The first documented source of Scots in the new world comes from the Saga of Eric the Red and the Viking expedition to Vinland, modern Newfoundland in 1010AD. Viking prince Thorfinn Karlsefni led an expedition to Vinland (the land of wine) and took with him 160 Viking men, three ships, and two Scottish slaves, a man named Haki and a woman named Hekja, who were reputed to be as swift or faster than a deer at running. When the long boats moored along the coast, they sent the slaves ashore to run along the waterfront to gauge whether it was safe for the rest of the crew to follow. After the Scots survived a day of baiting for potential foes (native or animal), the Vikings deemed it safe to spend the night ashore. The expedition was abandoned three years later; the original sagas were passed on in an oral tradition and then written down 250 years later. The sagas demonstrate how daring and pioneering Viking culture was at the turn of the first millennium and are open to considerable breadth of interpretation.
An apocryphal voyage in 1398 by a captain named Zichmni, believed to be Henry I Sinclair, Earl of Orkney, who was of joint Norse-Scottish title and family, is also claimed to have reached Atlantic Canada as well as New England.
The first attempts in earnest to entice Scottish settlers to Canada began as early as 1622, when Sir William Alexander obtained permission from King James VI of Scotland (James I of England) to establish new Scotland or Nova Scotia. Only a small number of Scottish families settled in Canada, however, prior to the conquest of New France in 1759. Those who did make a home on Canadian soil were Highlanders who sought political and religious asylum following the failed Jacobite uprisings in Scotland in 1715 and 1745.
Those immigrants who arrived after 1759 were mainly Highland farmers who had been forced off their rented land or "crofts" due to the Highland Clearances (Scottish Gaelic: Fuadaich nan Gàidheal) to make way for sheep grazing. Most of these Scots settled in what is now the Atlantic coast. A large groups of Ulster Scots, many of whom had first settled in New Hampshire, moved to Truro, Nova Scotia, in 1761. Their descendants have provided many of the country's leading justices, statesmen, clergymen, businessmen and scholars. In 1772 a wave of Scots began to arrive in Prince Edward Island. In 1773 the little brig Hector brought 200 Scots to Pictou, starting a new stream of Highland emigration. To this day the town's slogan is "The Birthplace of New Scotland". At the end of the 18th century Cape Breton Island became a centre of Scottish settlement where only Scottish Gaelic was spoken.
Some info about the early wars.
The northern English colonies increased the competitive pressure on New France for control of the fur trade and other commerce on the Great Lakes and along the upper Mississippi valley. In response, the French built new forts on the Great Lakes and hastened their plans to settle the Mississippi River valley and "Louisiana." With the outbreak of war in Europe between France and England in 1689, the competition in North America escalated into a subsidiary war.* Although the English colonial population far surpassed the French in North America—250,000 to 12,000 in 1682—the competitive edge lay not with numbers but with alliances, strategy, and execution. After eight years of attacks and counterattacks, however, the French and English negotiated a fragile peace in 1697, neither side the victor.
The strategic center of the war was Albany, New York, situated 150 miles due north of Manhattan and 225 miles due south of Montreal, the fur trading center of New France. This north-south line along the Hudson River marked the boundary at the time between the New England colonies and Iroquois territory to the west. "
Albany's fur trade competition," writes historian Alan Taylor, "
merged into both the imperial rivalry between England and France for commercial dominance and the Iroquois' struggle to maintain their edge in a violent and disrupted world of native peoples" For the Indians are the third major party in this war. The Iroquois allied with the English and the Algonquian with the French, all anxiously aware that their fates had become inextricably linked.
French-English in Northeast, American Beginnings: 1492-1690, Primary Resources in U.S. History and Literature, Toolbox Library, National Humanities Center