Owen 's mother , Narcissa Chisholm Owen ( 1831 – 1911 ) , was part Cherokee . She did much to foster her son 's career , as well as becoming a distinguished painter . In 1907 she published memoirs about her life lived between Cherokee and mainstream U.S. societies , which have more recently attracted scholarly attention when republished in a critical edition in 2005 . However , the precise extent of her ( and thus his ) Cherokee ancestry is unclear . Owen 's listing on the Dawes Rolls , dating from around 1900 , records him as 1/16th Cherokee by blood . However , Narcissa 's Memoirs ( 1907 ) , self-describe her as 1/16th Cherokee , which if correct would imply that her son was 1/32nd Cherokee . Some secondary sources describe Narcissa as 1/8th Cherokee The modern editor of Narcissa 's memoirs speculates that Narcissa might have missed " one generation or possibly two " in her family tree ; adjusting for this possibility might further dilute her Cherokee blood . However , Narcissa had been raised among Cherokees , and skillfully used her Cherokee heritage , colorfully describing her father , Thomas Chisholm ( a leader of the " Old Settlers " who moved west before the Trail of Tears ) , as " the last hereditary war chief of the Western Cherokees . " Narcissa also gave both her sons parallel Indian names derived from famous Cherokee chiefs : she named Robert Oconostota after a noted Cherokee chief of the late eighteenth century who was also , she claimed , her own great great uncle
Trail of Tears
Trail of Tears
Robert Latham Owen