The five-generation family known as the Graysons was chronicled in detail by Claudio Saunt in his nonfiction book, Black, White, and Indian: Does race and the unraveling of an American deny their common origins to conform to the “American racial hierarchy?” Furthermore, using “America's racial hierarchy as a survival strategy?” I completely disagree with Saunt's argument. I dispute that the members of the Grayson family used free will and made conscious choices regarding the direction of their family and personal lives. In my opinion, their cultural environment significantly influenced their survival strategy and not the racial hierarchy. Therefore, I will discuss the commonality of social norms of siblings Katy Grayson and William Grayson while growing up, their brother's early pregnancy experiences, and their brother's political experience with issues such as chattel slavery versus kinship slavery. “Tracing a single Native American family from 1780” through the 1920s posed a number of challenges,” for Claudio Saunt, author of Black, White, and Indian: Race and the Unmaking of an American Family. (p. 217) A family tree is composed of genealogical data that has many branches that take shape by twisting, turning, and attempting to accurately represent descendants from oldest to youngest. “The Grayson family of the Creek Nation traces its origins to the late 1700s, when Robert Grierson, a Scotsman, and Sinnugee, a Creek woman, settled together in what is now north-central Alabama. Today their descendants number thousands and have dozens of surnames." (p. 3) For the purposes of this essay I will focus on the surname Grayson. I will focus on the two brothers who were the descendants of the mating of the Scottish Rober families... in the center of the card. Katy eventually left her black family and married another man. He was said to be part Scots and part Creek. The reason why he left his first relationship behind is unclear. “A transformation took place in 1817 when Robert gave his daughters Elizabeth and Katy a number of slaves, for “natural love and affection” and for their “better support and maintenance.” Didn't Katy want to be a mother of black Creeks, or did she prefer to be a mistress of black slaves? (p. 25) William remained faithful to his relatives and emancipated them. I will reiterate that the cultural environments of the two brothers influenced their survival strategy and not the racial hierarchy. Free will and personal choices prevailed over the prevailing class warfare of the period. Works Cited Claudio Saunt, Black, White, and Indian: Race and the Unmaking of an American Family