White People, Indians, and Highlanders: Tribal People and Colonial Encounters in Scotland and America

by Colin G. Calloway

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.

Genres: History, American History, Scotland, Native American, Nonfiction

392 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2008

About the author

Colin G. Calloway is John Kimball Jr. 1943 Professor of History and Native American Studies at Dartmouth College. His previous books include A Scratch of the Pen and The Victory with No Name.

Reviews

[Lynn · Rating 3 out of 5]

The premise of this book seems to be that what native North Americans and Highland Scots experienced as victims of colonialisation was very much the same . . . and also that it was completely different. The author does a good job of recapping the similarities between the two tribal peoples and their experiences, but he acknowledges that the analogy can be taken too far. Ultimately, the Highlanders, although also feared, defeated and evicted, sometimes violently, from their lands, were a small, culturally homogenous group who despite their situation still had options and were ultimately able to assimilate into their new homelands. The native groups in the US and Canada differed significantly from each other and responded in different ways to the invasion of their homes; when driven from their lands they had nowhere to go, and they were prevented by attitudes in the dominant population from fully succeeding in the new society that confronted them. The author concludes by observing that ironically both groups, once they were no longer perceived as a threat, became idealised by the very peoples who once viewed them as ignorant savages.

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

Calloway is probably the best writer of sociology I've ever run into. This is the third book of his I've read, and his research is thorough, his thinking is clear, and his writing rivals the best pop novelist out there. This book is a real page turner, as well as being enlightening about a topic I've suspected had relevant comparisons for quite some time. The tribal societies of the America's had more similiarities than differences with the celtic clans of Britain, and their experience dealing with expanding empire were almost identical, as is their current experience carving out an identity in the modern world. He weaves stories of individuals into his theme seamlessly, and he's not shy about admitting the ambiguities of real world experience. I look forward to reading more of his work.

[Janelle V. Dvorak · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book emphasized and documented the similarity of Highland Scot and Native American cultures in terms of their tribal and aboriginal qualities. It also had very trenchant things to say about the romanticization of both original cultures by conquering and dominant cultures once they had been changed irrevocably by the agency of the conquerors. He talks at length about the Scottish diaspora and its similarity to the Cherokee Trail of Tears and the Navajo Long Walk.

I found myself highlighting and noting extensively during my reading. The book provides a lot of food for thought and mental stimulation.

[Selena (Life of a Random) · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was extremely boring (what do you expect for required reading for an American History class? oh well) and the author wrote in circles. It was an information overload with just facts, facts, something interesting, facts, facts, facts. I think it could have been a lot shorter and communicated fine.

That said, I did find some of the book interesting.

Let's just say I will never look at the history of England and America the same way ever again.

[Jonna Higgins-Freese · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Indians in the North American fur trade wore woolen blankets made by children in Yorkshire textile mills from the wool of sheep grazing on the lands of displaced Highlanders, some of whom made careers in the North American fur trade. Lowland Scots who invested in sheep farming in the Highlands and later in cattle ranching on the Great Plains helped eradicate tribal pastoralism on communal land on both sides of the Atlantic. Sheep replaced cattle n the Highlands of Scotland, cattle replaced buffalo on the Great Plains."

The thesis is simple, but Calloway's detailed and nuanced investigation is always satisfying: "Developments on the northern frontier of Britain affected the western frontiers of America. America's borders attracted displaced peoples from the north of Britain, while resources extracted from American lands fueled developments in Scotland and England" (11).

"Colonial relationships did not always break down neatly into exploiter and exploited. As mercantile and capitalist forces incorporated people and redeployed their bodies and their labor, roles and even identities shifted. "The binary of colonizer/colonized does not take into account, for example, the development of different layerings within each group and across the two groups," notes Linda Tuhiwai Smith. The demands and pressures of colonialism moved people from one area of the empire to another as if they were commodities." (14)

"Distinguished by the Gaelic language, kilts, broadswords, and ferocious charges, Highlanders were savages as well as rebels" (30). They were hunted down at home, their cattle slaughtered in a scorched earth policy that resembled the slaughter of the buffalo on the Great Plains a hundred years later.

"In Britain replacing subsistence economy with marekt-orietned production was regarded as fundamental, both to integrate the Highlands into the larger national economy and to advance the social improvement and 'civilization' of the Highlanders. Clan chiefs removed people to render their lands more profitable. In North America, traditional subsistence economies became untenable as animal populations declined and the environment became degraded . . . 'Common property and civilization cannot co-exist,' declared T. Hartley Crawford, commissioner of Indian affairs in 1838." (57)

"While young women from the Hebrides were traveling south to work in the [new] cotton mills, young Abenaki women from northern New England were traveing south to find work in the cotton mills of [Massachusetts and New Hampshire]. They were likely to work on Scottish looms alongside immigrant Scottish women . . . Southern cotton grown on Indian lands seized by Andrew Jackson and acquired by Scottish merchants supplied mills in Scotland, as well as in England and New England and provided employment for Highland and Indian women at a time when their traditional economies were disintegrating" (59).

John Eliot translated the Bible into Algonquin a hundred years before it was translated into Gaelic (75).

American thinkers borrowed Scottish Enlightenment thinking to interpret their experience as a sociology of progress, "phase of social evolution rather than a violent political upheaval" (78)

The Battle of Bush Run, where Shawnee, Delaware, and Mingo warriors were defeated by Highland troops, "pitched into conflict two groups who were at different stages in their dealings with the British Empire. Redcoats still garrisoned Fort William in the Scottish Highlands just as they now occupied Fort Pitt in Indian country. Highland warriors had battled against English colonial power on its northern frontier in the British Isles; now Highland soldiers were defending British colonial power on its western frontier in North America." (89)

[Tascha Folsoi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Highlanders and American Indians had intersecting, parallel, and diverging experiences. The author does an excellent job of describing all three. He describes how the Highlanders and the Native Americans were often describes as savages, in other words impediments to progress, capitalism, and industrialization in their respective homelands. As such, both were victims of forced removals and both were later rendered in romantic terms once the threat of resurgence was effectively extinguished. Just as Sir Walter Scott created a mythology of Highlander experiences so did James Fenimore Cooper render one of Native Americans. The images of both "groups" have often been conflated into a single image: the Scotts in the belatedly invented kilt and all Native Americans in the garb of the plains Indians. Both tried to regain their security by serving in the colonizers' armies; clearly that worked out better for the Scottish. The Scottish Highlanders, who tended to be poorer, were conflated with more affluent Lowlander emigres, many of whom were among the nation's early leaders. In either case, those who had fought the British in the Battle of Culloden were able to redeem themselves and were often granted North American land for their service to the Empire. He also describes the political and familial relationships formed between the Scottish and the Indian as well as how the Scottish eventually became the Indians' conquerors. There is much to learn here. I would like to read more books by this author.

[Mark McTague · Rating 3 out of 5]

The three stars are NOT an indication of the quality of this book but simply a rating as it says: "I liked it." This is straight history, not entertainment, and of a subject not explored much to my knowledge - the colonial experiences and cultural collisions of 18th century Scots Highlanders and north American Indian nations. In doing so, Calloway examines a breadth of topics using a wealth of primary and secondary sources, questions of conquest and colonization, "savagery" and "civilization,", warrior ethos, intermarriage, cultural assimilation and identity, and land use and the European idea of ownership of land. In doing so, the author draws parallels between both groups of people, showing them both as victims of colonial power as well as participants in that colonial enterprise, not merely its victims. He ends with musings on the question of cultural identity today, in both the Scottish diaspora (more people of Scottish ancestry live outside of Scotland than inside [over two million in Australia and almost five million in Canada]) and the Indian nations today within the continental United States. Well recommended for anyone with an interest in early north American history or Scottish history and culture.

[Doug · Rating 2 out of 5]

Got as far as I could and decided it just didn't hold my interest

[Carolyn Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very engrossing book comparing the Highlanders of Scotland and the Native Americans in Colonial American, as the Highlanders lived in Scotland, and as they emigrated to the Colonies.

The title of the book is from a quote by General George Oglethorpe, who was later the first governor of Georgia. He apparently considered the Indians and the Highlanders as non-whites.

[Olivia Waite · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bit dry in places, but well worth the read for the bounty of unique research.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

More like 3.5.