Was there tribes of blond headed Indians?

Answer 1

No entire tribe of native peoples anywhere in the Americas ever had blond hair. The general colouring is black hair, usually straight and often worn long, with generally brown eyes but there were certainly individual exceptions. Among some native groups, notably the Mandans, Arikaras, Hidatsas and Crows some individuals had brown or grey hair (even among young people) - a few writers claimed that some of the women had "blonde" hair and hazel or blue eyes.

The problem with these reports is that the white Americans responsible were deliberately looking for evidence of much earlier European contact, either with Scandinavian Vikings or the so-called "Welsh colony" of the 12th century. Finding individual young Mandan girls with pale (probably grey) hair that could be described as "blond" when it wasn't helped to support these groundless theories. Twisting the evidence to fit a theory was common practice (and still is in some modern websites).

It is significant that a portrait of 12-year-old Shakoka (Mint), a Mandan girl, painted by George Catlin in 1832 shows her with silvery grey, not blonde, hair. If there had been any genuinely blonde girls among the tribe Catlin never painted them - and he painted very many members of the tribe.

Descriptions of the Lakota Crazy Horse emphasise his very unusual light brown hair, but there were certainly other individuals with the same characteristic.

In fact there are quite a number of reports of native individuals with hair much paler than the norm and pale eyes, simply as a result of native genetic recession and definitely not the result of contact with Vikings or Welshmen.

Similar native genetic recession was found among Polynesian islanders in the Pacific, whose general hair colour was black - but some individuals had striking reddish/auburn hair.

See link below for an image: