I have Cajun DNA relatives but found no Cajun ancestors? (American, find)

[cruciallyraport]

I'm from Louisiana. I'm 75% West African and the rest is european blood, south asian and north african. On Ancestry I have at least 30 or more distant cousins who are of Cajun decent from 18 cm to 8 cm. They all seem to be descended from the same ancestors and have surnames like Broussard, Landry, Guidry, Trahan, Beaulieu, Savoie, Hebert ect. Most of them have French blood and some are 100% French and I have no French blood. I have not found any Cajun ancestors in my tree. Can someone tell me how I maybe related to them?

Also when I click on my Cajun relatives shared matches, I always see the same two relatives that shows up as a shared match. What does that mean?

[jiminnm]

8-18 cM is a pretty distant relation. It could be 6-7 generations back and maybe not a direct ancestor.

[AndersFL]

You don't have to show French ethnicity on Ancestry.com to have distant French ancestors. I manage my cousin's kit. She is 1/16 French Canadian and her uncles are 1/8. None of them show any French ethnicity though they have quite a few French Canadian DNA matches and their trees can be traced through Quebec back to France. European ethnicities especially those from neighboring countries can be difficult to distinguish from one another.

Ancestry has some very useful features for finding common ancestors. I would start by searching your DNA matches for everyone with the names you mentioned in your post. You might get lucky and notice a common ancestor between a few of them in their trees. This is how I found two non-paternal events in my background though in my case I shared over 20 cMs with descendants of the common ancestors. In addition I had my cousin's kit to analyze and eventually I worked with two adopted descendants of the common ancestors to confirm my hypothesis.

[PA2UK]

I imagine there's a lot of endogamy in the Cajun population so if you have relatives who have Cajun ancestry on a branch they don't share with you, they will likely still share Cajun ancestors with each other, even if it has nothing to do with you.

That said, you can't base your ancestry off the DNA ethnicity report, it's just not reliable enough, especially the French population. Given that you're from Louisiana so I assume you have ancestry there too, it's certainly not impossible you have Cajun ancestry. Identify the specific Cajun ancestors your matches share with each other (not just surnames), and build a tree for them, see if it intersects with yours in anyway.

Originally Posted by cruciallyraport

Also when I click on my Cajun relatives shared matches, I always see the same two relatives that shows up as a shared match. What does that mean?

It means they share DNA with each other.

[NorthofHere]

Originally Posted by cruciallyraport

I'm from Louisiana. I'm 75% West African and the rest is european blood, south asian and north african. On Ancestry I have at least 30 or more distant cousins who are of Cajun decent from 18 cm to 8 cm. They all seem to be descended from the same ancestors and have surnames like Broussard, Landry, Guidry, Trahan, Beaulieu, Savoie, Hebert ect. Most of them have French blood and some are 100% French and I have no French blood. I have not found any Cajun ancestors in my tree. Can someone tell me how I maybe related to them?

Also when I click on my Cajun relatives shared matches, I always see the same two relatives that shows up as a shared match. What does that mean?

How far back in your ancestry do you go? You probably would need to go back to mid 1700's and the expulsion of Acadians from the Nova Scotia region. Not all ended up in Louisiana. Some ended up elsewhere in the American colonies, some were expelled back to France as a great something uncle was and others escaped to Quebec like my some of my ancestors. If you always see the two relatives that show up as a shared match they are most likely your ancestors as well.

[ashbeeigh]

I'm not African American, but I have African American cousins in the 8-20 cM range. Same for Hispanic cousins. There's an ancestor somewhere that connects. The challenge is finding that one.

[westsideboy]

It's also possible your share an ancestor with these Cajuns, but your shared ancestor wasn't Cajun, but rather Scottish, Spanish, African American, etc. etc.