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.
ISBN-13: 9780199737826
Media Type: Paperback
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Publication Date: 03-15-2010
Pages: 392
Product Dimensions: 6.10(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.10(d)
Colin G. Calloway is Professor of History, Samson Occom Professor of Native American Studies, and chair of the Native American Studies Program at Dartmouth College. His many books include The Scratch of a Pen: 1763 and the Transformation of North America and One Vast Winter Count: The Native American West before Lewis and Clark.
Table of Contents
A Note on Terminology xix
Abbreviations xxi
Introduction 3
Cycles of Conquest and Colonization 20
Scots and Indians in a Changing World 43
Savage Peoples and Civilizing Powers 60
Warriors and Soldiers 88
Highland Traders and Indian Hunters 117
Highland Men and Indian Families 147
Clearances and Removals 175
Highland Settlers and Indian Lands 201
Empires, Myths, and New Traditions 230
Epilogue: History, Heritage, and Identity 257
Notes 273
Index 353
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