Looking back, I know my parents must have been worried about me.

They'd gotten a call from old Mrs. Picard, a neighbor who liked to sit on the porch of her ranch house and watch the pretty songbirds flitting from feeders to baths on her front lawn.I can only imagine her astonishment and outrage when some kid's arrow came down from the sky and pinned one of those birds to the ground, killing it.I would have been in second grade.Unbeknownst to my parents, I'd been spending a good bit of my free time exploring in the woods, building forts, and making bows and arrows. As I recall, it truly was an unbelievable shot - my little bow with white cotton string, a hand-sharpened arrow, aimed skyward from a distance of two house yards. But the second that arrow hit the bird and it started screeching, I knew I was in big trouble. Again.The phone was ringing as I walked through the hallway downstairs; I knew it was undoubtedly Mrs. Picard. I didn't even break stride. I was headed to my room, where I would soon be sent anyway. That time, my parents took my bow and arrows and destroyed them.Truth be told, I was certain I was part Indian, most likely Cherokee.When I'd been small enough to stand under the kitchen table, I'd heard my mom and grandmother talking about it. They'd made mention of one of Nana's ancestors, who was a "half-breed" and lived in the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia. And I remembered going to visit my grandmother when she lived in North Carolina, and during that visit we'd gone someplace to visit relatives who I remember had long, dark hair.A few decades later, when I set out to hike the Appalachian Trail, my grandmother jokingly told me that "maybe I'd find the old family graveyard."And then, right along the trail in Shenandoah National Park, there it was. A graveyard full of tombstones with her family name, Meadows.Some of the stones were inside the stone walls, but, inexplicably, some were outside the walls.This was in the days before digital cameras and cellphones. Using a disposable camera, I took a picture of each stone and hiked to the nearest pay phone to call my grandmother. I thought she'd be pleased to learn that a forest service road could take her nearly right to the spot. As I babbled on excitedly about the graveyard, her lack of response was obvious. She wanted nothing to do with it. She never made any effort to go there.And so I closed the door on that exploration until one day I ventured onto Ancestry.com. What fun! I concentrated on my grandmother's side, looking for that Cherokee ancestor. I checked census records and military records, intrigued by descriptions of ancestors who had "dark complexion" and "black hair."Some of the women did not have last names - just single names such as Bazzell and Jeziah. I envisioned them as Indians. I figured that was where I got my affinity for the bow and arrow.Then as a gift a friend got me the Ancestry.com DNA kit. Dutifully I spit into the supplied container and mailed it. Finally the results arrived.My heritage was mainly English. The small percentage that remained was not Cherokee. It was Senegalese.Funny when something you thought helped make you what you are turns out to be very different; in fact, turns out to be something that once caused your relatives to bury certain of their dead outside the cemetery walls.Several generations later, are we making progress? Or are we busy building walls?