OK, you say, what’s Twatt about? Not much these days, since the so-called village called Twatt where we’re staying lost its shop church and post office a while ago, and never had enough to cohere in the first place. What remains are random farm buildings sprinkled across a hillside.
Eighty years ago, Twatt’s glory moment was when the Navy had an air station here, HMS Tern, to support nearby carrier operations. But by now that’s mostly dismantled and forgotten.
The big story concerns Magnus Twatt, an early adventurer to Canada. We forget now the audacity of the Hudson’s Bay Company, which in the 1700s colonised an area 15 times the size of Britain using only 500 men. And 400 of those came from Orkney, just the one being called Twatt.
In those pre-Victorian times, colonists were mainly practical traders. They collaborated with natives, rather than overseeing or subduing them. In due course, a good proportion of Hudson’s Bay men did not return, but married and settled down in Canada. Magnus was exemplary, first by learning some of the languages of the dozen nearby tribes, and then by assimilating into the Cree nation.
So it was that, by 1876, Magnus’ grandson William was titled Chief Twatt of the Cree tribe. In that capacity he negotiated what was perhaps the first treaty with the Crown that actually endured, to establish a reserve for the Cree people that would guarantee independent space resources and livelihood for their future. NB, this was the same year the Americans tried a different approach, and Colonel Custer’s men were massacred at Little Big Horn.
Mind you, the Crees didn’t get it all their own way. Twatt introduced them to the Scottish fiddle and dance routines, and they’ve been lumbered with that inheritance ever since.
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