Where are the sons of the scattered clans? Many of them peacefully settled among law-abiding Lowlanders, many of them gone to America, where among other mountains, on fruitfuller straths and by mightier streams, they often cherish their Gaelic and their kilts, sometimes against sore pricks of climate and mosquitoes, sharper than the ancestral itch of dirt and poverty. In one district of Nova Scotia alone, there are said to thrive three thousand of those Macdonalds whose offended pride hung back from the clash of Culloden. Before the ’45, emigration to America had already begun with the colony settled in Georgia by General Oglethorpe; even earlier indeed hardy Highlanders and Orkneymen were in demand for service in the wilds of Hudson’s Bay; but after Culloden the exodus became considerable, increasing as the chieftains, turned into lairds, found idle and prejudiced dependants only in the way of improving their estates; and “another for Hector!” came to mean a fresh clansman shipped across the Atlantic to see Lochaber no more. Harsh as it was, the wrench proved often a blessing in disguise, when the last look at those misty Hebrides had softened into a tender memory with the farmers of New Glengarry or ice-bound Antigonish. Our day saw two Prime Ministers of Canada who, if kept at home, might have
been carrying the southron’s game-bag, as one of them perhaps did in his bare-legged youth.
Perhaps the most remarkable Highland-American has never been duly brought into the light of history, as neither has that mysterious soldier of fortune Gregor MacGregor, “Cacique of Poyais,” who made such a stir in two worlds, but is now hardly remembered unless by the mention of him in the Ingoldsby Legends, and the banknotes of his bankrupt kingdom, treasured by collectors of curiosities. Did the general reader ever hear of Alexander MacGillivray, who was born at once a Highland gentleman and a Red Indian chief? His career, which I hope to write some day, if once able to bridge over certain gaps in my information, makes an extraordinary mixture of romance with very opposite features, better fitting the vulgar idea of a Scot.
Some time during the Jacobite disturbances, one Lachlan MacGillivray emigrated from Inverness to the Southern States, where he became a prosperous Indian trader, and, perhaps in the way of business, married a “princess” of the great Creek Confederacy. Alexander, the son of this mésalliance, was well educated and brought up to trade, but early in life betook himself to his mother’s people, among whom his attainments as well as his birth gave him influence. Rank, by Indian law, as by “Lycian custom,” being inherited on the spindle side, before he was thirty he had been recognised as chief of the Creeks, and for many years played a leading part in their fitful politics. Little is known of his rule beyond the main facts, our clearest accounts of him being derived from a rare book written by another young adventurer, the Frenchman Leclerc Milfort, whose story, in plain English, seems not to be always trusted.
According to himself, Milfort, having also wandered among the Creeks, was chosen by them as their war chief, an office separate from the civil headship of an Indian tribe. Then the Scotsman and the Frenchman appear to have governed the Creeks for years, making a congenial disposition of power, the one the head, the other the hand, of a powerful though somewhat unstable body politic. MacGillivray had no stomach for fighting, was even a coward, if Milfort is to be believed; but he was crafty, resourceful, and of a clear Caledonian eye to the main chance. Milfort found him living in a good house, with herds of cattle and dozens of negro slaves. Another source of profit he had in a secret partnership with a firm of brother Scots at Pensacola, to which he directed the trade of the Creek nation, jealously intrigued for by their British and Spanish neighbours. The Revolutionary War had nearly caused a rupture between these Creek consuls. MacGillivray’s sympathies were with the British; Milfort had no scruple in fighting against the Americans, but when French troops came to take part in the struggle, he was disposed to side with his compatriots. His colleague, however, persuaded him to remain neutral; and by this Scotsman’s influence, the Creeks seem to have been kept from throwing into the scale the weight of their war parties. The canny chief entered into a maze of tricky negotiations with the various bordering Powers, pretending to each to be in its special interest, receiving bribes from all, throughout, as far as his dealings can be traced, “true to one party, and that is himself.”