Peter Williamson (memoirist)

Born in a croft in Aberdeenshire, he was forcibly taken to North America at an early age, but succeeded in returning to Scotland where he eventually became a well-known character in 18th century Edinburgh.

Williamson said Wilson treated him kindly, and when the latter died in 1750, just before the end of the indenture, he bequeathed the boy £120 plus his best horse and saddle and all his clothes.

At the age of 24, Williamson married the daughter of a wealthy plantation owner and was given a dowry of 200 acres of land close to the frontier of Pennsylvania, where he settled down to live as a farmer.

Arriving penniless in York his stories aroused the interest of some "honourable and influential men" who encouraged him to write about his exploits.

With their backing he published his account under the title French and Indian Cruelty, exemplified in the Life and various Vicissitudes of Fortune of Peter Williamson, who was carried off from Aberdeen in his Infancy and sold as a slave in Pennsylvania.

A thousand copies of the book were sold, earning Williamson a profit of £30, which allowed him to continue his journey to Scotland in comparative ease.

While he was selling copies of his book in Aberdeen, the authorities charged Williamson with libel in relation to his accusations of their involvement in his original kidnapping.

Williamson was made to sign a statement stating that his claims were false, fined five shillings and banished from Aberdeen as a vagrant.

[5] Robert Fergusson devoted a verse of his poem The Rising of the Session to this popular establishment: This vacance [vacation] is a heavy doom On Indian Peter's coffee-room For a' his china pigs are toom [bottles are empty] Nor do we see In wine the soukar biskets soom [sugar biscuits swim] As light's a flee[6] Having read his book, some of the lawyers encouraged him to sue the Aberdeen magistrates.

Emboldened by this success, Williamson decided further to sue Bailie William Fordyce and others, who he believed were personally responsible for his kidnapping.

In 1769 Williamson opened a printing shop in the Luckenbooths between St Giles High Kirk and the north side of the Royal Mile.

The National Portrait Gallery in London has a print which appeared in The Grand Magazine in June 1759 showing Williamson in full "Delaware Indian" dress with tomahawk and scalping knife.

The caricaturist John Kay drew him in Indian costume some time around 1768 and this drawing appeared in the preface of later editions of Williamson's autobiography.

This is evidenced in his Edinburgh Directory of that year, where he draws the public's attention to the fact that "the publisher" (i.e. himself) is willing to dispatch letters and packages up to 3 pounds in weight to any place within one mile of the city's mercat cross, as well as to properties in North and South Leith.

"[13] Whilst Bennett's statement may be slightly harsh, recent scholarship speculate that large parts of Williamson's narrative are in fact a fabrication; including possibly his marriage, his age at the time of his first kidnapping from Aberdeen, and most significantly his capture by Native Americans.

Whilst Williamson's tale is "not to be trusted as an account of Indian Captivity," it is an interesting example of the popular literature genre Timothy J. Shannon has called "narratives of unfortunates."

It is also a good example of anti-French propaganda during the Seven Years' War, and like Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, sheds light on the colonial construction and representation of native peoples.