Celebrating Indigenous Peoples' Day With A New Finding In My Ancestry DNA

"The Northern Rio Grande Basin" 
DNA Map

For many years, one of my favorite late night pass times has been to work on my ancestry research. Occasionally new DNA research arises because DNA research is one of the fastest-moving fields in science. When the DNA regions are recalculated, I like to compare the difference in my DNA with my siblings and my grandson's because they are my closest matches (who have had DNA tests) My DNA has always been about 62% European with about 54% of that from the Iberian Peninsula. The European DNA regions have basically stayed the same since I have been doing ancestry research. The percentages of which region of the Iberian Peninsula my DNA is from changes from time to time, as Ancestry does more research, but overall, my DNA readings from the Iberian Peninsula stay the same. 

Recently, the big news is that Ancestry.com has  updated the map that displays the region of my Indigenous American DNA. For the longest time my DNA report looked like this map below with all of the Indigenous American DNA lumped together in the green area. I am 18% Indigenous American but the map included California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas and Mexico. I have been researching my ancestry for over 15 years so I knew that my indigenous DNA came specifically from New Mexico.

The other day I opened ancestry.com and they had finally categorized Indigenous American DNA and I received a map of precisely where my 18% Indigenous American DNA is from. It is called "The Northern Rio Grande Basin" which stretches across most of New Mexico and parts of Colorado, Arizona and a very small part of Texas and Northern Mexico. This land is the ancestral home of the Pueblo, Navajo, Apache and many other tribes of Native Americans. I am so happy to have this categorized because I have always been so proud of my family's Spanish heritage via New Mexico. We only knew the centuries old history of my Spanish ancestors who settled in New Mexico in the 1500's because they were Catholic and very good at keeping church records. This is important to me because I have lived in Texas most of my life and most people here don't know or care about my Spanish/New Mexico roots. They assume that because I am Mestiza, or a woman of Hispanic and Indigenous American descent, that my ancestors were from Mexico. Not true. New Mexico was a remote northern frontier of the Spanish Empire since the Juan de Oñate Expedition established the northern most frontier region of the Spanish colonial province of Santa Fe de Nuevo México in 1598. The name was inspired by the Mexica (Aztec) heartland of the Valley of Mexico, not a pre-existing nation of Mexico. Many of my ancestors came with the Oñate Expedition and lived for generations in isolated New Mexican villages, developing distinct dialects, music and traditions. They slowly assimilating with Indigenous people so 38% of my DNA is from New Mexico. 

Here is where many people get confused. New Mexico was part of Mexico for about 25 years from September 1821, when Mexico gained independence from Spain, to February 1848, when the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ceded the territory to the United States. New Mexico was still a territory until it became the 47th U.S. state on January 6, 1912.