Adair, James (c. 1709–c. 1783)

Irish trader and historian of the American Indians, who emigrated from County Antrim to South Carolina in 1735. His intensive dealings with the Cherokees, Chickasaws, and other American Indian tribes, among whom he lived for 40 years, formed the subject of his History of the American Indians (1755). Though his work, which includes the theory that American Indians came from ten lost tribes, was inaccurate and misleading, it remains a valuable source for the relations between American Indians and Southern colonists in the 18th century.