"From the lone Shieling
of the misty island
Mountains divide us,
and the waste of seas --
Yet still the blood is strong
the heart is Highland,
And we in dreams
behold the Hebrides.1

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> GO TO TABLE OF CONTENTS.

Introduction The Highlander Post-Culloden Scottish Clearances Immigration To Nova Scotia Scottish Immigration To Cape Breton Conclusion Notes Authorities

The great English essayist, Macaulay wrote of them: "In perseverance, in self-command, in forethought, in all the virtues which conduce to success in life, the Scots have never been surpassed." Further, it might be said, that the Scots were a race in whom personal and family pride was the dominant passion. These attributes might well describe the Lowlanders and the Highlanders; though, there was a considerable difference of another kind between them, especially before the mid-18th century.2

Defoe described the Highlander:

"They are formidable fellows and I only wish Her Majesty had 25,000 of them in Spain [the British and the Spaniards were at war], as a nation equally proud and barbarous like themselves. They are all gentlemen, will take affront from no man, and insolent to the last degree. But certainly the absurdity is ridiculous to see a man in his mountain habit, armed with a broadsword, target, pistol, at his girdle a dagger, and staff, walking down the High Street as upright and haughty as if he were a lord, and withal driving a cow!"3

It was not likely the only reason which drove families to relocate over the seas, but it is accepted that it was the land clearances in Scotland that drove the Highlanders to America. With the approval of those in the highest positions of government (then located in London) fences went up where fences had not been. Fences were needed to mark-off individual property rights; and these rights had finally come to Scotland ending the feudal system which had long lasted in Scotland. Prior to this "English" fencing there were, quite unlike what one sees today, no hedges; all about were open fields. These fields were cultivated, but strictly according to "village rules of immemorial antiquity." No one owned these common fields. Thus these fields, once available to the common people, were enclosed and large farms appeared. This process was part of a general revolution in society which had begun many years before in Europe and only lastly came to Scotland. The total effect of the unfolding process was likely, on the whole, good for Scotland.6

This process just briefly described, principally, led the Highlanders to immigrate to North America, with Nova Scotia getting, to her good fortune, more than her share of Highlanders.

[TOC]
The Highlander

The view had by the typical Englishmen of the Scottish highlander, a view, incidentally held by those of the mighty Roman army when it was in possession of most of the British Isles7, was expressed by the historian, G. M. Trevelyan:

"Beyond the Highland line ... lay the grim, unmapped, roadless mountains, the abode of the Celtic tribes, speaking another language; wearing another dress; living under a system of law and society a thousand years older than that of Southern Scotland; obedient neither to Kirk nor Queen, but to their own chiefs, clans, customs and superstitions. Till General Wade's work a generation later, there was no driving road through the Highlands. Nature reigned, gloomy, splendid, unchallenged ..."8

This British military activity, worked. The Celtic tribes, their chiefs, clans, customs and superstitions, if not ended permanently, changed in 1745 with the Battle of Culloden.

"Although a fraction only of the clans had taken part in the last Jacobite Rebellion of 1745, all felt the results of its defeat. Bayonet and noose, the prescription of arms, of tartan and kilt, the abolition of the hereditary jurisdictions of the chiefs, the sequestration of their estates, began the destruction of the clan system. A memory survived, cocooned in the silk of songs, awaiting mutation in romance."10

[TOC]
Post-Culloden

After Culloden a distinctive era for Scotland came to an end and another began. It put an end to the claims of the Stuarts and it solidified the Hanoverian hold on the English throne. These were important objectives for those in power at the time, and the reason why the English troops under Cumberland did such a thorough job of it in northern Scotland. More important to history, is that in the aftermath of Culloden the clan structure of Scotland, which had been the last bastion of European feudalism came to an end. An entire new structure, of leadership and of law, was put in place which shook Scotland to its very roots.

To disperse the people of these Scottish clans became the objective of the English. A view became popular that it might be best if the Scottish rebels were shipped off to America. Admiral Peter Warren, in a dispatch to the Board of Trade dated July 10th, 1746, wrote: "Fones is just arrived here [Boston], and brings us the agreeable account of his royal highness' success [Culloden] against the rebels. I hope the government will hang every chief among them that can write or read, and send the rest to be dispersed through the American colonies!"11

More generally, hard times came to Great Britain in the wake of the Napoleonic wars (1793-1815). The lower classes became poverty stricken. The people who inhabited the Highlands of Scotland were always poor, in the years beyond 1815, more so. The authorities thought to relieve the developing problems by supporting schemes that would reduce population levels by shipping poor Scottish people to America. And so it came to be, that from 1815 to 1830 there was a steady stream of immigrants from Scotland many of whom came to Nova Scotia.

It is important to emphasize that the greatest number of Scottish immigrants came to Nova Scotia during the first half of the 19th century, in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars (1793-1815). In my work, Settlement, Revolution and War, I wrote of the earlier arrivals, especially those that arrived at Pictou on the Hector in 1773, the first ship to come to Nova Scotia directly from Scotland in the 18th century. The Hector was but one of a very limited number of immigration ships that arrived at Pictou in the 18th century. It is estimated that there may have been four, which is a number that pales to the number that arrived after the 19th century had begun.

The Scottish people who arrived on the Hector were Presbyterian from Sutherland (see map). They stayed on in the Pictou area joining the English speaking Protestants who had come from Pennsylvania in 1767. In the years after, the Scottish arrivals at Pictou settled in the area, but not all. If they were Presbyterian they tended to stick but the Catholics were encouraged to move on to Antigonish County and Cape Breton. Eventually, but not before 1802, Scottish settlers came directly from Scotland to Cape Breton.12 "Highland immigration to Cape Breton reached its peak in 1828, but it continued until the 1850s. Soon the Highlanders outnumbered all other ethnic groups in Cape Breton and both the eastern counties of Pictou and Antigonish."13

An analysis of the population levels in Cape Breton through the years 1817-1838, though no passenger lists survive, show that the Scottish Immigration was heavy.14 It appears that thousands of poor Scottish people came to the island. As of 1817, the population of Cape Breton was between 7,000 and 8,000; as of 1827 it was at 18,700; as of 1838 it was at around 38,000. The increase from 1817 to 1838 was approximately 30,000 mostly due to the influx of Highland Scots.15

The principal reason why these people were driven from their homelands, as the historians have labeled it, was because of the Scottish Clearances.

[TOC]
Scottish Clearances

It is not difficult to find people who will say it was the "Land Clearances" that drove the Highlanders from their ancient home grounds to Nova Scotia. This was likely part of why so many left their homes during this period, particularly between 1815 to 1830. Like so many phenomena that impact on human affairs, it is often difficult to point to causes that brought on a particular train of events. Certain of these causes can go back along time and are likely pinned to the culture of the people effected. This would be especially so, where a law is introduced, such as private property rights, to a land and culture which did not know of or depend upon such extensive rights.

"For the age of enclosure was also the age of new methods of draining, drilling, sowing, manuring, breeding and feeding cattle, making of roads, rebuilding of farm premises and a hundred other changes, all of them requiring capital."16 Trevelyan continues and points out that this movement started in the early part of the 18th century, much before Culloden, as the "rustic squires" with their smaller acreages gradually disappeared in favour of a growing landlord class who had the capital and credit for large agricultural operations.

Prior to the clearances, villages, a small collection of people, as were all villages of medieval times, were surrounded by open fields to be used by all and owned by the community as a whole. And so, between the years 1760 and 1840, "open fields" were abolished by acts of parliament and titles of ownership placed in the hands of a few who had won favour with the crown. Some good came of it; some bad.

"The inclosure movement had increased the amount of land in the hands of the upper and wealthy classes; the more enterprising small freeholders became large farmers, the weaker and poorer men sank into the status of labourers at a time when, owing to the increase in the rural population, there was already a drift of the labouring class into the towns. ... The labouring families, in areas of recent and considerable inclosure, lost their customary privileges of stubbling on open fields or putting a beast on the commons. The loss of fuel was also a hardship at a time when timber was scarce. ... The diet of most labouring families was bread and cheese for six out of seven days of the week, though some labourers kept a pig, and many had small gardens. It is difficult enough, on these low standards, to make any comparison with earlier times. On the whole, taking into account all sources of income, the average labourer was probably not worse off in the ten or twenty years after 1815 than he had been in 1790 ..."17

For quite some period of time, "in Lewis and the Uists there were no songs sung about a land taken from the people, or of white-sailed ships taking away the best of the youth."19 The reason that Prebble gives, is, because the islands were profitable enough without sheep: they could harvest kelp from the sea. It is burnt for the sake of the substances found in the ashes. The calcined ashes of seaweed used in commerce for the sake of the carbonate of soda, iodine, and other substances which they contain; large quantities were formerly used in the manufacture of soap and glass. But mostly the ashes in the early part of the 19th c. in the Western Isles of Scotland were turned into a rich fertilizer. The kelp was burned over peat in great kilns on the shore. With the winding down of the Napoleonic Wars, the price for kelp ashes fell.20

Thus we have a reason, maybe the principal one, for the Highlanders leaving the Western Isles. The kelp industry failed. While places can be pointed out in the highlands of the mainland where the lairds cleared the land for sheep, the clearances did not much come to the Western Isles. The reason for this is that the majority of these Highlanders could no longer support themselves and their families on the collection and processing of kelp. Though still, the police came to boot the people out of certain of the communities, even if, as it turned out, they were not replaced by sheep. Cruel events occurred in the Western Isles though not as frequently or as extensively in the Mainland Highlands. John Prebble gave a couple of vivid descriptions of these events. The first is that which unfolded at Solas, North Uist, in 1849:

"The black flags of defiance were flying again the next morning when the police once more marched down the Lochmaddy road to Mallaglate. Now there was no discussion, no arguments, no appeals. The police formed two lines down the street of the township. Sheriff-Officers asked one question only at the doors of the cottages, whether those within were prepared to emigrate on the terms offered. If the answer was no, and it invariably was, then bedding, bed-frames, spinning-wheels, barrels, benches, tables and clothing were all dragged out and left at the door. Divots were torn from the roof, and the house timbers were pulled down ready for burning."21

"[A woman] with many tears, sobs and groans, put up a petition to the Sheriffs that they would leave the roof over part of her house where she had a loom with cloth in it which she was weaving ... [Another] woman, the eldest, made an attack with a stick on an officer, and missing her blow, sprung upon him and knocked off his hat. Two stout policemen had difficulty in carrying her to the door."22

"The style and material of building and the degree of poverty varied in different regions, but walls of turf or of unmortared stone, stopped with grass or straw, were very common; chimneys and glass windows were very rare; the floor was the bare ground; in many places the cattle lived at one end of the room, the people at the other, with no partition between. The family often sat on stones or heaps of turf round the fire of peat, whence the smoke made partial escape through a hole in the thatch overhead."23

Up to 1816, it cannot be concluded that there were any great numbers of ships coming to Nova Scotia with Scottish immigrants aboard. The Napoleonic Wars (1793-1815) had put a damper on immigration in general. Thereafter, there is no lack of lists of immigration ships that came to Nova Scotia with Scots aboard; passenger lists, however, are another matter.24

A word about the sad scenes that played themselves out in Scotland as people left the only lands they ever knew to set out to lands across the sea.

"The sailing of an immigrant vessel was a deeply emotional experience, for those leaving and for those who remained. The Highlanders were like children, uninhibited in their feelings and wildly demonstrative in their grief. Men and women wept without constraint. They flung themselves on the earth they were leaving, clinging to it so fiercely that sailors had to prise them free and carry them bodily to the boats. A correspondent of the Inverness Courier watched the departure of some Kildonan people from Helmsdale: 'Hands were wrung and wrung again, bumbers of whisky tossed wildly off amidst cheers and shouts; the women were forced almost fainting into the boats; and the crowd upon the shore burst into a long, loud cheer. Again and again that cheer was raised and responded to from the boat, while bonnets were thrown into the air, handkerchiefs were waved, and last words of adieu shouted to the receding shore, while, high above all, the wild notes of the pipes were heard ...'"25

Charles W. Dunn:

"Life for him [the settler] was something more than a ceaseless round of cutting, burning, ploughing, planting, sowing, and reaping; and for his wife, something more than a grim monotony of cooking, carding, spinning, weaving, knitting, sewing, and mending. Their long hours of toil and their few well-deserved moments of leisure were always the occasion for laughter and story and song and music."28

"... the many people here [Sydney] whose roots are in the Highlands have had an exceptionally raw deal from history. For a single family to have laboured in the kelp industry, to have been evicted from a croft, to have made the ocean crossing in an immigrant ship, to have hacked a farm out of virgin forest, to have found it impossible to make a living on that farm, to have gone into coal-mining, to have endured that industry's grim casualty toll and to have seen, at the end of all of this, the mines shut down is, whatever way you look at it, to have endured an awful lot in the space of half a dozen generations."29

"One of his first acts was to issue a code of instructions to the Surveyor-General, to lay off lands in lots of 100 acres to single, and of 200 acres to married men, with permission to occupy them under tickets of location until they were prepared to pay for grants, with the proviso, that no absolute title should be given except to bona fide settlers who had actually made improvements."31

"In 1841 ... Lieutenant-Governor Falkland informed the Colonial Office that he had dispensed with public auction in Cape Breton and allowed settlers to occupy crown lands on the payment of a fixed price of 2s.6d. an acre. This modification might have appeared advantageous to the lieutenant-governor, but Surveyor-General Crawley soon pointed out that the intended purchasers consisted of 1,500 poor souls from the Hebrides, who possessed neither the power nor the inclination to avail themselves of Falkland's kind offer. Indeed, the majority had at once settled themselves on one of the larger grants of the absentees. Admittedly, two or three of these immigrants made enquiries at the land office, but they had frankly admitted that their intention was not to purchase crown land but to ascertain where vacant land could be found so that they could settle on it without purchase or permission."32

For a variety of reasons, Cape Breton was slow to make itself ready to accept new immigrants, of any kind.33 More generally, it might be stated that during the war years (1793-1815) no one risked voyages at sea unless made in the company of a British Man-of-War. There was a short respite period when in 1802, the Treaty of Amiens was signed; the period lasted but eighteen months. Enough time, however, to set immigrant ships in motion from Scotland to America. During August of 1802, the first boat load of Scottish immigrants, 299, arrived at Spanish Bay (Sydney).34 We should note that it was in 1803 that Selkirk35 landed immigrants from the Scottish highlands at Prince Edward Island.36 Many of those that were first landed in Prince Edward Island, left to join their cousins who had been, by then, reasonably well settled in the Pictou area. With the Napoleonic Wars under way again, few Scottish immigrant ships came to Nova Scotia, until 1817, that is two years after the war had ended.

I suspect that the authorities kept track of the immigrant Ships that came into Pictou more so than those that landed at Cape Breton:

"Nor did these people's troubles end with the Atlantic crossing. Because Cape Breton was the earliest landfall made by ships heading ultimately for St Lawrence and Quebec, aspiring immigrants could get here more economically than they could travel to any other part of North America. And because Cape Breton's coastline, rather like that of the Scottish Highlands, is replete with sheltered coves and inlets, it was possible for those less scrupulous skippers who were common in the timber trade to put their passengers ashore in remote and unregulated harbours in order to avoid the delays and complexities which would have been encountered at more formal ports of entry to North America. 'Several vessels arrive annually and land their passengers on the western shore of this island,' customs officers complained from Sydney, 'the masters neglecting to make any report of the number.'"37

The greatest number of Scottish immigrant ships came in following 1820 and carried on in reasonably steady numbers through to the middle of the 19th century. It is no coincidence, I should think, that beginning in 1820, a new official position in regards Cape Breton became evident. As we have already pointed out, in October of that year, the newly appointed the Royal Governor of Nova Scotia, Sir James Kempt, within four months of his arrival in Nova Scotia, made a tour of Cape Breton. On the 9th he declared that Cape Breton, which had been an independent British colony since 1784, was to be re-annexed to Nova Scotia as one of its counties. This brought in its train changes in the justice system.39 This was important for any commercial development of the island, as people with capital need the protection of the law, especially a registry system in respect to real property.

Moorsom, who made his observations in 1827, estimated the population of Nova Scotia, including Cape Breton, at 143,000. He estimated that of this only 600 were Indian and 1,500 were black. A doubling, Moorsom concluded, of the 1817 population of 72,000. While the information we have is shaky in regards to which ships came in from Scotland with immigrants aboard, we have as a practical matter no information who these Scottish people were and where they went to build their little huts and start life anew. Though, we do know, that these Scottish settlers flooded in and were in a destitute condition for a period of time.

James Hunter:

"... the town's magistrates noted in 1828, upwards of 2,100 persons have come into this district [Cape Breton] from the western part of Scotland many of whom, on their landing, were quite destitute of food and also of the means of procuring it. Sydney was again thought to be at risk from smallpox. And great numbers of newly disembarked Highlanders had been reduced to begging from door to door."40

"Ironically enough, in view of their earlier treatment by the British, Highlanders were extremely loyal to King and Country in the American colonies, and they were much persecuted during the war as Tories or Loyalists. Many recently-emigrated Highlanders ended up fighting against the Americans in Loyalist or British regiments, then being disbanded and receiving land in the provinces of British North America which remained within the Empire after the débâcle. Highlanders had always been more inclined than Lowlanders to emigrate to the wilderness colonies of Nova Scotia, the Island of St John, and Canada, and with peace they were joined by many of their fellow Highlanders who had initially sought a place in the rebellious American colonies to the south."42

"Perhaps there are no race of people better adapted to the climate of North America [Cape Breton] than that of the Highlands of Scotland. The habits, employments, and customs of the Highlander seem to fit him for the American forest, which he penetrates without feeling the gloom and melancholy experienced by those who have been brought up in towns and amidst the fertile fields of highly cultivated districts. Scotch immigrants are hardy, industrious, and cheerful, and experience has fully proved that no people meet the first difficulties of settling wild lands with greater patience and fortitude."43

"As the spring moves grudgingly along there is always plenty of work for the men-folk to do. The farmer gets his equipment ready for planting. The fisherman overhauls his boat and engine, and mends his nets, or completes his lobster traps. Both fisherman and farmer inspect their fences and put in new posts and poles wherever they are needed. The cows calf; the mares foal; the sheep lamb; the hens are set on their eggs, and hatch out their chicks, and the household cat proudly summons her new kittens out from the barn.
Then the busy season begins. The fisherman leaves his house and takes up his residence at the shore, immersing himself in a tangle of rope, lines, crates, kegs, barrels, nets, traps, hooks, and buckets. In a short he is out to sea, setting the traps and nets, trying to guess where the fish will run this season. From then on through the summer he is never idle. Each kind of fish requires special gear and a special technique -- salmon, herring, mackerel, cod, lobster -- and all require incessant watchfulness and toil.
The farmer, at the same, is trying to foresee what nature is going to bring him in the way of weather. He begins to plough and harrow and sow and plant. Summer moves on. The seeds entrusted to the soil thrust out green blades. Finally the season brought home. The tempo of life slows down. The people are secure for another year. Whatever may befall, they will have plenty to eat. ....
In winter when it is impossible to get to a store the wise farmer or fisherman has a well-stocked house. Even in an isolated settlement at this time of the year it is not uncommon to find in a fisherman's house fresh eggs, milk, cream, and butter; half a carcass of beef hanging frozen in the out-house; a barrelful of home-killed pork, and cuts of home-cured ham and bacon; a hundred-pound box of dry-salt-cod, a barrel of salt herring; miscellaneous frozen fish recently caught, such as cod, skate, and ells; home-canned fruit; and a store of other necessities purchased in the autumn."44

The adversities faced by the pioneers that came to Nova Scotia convinced a number, after a winter season or two, to go south into the lands of promise and plenty, the United States, with a climate not to be found in Nova Scotia. But the Scots -- well, they were use to the climate of Nova Scotia before they even set a foot on its soil. The hard times experienced by the Highlanders only served to enhanced the ingrained character of a Scottish person:

"All the perplexity and doggedness of the race was in him, its loneliness, tenderness and affection, its deceptive vitality, its quick flashes of violence, its dog-whistle sensitivity to sounds to which Anglo-Saxons are stone deaf, its incapacity to tell its heart to foreigners save in terms foreigners do not comprehend, its resigned indifference to whether they comprehend or not. It's not easy being Scotch, he told me once. To which I suppose another Scotchman might say, It wasn't meant to be."45

"My name is the Devil's Dick of Hellgarth, well known in Annandale for a gentle Johnstone. I follow the stout Laird of Wamphray, who rides with his kinsman, the redoubted Lord of Johnstone, who is banded with the doughty earl of Douglas; and the Earl, and the Lord, and the laird, and I, the esquire, fly our hawks where we find our game, and ask no man whose ground we ride over."

-- End

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