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Colin Calloway offers an intricate portrait of the early American settlers who came to be known as Scotch-Irish -- from their origins on borderlands on one side of the Atlantic to their crucial part in conquering borderlands on the other. "Hard neighbors," as they were called, the Scotch-Irish were the tip of the spear of white colonial expansion into Indian lands, earning a reputation first as Indian killers and then as embodiments of the American pioneer spirit.
List of contents
- Preface
- Terminology
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1. Ulster Genesis and Atlantic Migration
- 2. Valley Paths to Native Lands
- 3. Borderland Peoples
- 4. Hard Neighbors
- 5. The Scotch-Irish French and Indian War
- 6. Indian Killers
- 7. Scotch-Irish Captives and Scotch-Irish Indians
- 8. Black Boys and White Savages
- 9. "A Scotch Irish Presbyterian Rebellion"
- 10. Fighting Landlords, Indians, and Taxes
- 11. Andrew Jackson and the Triumph of Scotch-Irish Indian Policy
- 12. Across the Mississippi
- 13. Texas and Beyond
- 14. How the Scotch-Irish became Americans and Americans became the Scotch-Irish
- Index
About the author
Colin G. Calloway is John Kimball, Jr. 1943 Professor of History and Professor of Native American Studies at Dartmouth College, where he has been a member of the faculty since 1995. He is the author of many books, including The Indian World of George Washington, which won the George Washington Book Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Award.
Summary
An intricate portrayal of the early American settlers who came to be known as Scotch-Irish, who through collusion and bloody conflict acted as the tip of the spear for white colonial expansion into Indian lands, embodying what became the American pioneer spirit.
Hard Neighbors highlights stories that have been subsumed by terms such as "English settlers" and "American expansion" and traces shifting relationships involving Scotch-Irish people living on the frontier, neighboring Indian peoples, and more distant governments. It follows the people who came to be known as Scotch-Irish from their genesis on a colonial borderland on one side of the Atlantic to their role in the borderlands of Indian country on the other. It traces their relations with Native Americans over time and across the continent, examines their experiences as marginalized and expendable people living between colonial powers and Indigenous peoples, and demonstrates their roles as protective and disruptive forces on the hard edge of colonialism. The Scotch-Irish fought Indian wars and shaped the frontier, and their experiences living near and fighting against Indians shaped their identity and their attitudes towards government. They influenced national attitudes and policies, and they transformed Indian people into racial others as they transformed themselves into Americans.
The story this book tells is less about the Scotch-Irish as a distinct ethnic group than as a people in motion who, in collusion and conflict with colonial authorities, repeatedly inserted themselves on Native land. Instead of a tale of unified westward expansion, it recovers the experiences, encounters, and humanity of groups of people enmeshed in the violence of colonialism and reconstructs the roles of multiple peoples placed as buffers between competing powers. Expansion, and the accompanying expulsion and killing of Indian people, helped to create American unity and identity and, ultimately, made the Scotch-Irish Americans. Once marginalized as little better than Indians, they reaffirmed their reputation as Indian killers and made a place for themselves in America, as Americans.
Additional text
Arguing that what happened on the frontier was as significant to the foundational myth of American democracy as what happened in Philadelphia, Colin Calloway reveals how the Scotch Irish defined that myth, one born of conflict with Indigenous peoples in an ever-receding West and with the expansionism of an imperial East. Anyone who wants to follow the national narrative unspooling under these contending forces over three centuries should read this monumental and masterful account of the American past.
