Part Native American?!

When historian, researcher and Hayes Family friend Mary Faith Warshaw asked her old 1963 high school classmate, Roger Hayes, if he knew he was part Native American, he was taken aback. Well it's true. Here is the story:

From the BASS ANCESTRY page: Capt'n Nathaniel Basse of London, England married Mary Jourdon on May 21, 1613 in London. Mary was born about 1591 so she was 22; he was two years older. 

Capt'n Basse was awarded a commission to bring settlers to the New World. On April 27, 1619, a ship with one hundred of his recruits arrived at Jamestown, Virginia. Mary was aboard with toddler son John. He would have been three years old.

For his efforts, Nathaniel was awarded 300 acres of property in what is now Isle of Wight County in Virginia. He and his family immediately settled near the mouth of a creek on the south side of the James River. Nathaniel and others undertook to establish a second plantation nearby, which became known as “Basse's Choice.” 

Here is where the plot thickens: Nathaniel and Mary returned to England in early 1621/22 to enlist additional colonists. Rather than subject their young son John to a turbulent sea voyage to England and back, they left him behind in Virginia. That decision would prove momentous.

Construction at Basse's Choice was well underway when calamity struck. It was the Good Friday Indian Massacre of 1622 lead by Chief Opchanacanough of the Powhatan Confederacy. The Powhatan Indians killed 347 British colonists in the 80 settlements on the north and south sides of the James River. Fifty-three were residents of the Isle of Wight County. Fortunately, Nathaniel and Mary were in England as every man, woman and child at Basse's Choice was SLAIN―except for their son John, who was only six years old. He must have been severely traumatized. There is no known explanation of how he escaped or why he was spared.

John was rescued from the carnage by a tribe of Nansemond Indians. They raised him as one of their own. On August 14, 1638, when he was 21 years old, John married a Nansemond Indian princess “Elizabeth, the daughter of the 'King' of the Nansemond." Their son Richard Basse―one-half British and one-half Native America―is a direct ancestor to Eleanor Bass Hayes and all her descendants.

Thank goodness for the kindness of the Nansemonds! And as perverse and macabre as it sounds, thank goodness for the Powhatans. Without the 1622 massacre, John might never have met, much less married, the daughter of the King of the Nansemonds. None of the multitude of descendants from their union would have ever existed.

It is particularly instructive that the Basse family saw no sigma in being of "Indian descent" as long as one was "lawfully begotten," Christian, and not "a Negroe nor y't a Mulattoe." Look at this passage from the John Basse Prayer Book:

"This doth certify that William Bass, son of John Bass and grandson of William Bass, is of English and Indian descent and is not a Negroe nor y't a Mulattoe as by some lately and malitiously stated. His late Mother Sarah Ann Bass was a virtuous woman of Indian descent, a daughter of Symon Lorina and Joan Tucker lawfully begotten. Sd Joan Tucker was a sister of Robin Tucker a Christian Indian of ye Nansemund nation."

Frankly, the redemption story of John Basse is the stuff of myth, lore and fantasy.  It must have been horrible for Nathaniel and Mary to loose their child, but for those of us who are descendants of that little boy and his future Indian wife, thank goodness it happened.