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Native American Scots

New Mexico Scots

by
Wilma Ledgerwood

Wilma Ledgerwood wrote to soc.culture.scottish: "Our local Morristown, TN paper (The Citizen Tribune) published the following article from Albuquerque, N.M. The effort to unify the Scottish highlanders of New Mexico has turned uglier than a haggis hurl gone awry. It's a clash of Tartans. Many states have adopted an official tartan plaid along with a state bird or tree and the Scots think that New mexico should have one, too. But they can't agree on the design. 'In the 1700's this would be solved by someone sticking the other with a broadsword,' said Gilbert Watson, vice president of the the St. Andrew Scottish Society of New Mexico. 'But I guess these days we just have to wait and slug it out next year in the Legislature.' The society estimates the Scottish population in New Mexico at 170,000. (Then article goes on with a description of the Highland Games.) The opposing factions both submitted their Tartans to the legislature this year for approval. But lawmakers tabled the issue in the session's final days, unwilling to get caught in the middle of the two factions. On one side are the 200 members of St. Andrew's. On the other side is the self-excommunicated former president of the society, Ralph Stevenson, Jr. ( He wanted to include the Indian tribes in the decision.) The St. Andrew's Tartan choice was worn by the state's first territorial governor, James S. Calhoun and it is his distant relative James R. Calhoun that is the St.Andrews official. I found this an unusual news item."

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American Indian Scots of Note

Scots in the American West 1790 - 1917, Scotland and the American Indians:  The story of these Scoto-Indians is a fascinating one.  Like their French and Spanish counterparts, the Scots fur traders arrived in the West largely as single men.  Like the other Europeans, they soon aligned with Native women, usually 'in the fashion of the country.'  As historian Sylvia Van Kirk has noted, this form of 'country marriage' facilitated trade because the Native wives usually taught their husbands the tribal language.  The Montreal-based North West Company actively encouraged this policy, whereas the HBC discouraged it, because of expense, until the 1820s.  Eventually, however, all the fur-trade enterprises acknowledged the key role that Native wives played in their operations.

Tragedy of Chief Bowles:  Few historical figures are as tragic as Chief Bowles, the 83-year-old Cherokee Indian chief who died on a Neches River battlefield near Tyler 164 years ago this month [July 2004].  The battle of the Neches, fought on July 15 and 16, 1839, was the principal engagement of the Cherokee War, an event discolored by shame akin to the Trail of Tears, the forced march of the Cherokees from their homeland in the Southeast to Oklahoma in 1838 and 1839.   Bowles -- also known as The Bowl, Duwal'li, or Bold Hunter -- was born in North Carolina around 1765, the son of a Scottish father and a Cherokee mother.  As the leader of a village, he led his people from North Carolina to the St. Francis Valley in Missouri in 1810 to escape growing pressures of white settlers in the South.  He later led the tribe to Arkansas and then into East Texas.

Celtic Indians - When celebrating the fabulous history of the Celtic peoples in the New World, one must include the progeny of their liaisons with the Native Americans, for herein lay many of the greatest stories on this continent.  The joining of these two tribal cultures results in some of the greatest warrior-heroes to walk the planet, just when their people needed them the most.  The traditional powers of the Old World (Britain, Spain and France) were locked in mortal combat over the vast resources of the New World.  These resources included the 'Coilltich', Gaelic for the 'forest-folk', the term the highlanders had for the Red Man. ... It is likely that the Gaels realized that Native Americans were the disposed and disenfranchised of America in the same sense that they had become the subject race of Scotland, driven out of their home by Clearances that continued into the early twentieth century

Some Links

• Acee Blue Eagle (1907-1959) aka Alexander C. McIntosh aka Che Bon Ah Bula - Blue Eagle was an artist, painter, sculptor, ceramist, and dancer.  Collections of his art are in many museums including the Philbrook and Gilcrease in Tulsa, Oklahoma and museums in Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Washington, D.C., and the National Museum of Ethiopia. 
  
• To-Wah-Quah-Ke-Mon-Quah (1858-1932) aka George Washington Finley - His name, The Trail of The Storm, was given because he was born during a severe snowstorm and is said to have been born in a native Indian home.  He remembered easily the Civil War and recalled seeing the soldiers of both the North and the South pass through Kansas and from the fact that his people were annoyed and troubled so much by the Quantrell Band from Missouri, they moved south and lived among the Osages till the termination of the War.  Another observation during this time caused him to decide to become a Mason. Frank Valley, an interpreter and a Mason was not molested by the soldiers. 
  

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