Druim a' Chait. The Cat's Back. The Gaelic name fits the place: a long humped ridge southeast of Strathpeffer that runs across the country like a sleeping animal. In 1497 it became the killing ground for what the chroniclers called a sharp skirmish, and what the survivors no doubt called the day everything ended. Sir Alexander MacDonald of Lochalsh had come up from the west to claim - or to revenge - the earldom of Ross, four years after his cousin had been stripped of the Lordship of the Isles by a Scottish king who was finally tired of MacDonald pretensions. The Mackenzies were waiting for him on the ridge. By evening, in the words of the seventeenth-century chronicler Sir Robert Gordon, the islanders were put to the worst and chased out of Ross at that time. The Lordship of the Isles, as a real military power, did not quite die at Drumchatt. But it had begun the long process of dying.
In 1493 James IV of Scotland had finally done what his predecessors had only threatened. He revoked the Lordship of the Isles, stripped Sir John of Islay of the title, and brought the MacDonalds' sea-kingdom under the direct authority of the crown. The earldom of Ross had been gone since 1475. Many of the western clans - notably the MacLeods of Harris and Dunvegan - decided the MacDonalds were finished and dropped their allegiance. In 1495 James assembled his army at Glasgow, and on 18 May many of the highland chiefs came in to submit, including the chiefs of Clan Mackenzie and Clan Munro. That submission is the only good explanation anyone has ever offered for the unusual sight of Munros and Mackenzies fighting on the same side: they were rival clans, but they had both just sworn the same king's peace, and they had a shared interest in keeping MacDonald rebels out of the country.
Sir Alexander MacDonald of Lochalsh was the kind of figure for whom the word kinsman did a lot of work. He was a Clan Donald chief in his own right, and he was either chasing the lost earldom of Ross or settling a private score with the Mackenzies, who had beaten him before at the Battle of Blar Na Pairce. He chose his moment carefully. James IV was distracted in the south, supporting the pretender Perkin Warbeck and worrying about England. The young king's attention was anywhere but the Western Highlands. Lochalsh gathered the islanders and the men of Clan Donald and rode east into the fertile lands of Ross, intent on either restoring the old order or wrecking what had replaced it. He did not get far. The Mackenzies were already armed, and what the king's revocation of 1493 had begun, they meant to finish.
Whether the Munros were really there on Drumchatt that day is one of those Highland questions historians can't quite agree on. The early nineteenth-century historian Donald Gregory includes them firmly: "He was encountered by the Mackenzies and Munroes at a place called Drumchatt, where, after a sharp skirmish, he and his followers were again routed and driven out of Ross." Late nineteenth-century historian Alexander Mackenzie pointed out that the earliest source - Sir Robert Gordon, writing around 1625 - does not mention Munros at all, only Mackenzies and the Clan Donald. Either way the fight was sharp and decisive. Sir Robert's Scots prose preserves the shape of the day: "Thereafter, some of the islanders and the Clandonald met with Clankeinzie at a place in Ross called Drumchatt, where ensued a sharp skirmish; bot in the even the ilanders wer put to the worst, and chassed out of Rosse at that tyme."
Drumchatt itself is still there: a long whaleback ridge running east-west southeast of Strathpeffer, with the Peffery winding past its northern flank. The Mackenzies kept Ross. Sir Alexander of Lochalsh would not give up. In 1501 he tried again at Drumchatt and was routed again - a second Battle of Drumchatt, four years later, on the same ground. He was eventually murdered on the island of Oransay in 1499 by his own kinsman MacIain of Ardnamurchan, ending one of the more persistent Highland insurgencies of the fifteenth century. The Mackenzies, having backed the winning side, would dominate the region around Brahan and Strathpeffer for the next two centuries. The Lordship of the Isles, as a great independent western power, was over. What replaced it was a slower, sadder business of crown sheriffs, royal garrisons and clans turned against one another in the king's name.
The traditional site of Drumchatt is the ridge southeast of Strathpeffer, centred near 57.58°N, 4.52°W. The Peffery valley runs along its northern flank with the burgh of Dingwall about 4 miles to the east. Inverness Airport (EGPE) lies roughly 20 miles to the south. From the air the ridge is a clear east-west feature with Ben Wyvis (1,046 m) towering to the northwest. Recommended viewing altitude 3,000-4,500 ft AGL. The ground south of the ridge falls away towards the Beauly Firth. In poor weather Ben Wyvis often catches low cloud that drifts down into the Peffery valley.