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Scotland’s Global Impact Conference: Speaker Articles

13th October 2009

By: Margaret Connell Szasz, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque

Title: Gaelic Highlander and Mohegan Minister: Indigenous Encounters

In today’s post-colonial era of the early 21st century, it is difficult to empathize with eighteenth-century societies that justified stomping on the languages, religions, and cultural ways of other peoples on the grounds that their societies were inferior. 

Yet the Scottish Highlanders and Native American or “Red Indians” of North America proved apt targets for this cultural militancy. Early in the eighteenth century, when Scottish Lowland Presbyterians—under the aegis of the SSPCK missionary society—engaged in this game, they chose schoolmasters and some clergy to serve as cultural warriors charged with bringing about cultural change.  The SSPCK selected the Highlanders as their primary targets; by the 1740s they had added the Algonquian Indians of southern New England and adjacent colonies.

But cultural encounters seldom move in a single direction.  In this instance, the targets of colonialism—the Gaelic Highlanders and Native Americans—fought back with all the tools they possessed.  No single, homogeneous response characterized their actions.  The Highlanders’ reaction varied by region, by clan and family, and even within families and clans; cousins disagreed with cousins.  The same variety characterized Native American responses, dividing seemingly cohesive linguistic groups, such as the Mohegan and Narragansett communities in Connecticut and Rhode Island or the Indian nations of New York—the Iroquois League or Hodenosaunee.  Some Native peoples counselled change; others held back, vowing to retain customs, religion and language.

A third kind of response emerged when certain strong individuals opted to test the fickle winds of the cultural frontier by donning the cloak of “cultural broker” or cultural intermediary.  Intermediaries refused to adopt fully the outsiders’ ways. They acknowledged the need to absorb new customs but cultural tenacity taught them to shield the old ways by clinging to the language that expressed their world view and retaining their historic concept of community.  Brokers moved among different worlds, slipping from one into the other. 

In my presentation to the Scotland’s Global Impact Conference, I will set the stage for two Indigenous cultural intermediaries who highlighted the educational and spiritual frontier in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world.  These two figures provoke some intriguing parallels.  The first is Samson Occom, Mohegan Presbyterian minister of Connecticut, schoolmaster for the Long Island Montauk Indians, speaker of the Southern Algonquian language of Southern New England Natives and counsellor for these people.  His counterpart is Dugald Buchanan, Gaelic Highlander, schoolmaster, bard and poet, translator, especially known for his work on the first Gaelic edition of the New Testament (1767), and Presbyterian catechist of Perthshire. 

Occom and Buchanan remain iconic figures within this era’s Colonialist—Indigenous paradigm. They personify Indigenous responses to colonialism. They appear to be serving two masters simultaneously—first, the Outsiders, either New England spiritual leaders or Scottish Lowland Presbyterian educators; and, second, their Indigenous people, either Mohegan and other New England Algonquian groups or Gaelic Highlanders of Perthshire, Sutherland, and elsewhere in Northern Scotland. 
The crucial question one might ask of these two men pivots on the issue of individual versus community; it also addresses the choices that each made with regards to an ultimate allegiance.  Each day Occom and Buchanan made difficult decisions that thrust them toward the cutting edge of what appeared to be cultural warfare. But in the end, what they and their people fought for was their survival.

Professor Margaret Connell Szasz will present this study at the Scotland’s Global Impact Conference, Eden Court Theatre, Inverness from 22 to 24 October. This Conference will reveal much about the people of Scotland, exploring why they left their country over many centuries and unravelling the huge impact this small nation has made on the rest of our planet. Opened by First Minister Alex Salmond and chaired by the BBC’s Lesley Riddoch, the Scotland’s Global Impact features a number of controversial speakers, including Eric Richards, author of Patrick Sellar and the Highland Clearances. For more information or tickets go to http://www.scotlandsglobalimpact.com

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