lying about one's ethnicity

[brigittebod]

OK, I have a young boy in the latter part of the 19th century in America. One of his parents is a Native American (tentatively identified as an Apache, or possibly one of the Pueblo People). If his father wanted to disguise this fact, what ethnicity would he claim the mother was?

Comments

[semi_sweet]

I'd go with French, Italian, Spanish, Greek...all ethnicies that tend to have dark eyes and hair, darker skin. It might be an ethnicity that there weren't too many of in those parts, so no one would have seen many Italians before.

[of_carabas]

Ditto to the Italian suggestion, especially from Southern Italy. Sicilians still get mistaken for all sorts of things - Cuban, Jewish, Iraqi, gypsies... pretty much whichever minorty is on people's minds. Native American would be believable.

[sars_elleb]

I'm Native American/German and I've had people ask me if I was Greek or Italian before.

To the OT: Just curious, but if one parent is Native American, is the other parent caucasian? Your post confused me a little.

[sars_elleb]

Nevermind. Note to self: never go online the second you wake up.

[semi_sweet]

my grandma was German and people thought she was Native American when she lived out west. But you don't usually think of Germans as having dark skin and black hair.