A glimpse into how Scotland and the new world help shape each other

Scottish settlers and traders were widely regarded and regarded themselves as having a strong rapport and ability to negotiate with native peoples. Even in the 16th century Algonquins and “Picts” had been represented in a similar way, and in the campaigns of the 18th century the Black Watch were themselves described as “a kind of Indians”.

In the colonisation of Georgia from 1732, John Mackintosh (nephew of William, a Jacobite brigadier in the 1715 Rising) led 260 members of Clan Chattan to join the 200 transported after 1715 to help secure the colony for the British Empire, in what was a ­colony largely created and staffed by Jacobite sympathisers.

Lachlan MacGillivray (1718-99), one of the new colonists, became the ancestor of a number of Native American chiefs. He married the Creek/Muscogee noblewoman Sehoy Marchand of the Wind Clan, and their son Alexander MacGillivray (Hoboi-Hili-Miko/ “Good Child King”) (1750-93), became a Chief who – having heard about Culloden and its aftermath from his father and uncle – used Spanish power in Florida as a counterweight to Great Britain and later the United States.

MacGillivray’s other descendants included William Weatherford (Lamochatee/Red Eagle) (1781-1824) and Peter McQueen (c1780-1820), leaders of the Red Sticks nativist Creek faction in the War of 1812, who opposed further integration with white America and received the help of Spain in resisting it.

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On August 30 1813, these two led ­almost 1000 ­warriors in the ruthless ­massacre of more than 500 settlers and militia at Fort Mims, Alabama, ­destroying neighbouring plantations and killing or seizing the ­enslaved who worked on them.

MacGillivray’s family were far from the only ­Scottish chiefs, however, as many Scottish settlers or traders of family married the daughters of Native American chiefs and nobility, and inheritance came through the female line in a number of Native ­American peoples.

William Macintosh (1775-1825) (Tustunnuggee Hutke/White Warrior) likewise became a Creek chief, though an unsuccessful one, while Hugh ­Monroe (1798-1892) married the daughter of a ­Blackfeet Chief and John Macdonnel, son of a Jacobite exile, led dozens of raids in the service of Thayendanegea, the Mohawk military leader. Scots were four times as likely to marry Native ­Americans as other settlers, and men such as ­Alexander ­Cameron and John Macdonald lived among the First Nations.

Macdonald’s grandson was the most prominent among these Scottish ­descended chiefs, and the longest serving of all paramount chiefs of the Cherokee nation. John Ross (Guwisguwi/Mysterious Little White Bird) (1790-1866), served as an American officer in the War of 1812, and was principal ­negotiator on behalf of the Cherokee with the US ­Government in 1816, becoming ­paramount Chief in 1828.

Ross helped draft the ultimately ­unsuccessful Cherokee Constitution, the first Native American constitutional document which defined the Cherokee as a nation.

He was a strong opponent of the US’s resettlement policies, but ­following the 1835 Treaty of New Echota made with the US government by a ­dissenting faction of the Cherokee Nation which Ross did not approve, the US Army forced the removal of the Cherokee westward to Oklahoma.

This was the Trail of Tears, on which a quarter of those forcibly removed by American troops died, including Ross’s own wife. Later, Ross supervised the raising of money for the Irish and West Highland potato famines of the 1840s through a Cherokee Relief Committee, which sent two major donations totalling $348 (some £11,000 at today’s prices).

The Choctaw (who had chiefs of Irish descent) also donated for famine relief in Ireland, and in 1995 Irish President Mary Robinson was made the first female honorary Chief, while a scholarship has been endowed for members of the Choctaw Nation; there is also a plaque at the Mansion House in Dublin in honour of their support during An Gorta Mór.

Scotland has not yet marked the ­Cherokee relationship in a similar way.

In the Civil War, Ross counselled ­neutrality, but was unable to deliver it, with most Cherokee supporting the ­Confederacy. He died while once again negotiating with the American ­government on behalf of his people.

In areas and eras where the fur and deerskin trades predominated in particular, Scots and Indians co-existed and cohabited in a particularly marked way. The prominence of Scots in the fur trade-growing rapidly in Canada in the 1770s-was an important part of this alignment.

Families and cultures to a degree ­combined: Scots sent Scottish boys to live with Indian families and also led mixed forces in battle. In Canada, the Hudson’s Bay Company had a policy of employing Scots, in particular Orcadians, who formed 78% of the HBC workforce by 1800.

Some Scots such as John Stuart, David Taitt and James Grant evinced a preference for Native American societies. There was much greater equality in the exchange system built up through the fur trade, where both the native suppliers and colonial middlemen (who were often Scots) could make handsome margins on the way to the furs reaching their final buyers if they cooperated.

Tartan shawls became very common among Native Americans in the 19th century

This was to an extent reflected in wider social attitudes, as Native Americans were able to join at least some Scottish St Andrews and Caledonian societies in North America from the 1770s onwards.

By the 19th century, Native American/First Nations wearing of tartan was widespread, and this was not a one way process for, as the historian Colin Calloway remarks: “Highlanders and Indians borrowed and adapted each other’s clothing and style of dress.”

Tartan shawls were a particular favourite among the Cree (who made a handsome mark up from their trade with the Hudson’s Bay Company), while blue bonnets and Glengarry caps were also widely worn.

In Canada in particular, First Nations chiefs received tartan as a gift, and their people bought it and wore it in an early example of associational branding.

At Fort Vancouver alone in 1849, 1438 yards of MacDuff, 1119 yards of Clanranald and 965 yards of Royal Stuart, Argyll and Ancient MacGregor were sold- some two miles (3200 metres) of tartan.

The ‘Good Child King’ Alexander MacGillavray heard about the aftermath of Culloden from his Scottish ancestors

Red tartans were frequently preferred for their connotations of status and success, while new association tartans were developed in Canada, as the cloth became used for networking and as a public symbol of trust.

Tartan Day itself – now far more well known in its later US manifestation – first appeared in Nova Scotia in 1987, and in Canada the history of tartan among native and other settler populations (for example the Québecois) arguably renders it more inclusive as a symbol than it is in the USA.

These links, often forgotten in history (not least in the teaching of Native American experience), survived and prospered in fiction. James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans (1826) used Sir Walter Scott’s approach to ethno-cultural conflict in an American context in presenting Native Americans as a tragic race, while John Richardson’s Wacousta (1832) and The Canadian Brothers (1840) ensured that a key strand in Canadian literature reflected again through the prism of Scott-the longstanding association of Scottish ‘Highlanders’ with Native Americans.

Though sometimes exaggerated and sometimes sentimentalised, the link was real enough, an extraordinary part of Scotland’s global shared history which should be still more widely known.

Scotland: The Global History is published on July 26 by Yale University Press