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[PatrikLundell]

You cannot tell from the settlement symbol/color alone. You get some additional info by panning over it. If it says "Forest retreat..." it's typically ruined. If it says "Elven forest retreat..." it's controlled by an elven civ (but could still be a single elf, or 900 goblins and 10 elves). The color often indicates the race controlling it, but not always: sometimes the color and the text send conflicting messages (so you can look at a green hamlet described as Goblin/Dwarven/Elven/Kobold hamlet...").
And elven coloration is screwed up, since it's yellow both for elves and for ruins...
If you want to actually find out you need to use legends mode to find out what's in each settlement.
If you just want to settle in range of everyone tabbing to the neighbor screen will tell you who's in range (except kobolds), and that screen will also tell you if your civ is at war with someone(s). Note that different dwarven civs have different sets of diplomatic relations, so if you don't want war with the elves you can try another dwarven civ and see their relations at that embark site.

[Urist McVoyager]

http://www.dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Site

Probably the closest you're going to get to a legend.

If the initial seven dwarves break out into three couples with an odd one who marries the first adult offspring, that'd be three and a half families of DNA forming. It'd be a few generations before everyone's related. At that point, you can raise the popcap and bring in new blood. The hardest part of this is handling the initial 12+ years where only your starting seven can actually work. It gets boring after the first five or six years.

[PatrikLundell]

You need a fair bit of luck to get even two couples out of the initial seven;
- There is no guarantee for equal proportions of the genders (my latest had 6 females and one male, who additionally, didn't seem to be too interested in marriage).
- To form a couple the dwarves have to be within 10 years of age.
- A large proportion of all creatures are asexual or unwilling to commit to marriage (25%)
- Dorfs may be uninterested in forming a relation, in marrying, and/or in having children.
- Some dorfs are homosexual.
- It can take ages for dorfs to become lovers, and decades more for those relations to upgrade to marriage (I don't think I've ever had a single marriage in any of my fortresses).

Despite this, some people have successfully built fortresses solely from the starting 7.

[Urist McVoyager]

Yeah, a natural growth fort does do better when modding gets involved. It's entirely possible to shift the numbers so there's fewer members of the species who are uninterested in marriage.

Though I definitely agree with the proportions issue. My last attempt had 2 men and 5 women. Right off the bat got two lovers who married within the first year. But then we got the new release and I reset everything. Haven't actually done any NG forts in this one yet.