A brief history of the Outer Hebrides
While the Standing Stones dotted around the islands tell of habitation some 5,000 years ago, we can know little about those people except that they must have been skilled sailors. And while today we see a mainly treeless landscape, in those days the land was forested as there is evidence of tree stumps embedded in the peat. According to Donald MacDonald, tradition blames the marauding Norse in the 800's for destroying the forests as part of their scorched earth policy to harass the native population. But the real enemy of the forests was the peat which gradually formed as the climate warmed.
The Vikings found ownership of the islands troublesome. The Viking King would assign a loyal supporter to rule there in his absence. These officials wanted to keep the wealth that the islands generated for themselves and so their allegiance to the King wore thin. Thus in 1266 the Western Isles were ceded to Scotland by the Treaty of Perth and it was administered by the Lord of the Isles. The Norse though have left their mark in the fair hair and blue eyes of many Lewis people.
This period of history must have been glorious for the rulers, for the discovery of the 12th century Scandinavian Lewis Chessmen (on display in the Stornoway Museum) shows the craftsmanship of the period and the wealth of the region.
The Lords of the Isles also caused problems for the Scots King and so in 1494 the Scots King took full control. However, the Scots Kings were unable to administer the islands effectively and inter-clan warfare began. This inter-clan fighting continued for centuries and family feuds made things even worse. The main causes were disputes over land and cattle. When looking at ruins near Trinity Temple in North Uist, we found signs noting the site of the Battle of Caranish in 1601 (the fields of blood). This was the result of a feud between Clan MacLeod of Dunvegan and the Clan MacDonald of Sleat.
This monument in Barvas, Lewis, marks the site of the last Lewis clan battle in 1654. The battle took place between the Morrisons of Ness and the MacAulays of Uig. The MacAulays had been caught raiding the Morrison's cattle. On the top of the monument is a metal Highland Targe (shield) and a Broadsword. While we were at this rather desolate place, we met a descendent of the Morrisons, now living in Las Vegas, who was travelling around Lewis to see where his ancestors had come from.
In Harris in the early 1700's, few houses existed in Tarbert and Leverburgh and the rugged east coast of the Bays was practically deserted. The population of Harris was concentrated on the west machair shore, the off-shore islands, and few sheltered spots among the hill of North Harris, and around the religious centre of Rodel. The islands of Pabbay, Berneray and Taransay were the most fertile, so these locations were much favoured. Rodel (below right) is different from the rest of Harris in that it has soil, not the thin sand of the machair nor the peat moss and rock of the Bays (below left).
In 1779 Harris was sold to Captain Alexander MacLeod of Berneray. He attempted to establish a full-scale fishing industry up and down the Bays, but this stopped on his death. This is an oft repeated story of one person trying to make more from the islands but getting only a half-hearted support from the locals. So when this one person passed away, no-one continued with what had been started.
During the French Wars (1792-1802), the Bays and Islands of Harris and Lewis turned to the manufacture of minerals from kelp and more people moved to the barren shores of the Bays.
The kelp cast ashore by the Atlantic storms was gathered and burned, instead of being used to fertilise the land and feed the livestock. The kelp industry lasted from 1760 to 1836. It was not a popular job, being smelly and arduous work. When the Napoleonic Wars ended, the continental market opened up again and the kelp industries of Harris and Lewis died, leaving many destitute with only the poorest land to survive on.
Lewis had been owned by the Mackenzie's from 1610 to 1844 when they sold it to the Hong Kong merchant James Matheson for £190,000. He was then less interested in fishing and more interested in land development. He built a 'castle' in 1847 in Stornoway and thus deprived locals of winter pasture for their animals. Unfortunately for him the years1846 - 1850 were years of the great potato famine that affected both Ireland and the Hebrides, so Matheson was going to have a hard time trying to reform the practices of a people concerned only with avoiding starvation!
In 1851 the herring industry came to the rescue of the impoverished inhabitants, as recognised by the Herring Girl statue in Stornoway harbour. (And yes, it looks more like a Herring Man! There must be a typo involved somewhere.) Many fishermen and girls would travel vast distances to work up and down the east coast of Scotland following the herring shoals. But this boom for the islanders did not last forever.
In 1918, Lord Leverhulme purchased Lewis from Lieutenant-Colonel Duncan Matheson. He tried but then gave up trying to promote fishing as a business in Lewis and turned his attention to Harris (he owned both islands). He made An t-Ob (Leverburgh) the centre of Harris's commercial fishing industry, which apparently worked for a couple of years (1924 and 1925), but when the accountants examined the books after his death, they realised the futility of the operation and sold everything for scrap.
The most significant event in the history of these islands must be the CLEARANCES, when sheep farming took precedence over human welfare and thousands emigrated to distant shores. The relationship between land owners and their tenants makes for a depressing read, and some of this is also touched upon in the section on Survival.
The principle problem was always about land ownership. Some owners were considered, on the whole, benevolent, such as James Matheson who was knighted after investing thousands of pounds of his own fortune in assorted well-intentioned schemes from 1844 to 1918. Lord Seaforth in the late 1700's had also tried to improve the conditions of his tenants. But most landlords seemed to have little interest in their property other than to maximise income at any cost to their tenants. Most of the landlords in the Highlands and Islands left the management of the estates to factors. These were the "tacksmen" who then let most of the land to subtenants and lived on the proceeds of their labours doing practically no work on the land themselves. It was these subtenants who eventually became the crofter class, and it was the tacksmen who 'cleared' the land of crofters to make way for more profitable sheep.
In the 1820's, the clearances led to hundreds of families emigrating to Cape Breton, Canada. However, in the 1840's the potato blight also affected Cape Breton! The islanders then chose to head off to Australia, helped by the Highlands & Islands Emigration Society. Back in the Hebrides, James Matheson provided work and subsided oatmeal for the crofters but ultimately he expected this benevolence to be repaid through the payment of the delayed rents.
The most notorious factor was Donald Munro who was brought in by James Matheson in 1853. He managed to seize practically every official civic and legal post in Lewis, and thus his word was law! He brought terror to the inhabitants of Lewis, producing a huge long list of rules for tenants, most of which the uneducated tenants could not read as they were written in English. Any failure to follow these rules meant instant eviction. Worse still, Munro would burn the crofter's house which could not be rebuilt elsewhere because of the lack of timber for the roofs. So when they could, the evicted took their roof timbers with them. Generally it was only the blacksmiths who survived the clearances as they were considered necessary for the running of the new sheep farms.
The tacksmen considered the crofters to be an inferior race and exploited them to death. For example, they gained extra income by 'taxing' the grinding of grain. At one time each village had its own mill powered by a stream, such as this one in Lewis (the Norse Mill).
But the crofters were now obliged to use only the tackman's mill, at a fee, and all the villager's querning stones were thrown into the lochs! This system of servitude was called thirlage and the payments were mill dues or multures. If the tenant did not bring his own grain to the mill he was thirled to, and had to pay 'dry' multure, in money or in kind. Bear in mind that many tenants lived miles away from their assigned mill and it could take several days to travel the roadless miles and thus several days of lost labour on their crofts. So, if they could, they ground their grain at home on carefully hidden querns. Of course making your own querning stone was an achievement in itself as the gneiss rock is some of the hardest rock known to man!
Following crofter agitation about excessively high rents, lack of security of tenure, and deprivation of rights of access to land, an investigation was held to hear the stories of all those involved. Many of these stories are reported verbatim in Donald MacDonald's book on Lewis and make for interesting reading. The Highlands & Islands Commission (the Napier Commission) visited Lewis in 1883 to inquire into the distressing conditions then prevailing. In 1885, the Crofters (Scotland) Small Holdings Act was passed giving crofters their long sought for security from eviction and fair rents. But only if the holdings fell above the £6-a-year rental value threshold, if not the Napier Commission recommended voluntary assisted emigration.
Eventually even the sheep farms began to fail in the face of competition from Australia, and all the northern part of the machair and the hills behind it in Harris became deer forest. So while the crofters had gained some security and could look to the future of improving their land, they still had the problem of having been moved to the worst land on the islands. All the best arable land had been turned over to sheep farms and deer forests, and all this led to the Raiders as memorialised in this monument at Gress on the east coast of Lewis.
In 1919 the rural communities were at the centre of a struggle for the rights of the crofters against the power of the landowners. The Government had promised the islanders land when they returned from fighting in World War 1, and had already agreed plans for dividing up the land for crofts. But in 1918, Lord Leverhulme purchased Lewis and Harris and prevented the Government's plans saying he wanted to initiate his own schemes to improve the livelihood of the islanders. He wanted every family to be earning money, but the families wanted land not jobs. He spent a fortune building houses and starting the Tolsta-Ness road linking the northern route around Lewis. Presumably the Government had given way because they would rather he spent the money on the islands than the Government.
The Raiders got their name by raiding the deer farms and seizing back crofting territory that had belonged to their ancestors before eviction during the Highland Clearances. This was to the frustration of the Government who wanted some peaceful arrangement between Lord Leverhulme and the islanders. But the relationship between Lord Leverhulme and the Secretary for Scotland was strained and in 1923 Lord Leverhulme gave Lewis to the people in frustration and turned his attention to Harris.
Lord Leverhulme had spent far more on Lewis than the Scottish Government but he simply could not accept the Lewis man's desire for the security of a croft rather than Leverhulme's, granted rather precarious, employment. It is a familiar story of outsiders thinking they know what's best for 'the ignorant natives' but the flipside was the stunting of any progress in the development of improved agricultural techniques which could have enhanced the lives of the crofters who preferred to stay on their land.
