History
South Uist was clearly home to a thriving Neolithic community. The island is covered in archaeological sites including chambered tombs, Beaker sites, a Bronze Age hoard, roundhouses, brochs, cairns, ogham inscriptions, Viking settlements, medieval longhouses and post-medieval industry. After the Norse occupation, South Uist was held by the MacDonalds of Clanranald until 1838 when Colonel Gordon of Cluny bought the island and initiated Highland Clearances to make way for sheep farming, supplanting the crofters with farmers from the Borders, who brought Blackface sheep flocks. The population of South Uist fell from a total of 5093 in 1841 to its present level of 2285. As a result there was large scale emigration from the island.
Lochboisdale became a major herring port later in the nineteenth century. The island is one of the last surviving strongholds of the Gaelic language in Scotland and the crofting industries of peat cutting and seaweed gathering are still an important part of everyday life.
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“The principal office of history I take to be this: to prevent virtuous actions from being forgotten, and that evil words and deeds should fear an infamous reputation with posterity.”
—Tacitus (c. 55–c. 120)
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—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“When the coherence of the parts of a stone, or even that composition of parts which renders it extended; when these familiar objects, I say, are so inexplicable, and contain circumstances so repugnant and contradictory; with what assurance can we decide concerning the origin of worlds, or trace their history from eternity to eternity?”
—David Hume (1711–1776)