James Adair (historian)

In the 1740s, he led a British trade mission to the Eastern Choctaw tribe at the height of King George's War in an effort to win this nation over from French influence.

[1] Adair went forward under the direction of South Carolina Governor James Glen but then vehemently blamed him for the mission's failure and the loss of his personal fortune.

He mentions a string of disadvantages under which he laboured, notably the jealousy, secrecy, and closeness of the natives, but he hoped to be able to correct the very superficial notions that prevailed as to their civilisation.

[2] The value of Adair's work as showing the relations between the natives and the English traders was recognised, and a German translation appeared at Breslau in 1782.

It must be admitted that a very disproportionate space is given to the hypothesis that the American natives are descended from the lost ten tribes of Israel.

Thomas Thorowgood, adopting an old idea of the Spanish Las Casas, had first maintained this theory in English in 1650 in his Jewes in America.

Among the points of similarity between the Jews and natives, Adair emphasised the division into tribes, worship of a great spirit, Jehovah, notions of a theocracy, of ablutions and uncleanness, cities of refuge, and practices as regards divorce and raising seed to a deceased brother.