‘And if hostile Lakotas were on the rampage on Duke Street, marauding Apaches were giein’ it laldie in the Cowcaddens...’ The Diamond’s Ace - Scotland and the Native Americans Non Fiction Mainstream Publishing (Edinburgh) Ltd ISBN 1 84018 299 7 Price: £9.99 The Diamond’s Ace sold upwards of five hundred copies but failed to meet expectations, in part because it was effectively destroyed by a prodigiously incompetent text editor. It is now mercifully out of print. I don’t even have a personal copy. To confess a failing of my own, there were several important stories which I completely missed, prominent among them the story of Samson Occom, the Mohegan who was ordained as a Presbyterian minister; Tobias Shattock, a Rhode Island Narragansett who lies buried in the churchyard of Greyfriars, Edinburgh; ‘Bright Eyes’, the daughter of an Omaha chief, who memorably sojourned in Kilwinning and the Iroquois party who put the ‘Lacrosse’ in Lacrosse Terrace, Glasgow. I have continued to gather new material, an outline of which is included on this site, with a view to eventually producing a corrected, expanded and updated edition, to be published by someone other than Mainstream. In the meantime, please note that as regards the material on Buffalo Bill’s 1891-92 and 1904 seasons, The Diamond’s Ace has now been superceded by my more recent book, ‘Your Fathers the Ghosts’ - Buffalo Bill’s Wild West in Scotland Here’s what I had to say about my first book, all those years ago: It was eighteen months in the making but The Diamond’s Ace was finally published in the UK on 19th April 2001. The official publication date in North America was 15th January 2002. This book contains a comprehensive review of the many and complex interactions between Scotland and the ostensibly disconnected world of the American Indians, ever since 1492 and possibly even before. It takes as its jumping-off point an eye-witness view of the recent Glasgow ghost shirt saga. The principal emphasis lies upon Native American visitors to Scotland, particularly the Lakota Indians with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show who sojourned in Glasgow for several months during 1891-92 and toured the towns and cities of Scotland in 1904. The first of these stories is approached from the perspective of the historical anomaly of a substantial and semi-permanent Native American presence in the East End of Glasgow. Other stranger-than-fiction scenarios explored are the story of the Ioway and Ojibbeway Indians who toured with George Catlin’s exhibition during the 1840s and an account of the Scottish venues on Archie ‘Grey Owl’ Belaney’s momentous lecture tours during the 1930s. This attractive paperback volume presents, for the first time, the strange and compelling story of the Indian trails of Scotland. A broad selection of (fifteen) b & w photographs and illustrations is included.

The Diamond’s Ace - Scotland and the Native Americans