ACROSS THE POND: Why the Brahan Seer has become my obsession thousands of miles from home
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Wherever I’m living, I get fascinated with local history. When I lived on the Black Isle, Rosehaugh Estate and the Brahan Seer caught my interest.
Admittedly, Coinneach Odhar might be a wee obsession even now, as I’m still devouring every book I can find about him.
When I first came to the Bay Area, I got curious about what was here before Big Tech. The Santa Clara Valley, aka Silicon Valley was called ‘Valley of the Heart’s Delight.’ There was no Facebook or NASA or Google. No boxy, glass office buildings, and definitely no queues of traffic fighting to get into Mountain View every day. Instead, orchards stretched as far as the eye could see. Prunes were one of the main crops. Pretty street names like Peachtree Lane, Walnut Grove and Cherrystone Avenue reflect this agricultural history today.
These days I’m not so quick to laugh. I understand the need for belonging and making sense of who you are. Ironically, leaving Scotland made me much more interested in where I’m from. Far more than I ever was when I lived there.
Long before the fruit orchards, Indigenous tribes lived in harmony with the land. Then Spanish colonisation came to the west coast in 1769. The California mission system grabbed my attention. They were a string of twenty-one religious outposts scattered between San Diego and Sonoma, aimed at Christianising these tribes. Not too long ago, local schools taught how the tribes and the priests and monks of the missions got on peacefully.
The reality was very different. Thousands in the Santa Clara mission alone died from disease and cruel treatment. They were imprisoned, tortured, used for hard labour, and now rest in a mass grave next to the church.
Generations were lost, as was their way of life. Some converted tribal members did survive the mission era. Their descendants live in the area today, raising awareness about the barbarous treatment of their ancestors, and striving to pass on what they have left of their languages, customs, and traditions. Artefacts like beads and bones are still being unearthed near the former mission.
READ MORE FROM KERRY'S ACROSS THE POND SERIES
Other obsessions are closer to home. Often I think about the Highlands of the old days, and what it was like to live then. I dug deep into the Clearances, and especially where those displaced people went. Then there’s the Kinlochewe and Gairloch area, where my dad was from. I delved into my family and local history. I found new MacIver and MacKenzie relatives, and met them the last time I was home. On the same trip, I stood in front of old family graves contemplating our connection. More relatives popped up on ancestry.com. A MacIver relative in Pennsylvania filled in the blanks, sharing stories and photos of family I’ve never seen before. It turns out our common ancestor is Hector MacIver, famed by his finding the Poolewe Hoard.
Maybe I’m starting to sound all American with all this talk about my ancestors and being gripped by the past. I used to giggle when someone came up to me and told me in a broad Texan accent how they were Scottish too, even though it was Great-Great-Grandad who was born in Scotland.
But these days I’m not so quick to laugh. I understand the need for belonging and making sense of who you are. Ironically, leaving Scotland made me much more interested in where I’m from. Far more than I ever was when I lived there. When I moved away, every single little thing was unfamiliar. In that situation, the only thing you know is yourself and your history. There’s the need to know more and more. Maybe it fulfils some basic longing to know who you are and where you stand. If anything, it grounds you, no matter where in the world you are.
Kerry MacIver originally hails from the Black Isle and now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. She writes about being a Scot in the USA.
