There were even parallels between their harvest ceremonies. An Indian’s insistence on vengeance for the killing of a member of his clan was perfectly understood by an 18th century Scot with a similar custom. Both were clan societies, which considered loyalty to the clan their first obligation. Each identified itself by bands or clans, and since chiefdom descended through lineage, each devised a system flexible enough to allow selection of the best person for the job. Each viewed land as essentially a communal resource, not a commodity to be bought and sold for profit.

Each had achieved partial, but by no means complete success in fending off invasions.Īs indigenous peoples, their social structures reflected numerous similarities. Both were people with proud, independent, warrior societies who gloried in a good fight, rough games and reckless living. Members of both groups being driven from their homelands deepened the parallel. Each had fought lengthy battles, stretching over centuries, both against one another and against English speaking invaders. The Cherokee admired the Scots whom they considered fellow warriors. Historically there were a number of parallels between the American Indians and the Highland and Lowland Scots.

It was well acknowledged the key roles that Native wives played in their husband’s operations.

These marriages facilitated trade because Native wives usually taught their husbands their tribal languages. They soon aligned with Native American women.

The Scots were so compatible with the Indians that after 1750 nearly all the fur traders among the Eastern Indians were Highland Scots. At this point Scots either left seeking a better life away from persecution or were forced to leave their lands and move to what they hoped was a better life across the Atlantic.Īccording in part to Electric Scotland, the Scottish fur traders arrived in the colonies largely as single men. Despite an ocean separating their ancestral homelands, Scottish immigrants and Native Americans encountered each other frequently on America’s wild frontier, fighting, trading and even living together. Both cultures were treated as tribal societies and driven from their lands by British authorities, aggressively seeking power and financial gain and who would later romanticise the very ways of life they had destroyed.Īlthough Scots had been travelling to Americas since the 1600s and most certainly after the 1587 Act that cleared the Highlands, Isles and Borders of those unruly clans, it was only after the disaster that was Culloden which initiated further waves of migration.

7 clans casino native american clan