Pioneers of the Old Southwest | Page 6

permit their emigration to the New World.
In contrast with the Ulstermen, whose secular ideals were dictated by the forms of their Church, these Scots adhered still to the tribal or clan system, although they, too, in the majority, were Presbyterians, with a minority of Roman Catholics and Episcopalians. In the Scotch Highlands they had occupied small holdings on the land under the sway of their chief, or Head of the Clan, to whom they were bound by blood and fealty but to whom they paid no rentals. The position of the Head of the Clan was hereditary, but no heir was bold enough to step forward into that position until he had performed some deed of worth. They were principally herders, their chief stock being the famous small black cattle of the Highlands. Their wars with each other were cattle raids. Only in war, however, did the Gael lay hands on his neighbor's goods. There were no highwaymen and housebreakers in the Highlands. No Highland mansion, cot, or barn was ever locked. Theft and the breaking of an oath, sins against man's honor, were held in such abhorrence that no one guilty of them could remain among his clansmen in the beloved glens. These Highlanders were a race of tall, robust men, who lived simply and frugally and slept on the heath among their flocks in all weathers, with no other covering from rain and snow than their plaidies. It is reported of the Laird of Keppoch, who was leading his clan to war in winter time, that his men were divided as to the propriety of following him further because he rolled a snowball to rest his head upon when he lay down. "Now we despair of victory," they said, "since our leader has become go effeminate he cannot sleep without a pillow!"*
* MacLean, "An Historical Account of the Settlement of Scotch High.landers in America."
The "King's glorious victory of Culloden" was followed by a policy of extermination carried on by the orders and under the personal direction of the Duke of Cumberland. When King George at last restrained his son from his orgy of blood, he offered the Gaels their lives and exile to America on condition of their taking the full oath of allegiance. The majority accepted his terms, for not only were their lives forfeit but their crops and cattle had been destroyed and the holdings on which their ancestors had lived for many centuries taken from them. The descriptions of the scenes attending their leave-taking of the hills and glens they loved with such passionate fervor are among the most pathetic in history. Strong men who had met the ravage of a brutal sword without weakening abandoned themselves to the agony of sorrow. They kissed the walls of their houses. They flung themselves on the ground and embraced the sod upon which they had walked in freedom. They called their broken farewells to the peaks and lochs of the land they were never again to see; and, as they turned their backs and filed down through the passes, their pipers played the dirge for the dead.
Such was the character, such the deep feeling, of the race which entered North Carolina from the coast and pushed up into the wilderness about the headwaters of Cape Fear River. Tradition indicates that these hillsmen sought the interior because the grass and pea vine which overgrew the innercountry stretching towards the mountains provided excellent fodder for the cattle which some of the chiefs are said to have brought with them. These Gaelic herders, perhaps in negligible numbers, were in the Yadkin Valley before 1730, possibly even ten years earlier. In 1739 Neil MacNeill of Kintyre brought over a shipload of Gaels to rejoin his kinsman, Hector MacNeill, called Bluff Hector from his residence near the bluffs at Cross Creek, now Fayetteville. Some of these immigrants went on to the Yadkin, we are told, to unite with others of their clan who had been for some time in that district. The exact time of the first Highlander on the Yadkin cannot be ascertained, as there were no court records and the offices of the land companies were not then open for the sale of these remote regions. But by 1753 there were not less than four thousand Gaels in Cumberland County, where they occupied the chief magisterial posts; and they were already spreading over the lands now comprised within Moore, Anson, Richmond, Robeson, Bladen, and Sampson counties. In these counties Gaelic was as commonly heard as English.
In the years immediately preceding the Revolution and even in 1776 itself they came in increasing numbers. They knew nothing of the smoldering fire just about to break into flames in the country of their choice, but the Royal Governor, Josiah Martin, knew that Highland