are regarded by demographers as massive under-counts, because Scottish ancestry is known to be disproportionately under-reported among the majority of mixed ancestry, and because areas where people reported "American" ancestry were the places where, historically, Scottish and Scotch-Irish Protestants settled in North America (that is: along the North American coast, Appalachia, and the Southeastern United States). Scottish Americans descended from nineteenth-century Scottish emigrants tend to be concentrated in the West, while many in New England are the descendants of emigrants, often Gaelic-speaking, from the Maritime Provinces of Canada, from the 1880s onward. Americans of Scottish descent outnumber the population of Scotland, where 4,459,071 or 88.09% of people identified as ethnic Scottish in the 2001 Census. Scottish origins by state The states with the largest populations of either Scottish or Scotch Irish ancestral origin: California - 677,055 (1.7% of state population) Texas - 628,610 (2.8%) North Carolina - 475,322 (4.5%) Florida - 469,782 (2.3%) Pennsylvania - 325,588 (2.5%) Ohio - 314,214 (2.7%) Georgia - 293,211 (2.8%) Washington - 289,953 (3.0%) The states with the top percentages of Scottish or Scotch-Irish residents: Maine (6.0% of state population) Vermont (5.5%) New Hampshire (5.3%) Utah (5.0%) Wyoming and North Carolina (4.5% each) South Carolina (4.4%) Idaho and Tennessee (4.2% each) Oregon (4.0%) The metropolitan and micropolitan areas with the top percentage of Scottish or Scotch-Irish residents: Boone, NC (9.1% of micropolitan area population) Barre, VT and Sevierville, TN (8.3% each) Asheville, NC (8.1%) Marion, NC and Pinehurst-Southern Pines, NC (7.7% each) Jackson, WY and Lebanon, NH (7.0%) Cullowhee, NC (6.8%) Craig, CO (6.5% each) Morehead City, NC, Morristown, TN and Sandpoint, ID (6.4% each) 2020 population of Scottish ancestry by state As of 2020, the distribution of Scottish Americans across the 50 states and DC is as presented in the following table: Historical contributions Explorers The first Scots in North America came with the Vikings. A Christian bard from the Hebrides accompanied Bjarni Herjolfsson on his voyage around Greenland in 985/6 which sighted the mainland to the west. The first Scots recorded as having set foot in the New World were a man named Haki and a woman named Hekja, slaves owned by Leif Eiriksson. The Scottish couple were runners who scouted for Thorfinn Karlsefni's expedition in c. 1010, gathering wheat and the grapes for which Vinland was named. The controversial Zeno letters have been cited in support of a claim that Henry Sinclair,