The Royal Society of Edinburgh RSE @ Lochaber

A Lochaber McDonald in the Camp of Sitting Bull

Professor James Hunter FRSE

Mallaig High School Tuesday 12 March 2013

Report by Kate Kennedy

In 1876 they wiped out General George A Custer and his 7th Cavalry at the Battle of Little Bighorn. Chief Sitting Bull and his Sioux people then fled from the United States to Canada. A young man followed White Bird to Sitting Bull’s camp. This young man’s name was Duncan McDonald. Descended from chiefs of the Nez Perce and from chiefs of one of Scotland’s most formidable clans, Duncan’s family – first as Lochaber Highlanders, then as Native Americans – were twice victims of massacre and dispossession. This lecture told their story.

Professor Hunter’s story began in June 1876 when, near to the Little Bighorn River on the Great Plains of eastern Montana, war broke out between the United States Government troops, led by General George Custer, and the Sioux and Southern Cheyenne Indian people. General Custer expected an easy victory, but didn’t account for the fighting capabilities of the men led by Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull. The Battle of Little Bighorn was perhaps the most spectacular of victories by Native Americans in their many conflicts with their white neighbours. However, following this initial battle victory, the war continued well into the winter months and, faced with the greater resources of the US Government, Crazy Horse finally surrendered. Sitting Bull left the United States and moved his people across the border to Canada, which at the time was British territory, and here he founded an encampment in relative safety.

Meanwhile, further west in Idaho, another Indian people, the Nez Perce, were also involved in similar ongoing battles with the whites. The Nez Perce were naïve in their expectation that their war was solely with the whites of Idaho, and having defeated the US soldiers on many occasions, they set out on a long trek through Montana, Wyoming and across the Great Plains, headed for Canada to link up with Sitting Bull and the Sioux. During their journey of many hundreds of miles, accompanied by their famed Appaloosa horses and family members, both young and old, the Nez Perce fought and won several battles, incurring casualties along the way. However, their trek was to have a tragic outcome when, just 42 miles south of the Canadian border, they were overwhelmingly attacked by the US troops, including artillery. After several days, Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce decided to surrender, stating, "From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever."

Although Chief Joseph had surrendered, another Nez Perce chief, White Bird, distrusting the promise the US Government had made regarding safe passage back to Idaho, made a desperate last bid for freedom. Under the cover of darkness and in a blizzard, he and about one hundred Nez Perce people successfully broke through the US Army lines and made for Canada and Sitting Bull’s camp. Chief White Bird was joined in Sitting Bull’s camp by a young relative who was later to write up the story of the Nez Perce war from their perspective – his name was Duncan McDonald. 2

Professor Hunter first came across this story when researching his book A Dance Called America. He was intrigued by Duncan McDonald, a Nez Perce Indian with a name that was redolent of the Highlands of Scotland. Further research established that Duncan’s father, Angus McDonald was a fur trader for the Hudson Bay Company who had crossed the Rocky Mountains in the 1830s and had married into the Nez Perce people. Duncan’s mother belonged to a leading Nez Perce family. Professor Hunter contacted a friend in Idaho, Jim McLeod, who also had an interest in the Highland-born fur traders who were amongst the first white people to reach the Pacific northwest of the United States. They arranged to visit some of the places where Angus McDonald had been based, during Professor Hunter’s next visit to the region. Meanwhile, Jim McLeod received a telephone call from a colleague who knew a young Indian forester, named Tom Branson, from the Flathead Indian Reservation near Missoula. Tom had mentioned to Jim’s colleague that he was part Scottish by descent. Jim telephoned Tom and, during the conversation, was told that Tom’s great-great grandfather was a Scottish fur trader, named Angus McDonald.

In December 1994, Professor Hunter made the first of several trips to the Flathead Reservation and met with Tom Branson. Tom introduced him to his now late great- uncle, Charlie McDonald, who at the time was one of the tribal elders. Charlie was the grandson of Angus and nephew of Duncan. He remembered his Uncle Duncan very well. Professor Hunter recalled meeting Charlie at his home situation amongst some of the most spectacular scenery in the world. The Rockies in this region rise to 10,000 feet and their most prominent summit is McDonald Peak, named after Angus. To the north is Glacier National Park; its centrepiece being McDonald Lake, named after Duncan. During this first meeting with Charlie, Professor Hunter was shown old photographs, letters and documents belonging to Angus. Some of these letters dated back to the 1840s and were written by Angus’s sister, Margaret, and sent from Dingwall in the Scottish Highlands. Professor Hunter was further intrigued by the family and, with the permission of the Indian family, set about further research with the aim of writing the story of the two very similar societies, the Scottish Highland Clans and the Indian people of the American West.

Starting with what is known of Angus by the present-day McDonald family on the Flathead Reservation, Professor McDonald established that Angus had been born at a small settlement called Craig, Torridon, in 1816. Craig was a victim of the Highland Clearances and today there remains only one surviving building. Angus’s father, Donald, registered his birth across the loch at Applecross. Angus’s grandfather, another Angus, had family connections linking him to Munial in Knoydart, but lived in Glencoe in the late 18th Century at a place called Inverigan. This Angus, as a teenager, was a soldier in the Highland army that, in 1746, was defeated at Culloden. And this Angus's father, John MacDonald, had fled into the snow-covered Glencoe hills, as a small boy, on the night, in February 1692, when Scottish government soldiers massacred his McDonald clan. This, noted Professor Hunter, is in parallel with White Bird’s escape from the US army in blizzard conditions.

These Highland roots in themselves are impressive; however, Professor Hunter discovered that the ancestors of Duncan McDonald and the present-day McDonalds on the Flathead Reservation go back much further than 1692. They extend, by way of Glencoe's McDonald chiefs, to Aonghas Og, Angus McDonald of Islay who, in the course of Scotland's 14th-Century War of Independence, was a key ally of King Robert the Bruce. They extend beyond Angus of Islay to Somerled, the 12th-Century warrior prince who founded, in effect, the Lordship of the Isles. They extend, ultimately, to Somerled's earliest authenticated ancestors, such as Gofraid, son of Fergus, who came to the Highlands from Ireland in the year 835.

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Professor Hunter then turned his attention to how the McDonalds came to be in North America. In the early 1800s, Thomas Douglas, the 5th Earl of Selkirk, became concerned with the plight of the Scottish crofters who were being displaced by their landlords. He considered that there was little that could be done to prevent the Highland Clearances, but wanted to investigate ways in which he could help them find new land in the then British colonies. Selkirk spent some time in the United States and Canada and got to know the leading men of the North West Company, many of whom were Highlanders. He was informed about the lands known as Les Prairies, and a watercourse named the Red River, and considered that this might be an ideal place to establish his Highland colony. By happy coincidence, Selkirk’s wife held shares in the Hudson Bay Company and this enabled him to buy a tract of land from the Company. This land was four times the size of Scotland and cost him just ten shillings. Selkirk now had the land for the colony, but needed to find people to move to the area and settle. These people were found in the Highland settlement of Kildonan. Selkirk came up with a scheme whereby, knowing that military manpower was needed in Canada, he suggested to the British Government that he would raise a regiment of people from Kildonan, take them to Canada and, when the fighting was over, the regiment would be disbanded at the Red River and the men’s families would be shipped over to join them. This scheme was rejected. However, Selkirk persevered and, when the Kildonan folk were due to be evicted in May 1813, he took about one hundred, at his own expense, to Canada via Orkney.

Selkirk needed someone to be in charge of his new colonists. He was seeking a young man from a good family who spoke Gaelic, and whilst reliable, was also spirited and adventurous. His requests were fulfilled by a 21-year-old named Archibald McDonald. Archie’s father was Angus McDonald of Inverigan, Glencoe. Archie left Glencoe and set sail for Canada on one of the most gruelling journeys ever made by emigrants from Europe to North America. Terrible weather conditions meant that the party had to overwinter in Hudson’s Bay and it was Spring 1814 before they headed south to the Red River colony and set up their settlement. Today, this settlement is the city of Winnipeg. Initially, times were difficult at the Red River and there was fighting between the settlers and the Metis, a mixed-blood people who depended on the buffalo hunt. Professor Hunter noted the irony that the Kildonan folk, who themselves were evicted from their own homes, in turn evicted the Metis from their land. In time, life at the Red River became more settled and Archie McDonald was posted west to the Columbia River country. He eventually took charge of all Bay Company operations on the far side of the Rockies. Here Archie married a Chinook Indian woman and had a son, Ranald McDonald. Ranald travelled the world, and after stints in Japan, China, Australia and Scotland, he returned to the American West where, in his old age, he was well know to his second cousin, Duncan McDonald, the man who accompanied Chief White Bird to the camp of Sitting Bull. Duncan’s father, Angus, was a great-nephew of Archie McDonald of the Red River settlement and the Bay Company. He made his own journey to America in 1838 and was employed by the Bay Company and posted in Southern Idaho. Angus married an Indian girl named Catherine in 1842 and they moved north in 1847.

Professor Hunter commented that to the white people, a family like Angus’s was ‘beyond the pale’. A white, like Angus, married to an Indian, was known as a squawman and the children of that marriage, such as Duncan and his numerous brothers and sisters, were breeds, or half-breeds. All were spoken of, and treated, with contempt. Yet, both Angus and Catherine, in relation to the societies from which they came, were people of high standing. Angus was descended from the chiefs of the Glencoe MacDonalds and Catherine was related to the chiefs of the Nez Perce.

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The Nez Perce war of 1876, which led to Chief White Bird and Duncan McDonald joining the camp of Sitting Bull, was one of the last episodes of its kind. The Indian West was largely over by then, just as the Highlands of the clans was also over. Nine years after the Nez Perce war, Geronimo of the Apache surrendered to the United States military, bringing about an end to the Indian armed resistance to white settlement. Where there had previously been many millions of Indians there were now, in all of the United States, just over 200,000; all living on reservations. Today, there are many more Indians once again, but they continue to live difficult lives where poverty, unemployment, alcoholism and drug abuse are rife on the reservations. However, many Indians, including the McDonald family, are making efforts to put their society back together, with some success. The Salish Kootenai Community College on the Flathead Reservation provides young Indians with an education that honours their traditions, culture and heritage. In a similar way, the Gaelic-medium College, Sabhal Mor Ostaig on Skye aims to do the same in a Highland Scotland context.

Professor Hunter concluded by remembering a visit to the Flathead Reservation when he was told, “we have a saying here about our songs. As long as our songs are sung, we say, our people will be here. And today our songs are being sung much more than once they were.” Professor Hunter commented that it “seems appropriate to think of the McDonald story as a song to which all the many McDonalds that I’ve mentioned have added, or are adding, their few notes. This song’s been heard for a long, long time already. It will, I hope, be heard for a long time to come”.

A Vote of Thanks was offered by Dr Karly Kehoe.

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