Scottish Highlanders And Native Americans

A comparative approach to the American Indians and Scottish Highlanders, this book examines the experiences of clans and tribal societies, which underwent parallel experiences on the peripheries of Britain's empire in Britain, the United States, and Canada.

The Society in Scotland for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge (SSPCK) was founded in 1709 by Scottish Lowlanders for the education of Highlanders: specifically to convert them from the Gaelic language to English, from the Episcopal faith to Presbyterianism, and from latent Jacobitism to loyalty to the crown. In a transatlantic translation of this effort, the "Scottish Society" also established itself in the New World to educate and assimilate Iroquois, Algonquin, and southeastern Native peoples. In this first book-length examination of the SSPCK, Margaret Connell Szasz explores the origins of the Scottish Society's policies of cultural colonialism and their influence on two disparate frontiers. Drawing intriguing parallels between the treatment of Highland Scots and of Native Americans, she incorporates multiple perspectives on the cultural encounter, juxtaposing the attitudes of Highlanders and Lowlanders, English colonials and Native peoples, while giving voice to the Society's pupils and graduates, its schoolmasters, and religious leaders. Featuring more than two dozen illustrations, Scottish Highlanders and Native Americans brims with intriguing comparisons and insights into two cultures on the cusp of modernity. It is a benchmark in emerging studies of comparative education and a major contribution to the growing literature of cross-cultural encounters.

"In this first book-length examination of the SSPCK, Margaret Connell Szasz explores the origins of the Scottish Society's policies of cultural colonialism and their influence on two disparate frontiers. Drawing intriguing parallels between the treatment of Highland Scots and Native Americans, she incorporates multiple perspectives on the cultural encounter, juxtaposing the attitudes of Highlanders and Lowlanders, English colonials and Native peoples, while giving voice to the Society's pupils and graduates, its schoolmasters, and religious leaders."--BOOK JACKET.

In nineteenth century paintings, the proud Indian warrior and the Scottish Highland chief appear in similar ways--colorful and wild, righteous and warlike, the last of their kind. Earlier accounts depict both as barbarians, lacking in culture and in need of civilization. By the nineteenth century, intermarriage and cultural contact between the two--described during the Seven Years' War as cousins--was such that Cree, Mohawk, Cherokee, and Salish were often spoken with Gaelic accents. In this imaginative work of imperial and tribal history, Colin Calloway examines why these two seemingly wildly disparate groups appear to have so much in common. Both Highland clans and Native American societies underwent parallel experiences on the peripheries of Britain's empire, and often encountered one another on the frontier. Indeed, Highlanders and American Indians fought, traded, and lived together. Both groups were treated as tribal peoples--remnants of a barbaric past--and eventually forced from their ancestral lands as their traditional food sources--cattle in the Highlands and bison on the Great Plains--were decimated to make way for livestock farming. In a familiar pattern, the cultures that conquered them would later romanticize the very ways of life they had destroyed. White People, Indians, and Highlanders illustrates how these groups alternately resisted and accommodated the cultural and economic assault of colonialism, before their eventual dispossession during the Highland Clearances and Indian Removals. What emerges is a finely-drawn portrait of how indigenous peoples with their own rich identities experienced cultural change, economic transformation, and demographic dislocation amidst the growing power of the British and American empires.

In 1876, they wipe out General George A. Custer and his 7th Cavalry at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Chief Sitting Bull and his Sioux people then flee from the United States to Canada. There, in the autumn of 1877, the Sioux are joined by the remnants of the latest Indian nation to make a stand against the US Army, the Nez Perce. Their survivors are led by Chief White Bird. A young man follows White Bird to Sitting Bull's camp. He is White Bird's close relative and aims to tell the story of the Nez Perce War from the Nez Perce point of view. This young man's name is Duncan McDonald. Descended from chiefs of the Nez Perce and from chiefs of Scotland's most formidable clan, Duncan's family - first as Highlanders, then as Native Americans - have twice been victims of massacre and dispossession. Written with the help of Duncan McDonald's present-day kinsfolk on the Flathead Indian Reservation in Western Montana, this real-life family saga spans two continents and more than thirty generations to link Scotland's clans with the native peoples of the American West.

Between 1735 and 1748 hundreds of young men and their families emigrated from the Scottish Highlands to the Georgia coast to settle and protect the new British colony. These men were recruited by the trustees of the colony and military governor James Oglethorpe, who wanted settlers who were accustomed to hardship, militant in nature, and willing to become frontier farmer-soldiers. In this respect, the Highlanders fit the bill perfectly through training and tradition. Recruiting and settling the Scottish Highlanders as the first line of defense on the southern frontier in Georgia was an important decision on the part of the trustees and crucial for the survival of the colony, but this portion of Georgia's history has been sadly neglected until now. By focusing on the Scots themselves, Anthony W. Parker explains what factors motivated the Highlanders to leave their native glens of Scotland for the pine barrens of Georgia and attempts to account for the reasons their cultural distinctiveness and "old world" experience aptly prepared them to play a vital role in the survival of Georgia in this early and precarious moment in its history.

A history of the McDonald family traced from 835 in Ireland to the fur trading family of the 1800s in Montana. Angus McDonald (1816-1889) was born at Craig, Scotland, and hired on with the Hudson's Bay Company in 1838. In 1842 he married a Nez Perce part-Mohawk Indian named Catherine at Fort Hall, Idaho. They settled near Thompson Falls and Post Creek in Montana, and Colville in Washington where Angus was in charge of the fort and affairs of the Company. They raised twelve children. Many descendants live on and around the Flathead Reservation in Montana. The fur trading business is extensively described. The Battle of Big Hole in Montana as well as other Nez Perce events and genealogy are also elaborated. .

In this interdisciplinary collection of essays, Joel W. Martin and Mark A. Nicholas gather emerging and leading voices in the study of Native American religion to reconsider the complex and often misunderstood history of Native peoples' engagement with Christianity and with Euro-American missionaries. Surveying mission encounters from contact through the mid-nineteenth century, the volume alters and enriches our understanding of both American Christianity and indigenous religion. The essays here explore a variety of postcontact identities, including indigenous Christians, "mission friendly" non-Christians, and ex-Christians, thereby exploring the shifting world of Native-white cultural and religious exchange. Rather than questioning the authenticity of Native Christian experiences, these scholars reveal how indigenous peoples negotiated change with regard to missions, missionaries, and Christianity. This collection challenges the pervasive stereotype of Native Americans as culturally static and ill-equipped to navigate the roiling currents associated with colonialism and missionization. The contributors are Emma Anderson, Joanna Brooks, Steven W. Hackel, Tracy Neal Leavelle, Daniel Mandell, Joel W. Martin, Michael D. McNally, Mark A. Nicholas, Michelene Pesantubbee, David J. Silverman, Laura M. Stevens, Rachel Wheeler, Douglas L. Winiarski, and Hilary E. Wyss.