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela) Indian tribes practicing some Jewish rituals and who allegedly were descendants of the tribes of Reuben and Levi. Manasseh ben Israel used the legend of the lost tribes in pleading successfully for the admission of Jews into England during Oliver Cromwell’s regime. Remember, Jews of England were banished for 365 years from 1290 to 1655.
Joseph Israel (1818-1864), a Romanian-born Jewish adventurer and great admirer of Benjamin of Tudela to the extent that he changed his name to Benjamin the Second; Joseph Israel traveled between 1845 to 1859, from Istanbul, Turkey, to Egypt, Syria, Land of Israel, Kurdistan, Mesopotamia, Persia, Afghanistan, India, and after 1859 to North America, searching and inquiring everywhere for the Ten Lost Tribes. Joseph Israel met various Jewish communities and collected valuable information about their way of life and traditions. Among the Jewish communities of Asia, he met of the Bene Israel in India who in Israel’s opinion were descendants of of the Ten Tribes.
Jewish travelers from the Land of Israel that set out in search of the Ten Lost Tribes in the 19th century include Rabbi Baruch of Pinsk, who was murdered in Yemen having left Safed in 1830; Isaac son of Chaim Baruch Halevi (d. 1886) who traveled from Tiberias to India hoping to find the Sambatyon river; Ezekiel Asche, a German-born physician who left Jerusalem in 1848 and disappeared in Ethiopia, having traveled through Egypt and Yemen; and Rabbi Moshe Yaffe of Hebron who disappeared during his second visit to India in 1848.
Moses ben Isaac Edrehi (1774-c.1842), a Moroccan-born rabbi and kabbalist who lived for many years in Amsterdam and London and eventually immigrated to the Land of Israel is the author of two works dealing with the quest for the Ten Lost Tribes. Ma’aseh Nissim (originally published in Hebrew and German in Amsterdam in 1809), is a mythical description of the Sambatyon river who was later published in London in 1834, along with An historical account of the ten tribes, settled beyond the river Sambatyon in the East with many other curious matters relating to the state of the Israelites in various parts of the world, published in London in 1836.
The quest for the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel has been conducted by Jews, Christians and Muslims, in practically every corner of the earth. As a matter of fact during the last centuries this search turned into a theme that has reoccurred occasionally with many Christian travelers, missionaries, authors, and explorers belonging to the Roman Catholic Church as well as to various Protestant denominations. Jewish motifs and beliefs were adopted by non-Jews while Jews accepted some concepts and ideas developed by non-Jewish seekers of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel.
One interesting feature is that there are Jews with the Y haplotype of Q. In fact, my father's line is QBZ67, a very Jewish line. There are native American and South American Indians that also are of the Q haplogroup, but one that we evidently branched off of many years ago. The Qs had originated in Siberia, Mongolia and parts of Turkey thousands of years ago. Starting the Paleo-Indians period, a migration to the Americas across the Bering Strait (Beringia) by a small population carrying the Q-M242 mutation took place. A member of this initial population underwent a mutation, which defines its descendant population, known by the Q-M3 (SNP) mutation. These descendants migrated all over the Americas.
Haplogroup R1 (Y-DNA) is the second most predominant Y haplotype found among indigenous Amerindians after Q (Y-DNA).
Update: 3pm: Q-M242 originated in Asia (Altai regions), and is widely distributed across it. Q-M242 is found in Russia, Siberia (Kets, Selkups, Siberian Yupik people, Nivkhs, Chukchi people, Yukaghirs, Tuvans, Altai people, Koryaks, etc.), Mongolia, China, Uyghurs,] Tibet, Korea, Japan, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and so on. (For details, see below.)
Now we have found many of the lost Tribe who are the Pashtuns of Afghanistan, Pakistan an parts of India. The check out with cultural facts as well as DNA. A few are even of the Y haplotype of Q that match my brother distantly.
Reference:
TRAIL OF TEARS, The rise and fall of the Cherokee Nation by John Ehle
https://www.anumuseum.org.il/the-myth-of-the-ten-lost-tribes-article/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term=lost+tribes&utm_campaign=g&device=c&gclid=Cj0KCQjw7MGJBhD-ARIsAMZ0eeuwrElE-znIO4-hn95mLsmy-r8lqJiuL977DzQqrFcNnlGQKTDJs_EaArvpEALw_wcB
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_history_of_Indigenous_peoples_of_the_Americas
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