Who has not heard of Tombstone or The Alamo, or the exploits of Daniel Boone, Wyatt Earp, Hopalong Cassidy or Davy Crockett...?

A voyage to the New World from the Old used to mean a long and often hazardous sea journey. On arrival, many immigrants were faced with further long treks westwards to unknown destinations, involving exhausting journeys, often fraught with dangers, on horseback, in wagons or on foot. Hope of a new, better life sustained many; a spirit of adventure drove others; the fatal attraction of land or gold inspired yet others. Their exploits mirrored the evolution of their adopted country.

Numerous descendants of the earliest Scots immigrants were to carry on this pioneering tradition, further contributing to the country's development and folklore. And as the entertainment "industry" from Buffalo Bill (who, to wild acclaim, in 1891 and again in 1904 took his show to Scotland) to Hollywood celebrated the derring-do of America's "Wild West", the adventures of some of Scotland's sons took on mythical proportions.

These immigrant Scots and later Americans of Scottish descent included the legendary buckskin-clad hunter, trapper and pioneer Daniel Boone, Sam Houston who, as a boy, ran away to live with the Cherokee, the larger than life nineteenth-century frontiersman, businessman and politician Davy Crockett, and also Captain Kidd, the notorious seventeenth-century pirate...

Daniel Boone was born in Pennsylvania in 1734 and later lived on the North Carolina frontier. An itinerant hunter and trapper, he ventured as far south as Florida. An early exploration of Kentucky led to his capture by Indians, but he managed to escape. Some four years later he settled in Kentucky with his family, founding Boonesboro which he successfully defended against the Indians. But Boone was again captured, and "adopted" by the Shawnee chief – which was clearly not entirely to his liking as once more he made his escape. Boonville in central Missouri is named after him and there are those who celebrate his birthday on 2nd November...

Born in Tennessee in 1786, David "Davy" Crockett was to become a fabled frontiersman with a reputation (possibly enhanced by his propensity for "tall" stories) for fighting Indians and killing fierce black bears – as well, of course, as raccoons which provided his distinctive headgear. He fought in the Creek War, was elected to the Tennessee state legislature and eventually to Congress which, perhaps unsurprisingly, he found "boring", later joining the American forces in Texas where he was killed at the Alamo.

Sam Houston was another fascinating character. As a teenager in the early nineteenth century, he ran away from his first job and lived with the Cherokee Indians for three years. Returning home, he taught briefly, served in the war of 1812 under Andrew Jackson, became a lawyer, was elected Democrat governor of Tennessee and married... however, when his wife left him after just three months, he resigned as governor and returned to be "adopted" as a member of the Cherokee nation. Thenceforth he actively championed its cause.

President Jackson then asked Houston to negotiate treaties with Indian tribes in Texas. Sam Houston later settled there, eventually becoming commander-in-chief of the Texan army during the war which gained Texas its independence from Mexico. Houston was subsequently elected president of the republic of Texas, a position he held for eight years and, when Texas joined the union in 1845, he was elected a US senator.

A Scottish American with even stronger Indian connections was Jesse Chisholm. Half-Cherokee and half-Scottish, he could speak six Indian languages. In his book The Mark of the Scots*, Duncan Bruce relates that Chisholm was both a spokesman for several Indian tribes in their dealings with the government and a pioneer of the Texas cattle industry. He is commemorated in the so-called "Chisholm Trail" for his role in driving thousands of head of cattle over the first 220 miles of the 1,000-mile route northwards to the railhead at Abilene, Kansas.

James Bowie was also to leave a name that has become well known to subsequent generations. Born in Kentucky in 1796, he left home aged eighteen to make money through land clearance and timber trading and, later, slave-trading, sugar-planting and grinding, and property speculation. Bowie was a hero of the Texas revolution of 1835-1836, also dying at the Alamo, and is reputed to have been the inventor of the Bowie hunting knife – a knife with an 18" blade and a curved tip.

Born in the same state in 1809, Christopher "Kit" Carson ran away from his first job as a saddler's apprentice at fifteen, and joined a caravan on the renowned Santa Fe Trail. He was to experience life as an explorer, hunter, frontiersman, Indian agent, army guide and scout, and soldier. Carson City, the capital city of Nevada, was named after him.

Samuel Colt, born in Connecticut in 1814, was the inventor who designed the revolver of the same name. In his teenage years Colt was yet another runaway, sailing off to India at the age of sixteen. It was during this trip that he modelled his first revolver – in wood. His earliest metal model was of poor design but later significant improvements led to a major government contract for the Mexican War. Colt was to make a fortune

Perhaps the most celebrated lawman in the West was Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp, born in Illinois in 1848 of Scottish descent. He was to be marshal of Dodge City for six years – quite long enough to establish his reputation. What is less well known is that for most of his life Earp earned his living as a gambler, buffalo hunter and stagecoach guard... Having survived the famous gunfight at OK Corral in Tombstone, the subject of many films, Earp lived on until 1929.

Two other prominent Scottish American "cowboys" should surely be mentioned here, even though their roles are only fictional. The first is Hopalong Cassidy, the earliest cowboy film and TV "star", noted for his trademark black clothes and big hat. He was played by William Boyd, a member of the Boyd Clan. The second is John Wayne, who was born Marion Morrison, a member of Clan Morrison. Clint Eastwood, meanwhile, is not, to our knowledge, a Scot... but surely he should be!

A later and "real" proponent of law and order was Glasgow-born Allan Pinkerton, the redoubtable US detective and founder of the Pinkerton Detective Agency. When he first arrived in the United States as a young man in 1842, Pinkerton worked as a cooper in Dundee, Illinois. By chance he then discovered and apprehended a gang of counterfeiters. This and other successes led to his appointment as deputy sheriff of Kane county – and subsequent rapid promotion. Pinkerton resigned in 1850 to found the Pinkerton Detective Agency which became famous for its many achievements in hunting down prominent criminals including Jesse James's gang and also, spectacularly, for thwarting one plot to assassinate President Lincoln. The US Bureau of Investigation, first created in 1908, later renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation, is said to be modelled on Pinkerton's agency.

The legacy left to America by Captain William Kidd, the seventeenth-century pirate from Greenock, Scotland was booty, according to legend. Kidd commenced his career conventionally enough as a privateer fighting the French in the West Indies and protecting the ships of the East India Company from pirates. However he and his men, many of whom were recruited in New York, eventually turned to piracy. Despite an appeal to the governor of New York following his arrest, Captain Kidd was sent back to Britain where he was tried, found guilty and hanged. Some of his treasure was recovered off Long Island but treasure hunters to this day believe that there is more buried somewhere on Charles Island off Milford, Connecticut...

Read part 2.