Dear HCN,
Lisa Jones’ profile of
Jim Catron describes quite accurately the philosophy and attitudes
of one of several British cultures that reached what is now the
United States during the 17th and 18th centuries (HCN, 3/13/00: The
last Celtic warlord lives in New Mexico). But the one thing that
Jim Catron’s culture is not now, and never has been, is Celtic. It
has been called various things – Scotch-Irish, Borderer,
backcountry, southern highland. Its people came from the Border
country between England and Scotland, as Lisa Jones describes, and
their genetic makeup undoubtedly included Celtic elements, but they
were not culturally identified with the Scottish Highlanders, and
their language was not a Gaelic one. South of the Border they spoke
an English dialect; north of it they spoke Scots, a language with
many of the same roots as English.
Beginning in
the 17th century, thousands of Borderers settled in northern
Ireland. In this they were abetted by the dire economic conditions
in their homeland, and the active encouragement of the British
government centered in London, which, in its centuries-long
campaign to conquer Ireland, found the Borderers a convenient
buffer population. In Ireland, the Borderers continued their
cultural pursuits of cattle rustling and guerrilla warfare, this
time against the native Irish tribes, who were
Gaelic-speaking Celts. This was the beginning of the great hatred
between Catholics and Protestants in northern Ireland, a feud which
has about as much to do with religion as a stuffed turkey has to do
with art.
Early in the 18th century, northern
Ireland’s British rulers grew alarmed at the rising prosperity and
religious nonconformism of the Borderers (who were mostly
Presbyterians). They proceeded to tax their businesses, seize their
lands, and persecute them for not attending Anglican services. The
Borderers began to leave for America in large
numbers.
As the new immigrants arrived in ports
like Philadelphia, the Puritans and Quakers – representatives of
two other British cultures – looked upon these uncouth,
rough-speaking people with horror and were delighted when they
moved into the backcountry, there to become a buffer against the
powerful Eastern Indian tribes. The Borderers were happy to do
this. They liked living alone. This is Jim Catron’s culture, as it
was the natal culture of Bill Clinton, George Wallace, Bill Bradley
and Lyndon Johnson.
This is the culture which
hates the federal government, regarding it as the lineal descendant
of the irksome British tyrants. As a people, Borderers had little
use for the law, for the law had never protected them. They valued
strength and pugnaciousness over learning.
In
the U.S., states dominated by the Borderer culture (like Idaho)
value “local control” to such an extent that they are willing to
let school buildings fall down around children’s ears rather than
allow the state to pay for fixing them.
Borderers
disliked authority: it had too often been used to oppress them; at
the same time, they were intolerant of those with differing beliefs
and ways of life. They disliked cities and hierarchical religions;
in the American wilderness, they adopted colorful varieties of
Protestantism. Many of their descendants today are Baptists,
Pentecostals or evangelicals. Although Borderers have often been
elected to the presidency, they lost all their great political
battles, from the Whiskey Rebellion to the Sagebrush Rebellion. And
with each loss, some of them retreated farther into the
hinterlands.
Many Borderers who came to the
Western territories in the 19th century had fought on the losing
side of the Civil War, like Jim Catron’s distant relative, Thomas
Benton Catron. A lawyer, Thomas and his son Charles used their
legal skills to separate the Hispanic population of New Mexico from
their land grants. They were not, by any stretch of the
imagination, cowboys. They were Border reivers with new
tools.
If it gives Jim Catron joy to shout, “The
federal government hates us because we’re armed, dangerous, wild
and free!” then fine and dandy, but the facts are otherwise. The
federal government is not afraid of them because they are dangerous
and armed; the feds are not afraid of them at all, nor does the
government care very much about them, one way or the other.
It is too busy paying attention to other
American cultures which are willing to be actively involved in
government at all levels, and which are not predisposed to see
Government as alien, dangerous, and tolerable only when
minimized.
Since my cultural background is
largely Borderer, too, I have long had an interest in the subject.
For HCN readers who are curious about American
cultural history, the following books may be of interest: Bradley,
Bill: Time Present, Time Past. Crawford, Max:
Lords of the Plain. deBuys, William:
Enchantment and Exploitation. Fisher, David
Hackett: Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in
America. Fraser, George MacDonald: The Steel
Bonnets: The Anglo-Scottish Border Reivers. Gilbert, Bil:
Westering Man. Waters, Frank: To
Possess the Land.
Louise
Wagenknecht
Leadore, Idaho
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Guess who’s not Gaelic.
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