Sir Alexander Cuming, 2nd Baronet (1691–1775) was a Scottish adventurer to North America; he returned to Britain with a delegation of Cherokee chiefs. He later spent many years in a debtors' prison. Early life Cuming was born (according to his manuscript autobiography) in Edinburgh on 18 December 1691. He was the only son of Sir Alexander Cuming, M.P. (c.1670–1725), the first baronet of Culter, Aberdeenshire, by his first wife, Elizabeth; she was the second daughter of the second wife of Sir Alexander Swinton, a Scottish judge. (He had several sisters and a half-brother, James Cuming of Breda, by his father's second wife) In 1714 he was called to the Scottish bar, and also held a captain's commission in the Russian army. From his manuscripts, it seems that Cuming was induced to quit the legal profession by a pension of £300 a year being granted to him by the government at Christmas 1718, and that it was discontinued at Christmas 1721 at the instance, he suggests, of Sir Robert Walpole, who bore a grudge against his father for opposing him in parliament. It is more probable that he was found to be of a too flighty disposition to fulfil the services expected of him. Voyage to America; the Cherokee delegation In 1729 Cuming was led, supposedly by a dream of his wife's, to undertake a voyage to America, with the object of visiting the Cherokee mountains on the borders of South Carolina and Virginia. Leaving England on 13 September, he arrived at Charlestown on 5 December, and on 11 March following he began his journey to the Cherokee Indian country. It was on 3 April 1730 that "by the unanimous consent of the people he was made lawgiver, commander, leader, and chief of the Cherokee nation, and witness of the power of God, at a general meeting at Nequisee, in the Cherokee mountains". Extracts from his journal, giving an account of his transactions with the Indians and his explorations in the Cherokee mountains, were published in the London Daily Journal of 8 October 1730. He returned to Charlestown on 13 April 1730, accompanied by seven chiefs of the Cherokee nation, including Attakullakulla. They sailed with him to England, and on 5 June arrived at Dover in the man-of-war Fox. On 18 June he was allowed to present the chiefs to George II in the royal chapel at Windsor. Four days later