Peruvian Match

Although our shared DNA segments with Peruvians and South American Indians are usually rather small, one of the larger, more reliable ones with with a Peruvian (judging by the Quechua surname and their other matches, although Bolivian origin is also possible, perhaps). Moreover, this person's shared segment with us is actually along a segment identified as "Indigenous Puerto Rico" by Ancestry, not Indigenous Bolivia and Peru. Although only 6.8 cM, we suspect it is picking up on the deeper, shared ancestry between the indigenous people who populated the Caribbean and their South American mainland cousins found in parts of Andean and lowland tropical South America. Our other matches above 6 cM with South American indigenous people had lower SNP counts and densities, so we suspect this Peruvian match is somewhat more reliable. Checking the matched segment on Gedmatch's chromosome compare features and DNA painter also points to the shared segment falling along our "Indigenous Puerto Rico" segment on part of Chromosome 14.

Pocos Indios of Puerto Rico (1563)

A 1563 letter by the governor of Puerto Rico complained that the few Indians left on the island refused to work for whites. Part of the correspondence of colonial governors of Puerto Rico compiled by Alvaro Huerga in the first volume of Cartas de Gobernadores, one can surmise that the few Indians left on the island of Puerto Rico sought to live and work independently of the colonial elites. Unsurprisingly, they refused to work for whites for the meager wages offered. The only problem here is that one is left unsure if most of these "few Indians" were locals or emancipated Indian slaves still on the island, or perhaps a combination of the two.