Resonances of the so-called "Rob Roy" tartan?

[Benning Boy]

I wonder if the Rob Roy might have been woven for millinia. As I recall one or more of the Tarim Basin mummies was dressed in a yellow and black check "tartan." Red and black could have been done as easily, couldn't it?

In the US Rob Roy and Robin Hood are two variants of what we call Buffalo Check. Three other common variants are black and white, and brown and black and blue and black. Cabelas once sold brown on brown pattern shirts. I have a piece of brown on off yellow that I thought might make good autumn camouflage here as many of the native trees and shrubs here have yellow and brown leaves that time of year.

In my youth hunters nationwide wore Rob Roy -- red Buffalo Check -- coats and trousers for safety In the woods as red was considered a way of warning other hunters of one's presence. That was before blaze orange was universally mandated for hunter safety, and full camouflage was so heavily marketed it became de rigueur.

The history of Buffalo Check peeks my interest. I wonder where and how that name came into use. Does it have something to do with our bison, or buffalo, or might it have something to do with Buffalo, New York, a once prominent commercial city along the Erie Cannal. Or, is there another explanation. Is Buffalo Check a spontaneous American creation so simple anyone could have come up with It, or might it have been inspired by Rob Roy introduced by Scottish immigrants? It gets curiouser and curiouser.