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This book is the first extensive collection of Gaelic poetry composed in the United States and the first critical examination of relations between the Highlanders and other ethnic groups. It provides first-hand accounts written by Scottish Gaels as they fled oppression, became engaged in the American War of Independence, and settled in the country which we now call the United States. These poems give voice to a people who have previously been known only through impersonal records and documents written in what was, to them, a foreign language. Their poetry enables them to explain their actions and perceptions, and allows us to understand their lives from their own perspective in a way which dry historical documents cannot. These poems form a backdrop for their adventures and their remarkable interactions with the other peoples of America.

He has reawakened the voice of the Gael from out of the silent records that lurk on obscure library shelves and has revived the pulse of history ... And his concluding analysis concerning the intermingling of ethnic cultures sets the details contained in his book into a broad and valuable perspective.
    -- Prof. Charles Dunn (Dept. of Celtic, Harvard University)

As I read this remarkable book by Michael Newton on the uncharted heritage of Gaelic literature in North America, the question kept coming to mind: why has someone not done this before? Michael has plowed a largely neglected field of study; I predict that his pioneering work will bear rich fruit and will stimulate other research in an area important to the cultural history of both Scotland and North America.
    -- Rev. Dr. Douglas F. Kelly, Vice-President of Scottish Heritage USA

This book would be valuable for its Gaelic content alone. In tracking the growth of Highland communities in the United States, Newton offers many songs, poems and prose passages in Gaelic illustrating or supporting the historical record. However the book is not, strictly speaking, a history. It's an attempt to analyze a cultural legacy through a variety of disciplines, including literature, history, sociology and ethnology.
    --Liam O Caiside, Naidheachd Spring-Summer 2002

We're Indians Sure Enough is another tour de force explaining historical events in a clear and exciting fashion that gripped this reader from the first page. There is much new information in this book about the Highland people in America which should intrigue historians, both professional and amateur, on both sides of the Atlantic.
    -- Kenneth McKenna, Glengarry

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword (by Prof. Charles Dunn)

Introduction

Chapter One: The Background

• Scotland and the Highlanders
• The Strange Death of Scotland
• Gaelic Society
• Highlanders and Other Scots
• Oral Tradition
• Names and Places
• Sources, Editing Policy, and Translations

Chapter Two: A Broken World

• A World Turned Upside Down
• Failed Jacobite Risings
• Flora MacDonalds
• Of the Desolation of the Highlands
• A Song to Sir Allan MacLean of Coll
• A Lament for Scotland
• A Song about America
• A Song on the Potato Blight

Chapter Three: Over the Seas to Freedom

• From a Trickle to a Flood
• A Song of Departure, 1757
• A Song to the people of the Western Isles
• Encouraging News from North Carolina
• A Song made in Barbados, 1816
• Journey to and from America

Chapter Four: Warfare and Independence

• Highland Soldiers and Regiments
• To the Highlanders Upon Departing for America
• A Song to Raonall Òg MacDonald
• At the Siege of Quebec
• After Quebec
• I'm Weary of this Exile
• On the Departure of the Argyll Highlanders
• A Song after the Revolution

Chapter Five: Settlement

• Unsettled Populations
• Lullaby in an Alien Land
• When the Nobles Had Hardened Against Us
• Elegy to a Miner in the California Gold Rush
• Multi-Ethnic Encounters
• The Gaels and Slavery
• Cattle on the Prairie
• Boston Gaels

Chapter Six: Culture and Race in North America

• Race and Racialism
• Cultural Amnesia and Whiteness
• Language Survival
• Scotland and American Mythmaking

Conclusions