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I have heard this discussion also, of a walking gait giving a visual clue to those of Indian ancestry observing someone. Then again, it could be that an individual is a trained outdoorsman (hunter,Navy SEAL,Ranger..etc) in the art of silent walking in the woods (tropical or otherwise).

For a little humor...as I read your post, I recalled Mark Twain's devastating analysis of James Fenimore Cooper's writing style (he being the writer of Last of the Mohicans, etc.) and a hilarious section about Indian walking that Cooper repeatedly abused:

"In his little box of stage-properties he kept six or eight cunning devices, tricks, artifices for his savages and woodsmen to deceive and circumvent each other with, and he was never so happy as when he was working these innocent things and seeing them go. A favorite one was to make a moccasined person tread in the tracks of a moccasined enemy, and thus hide his own trail. Cooper wore out barrels and barrels of moccasins in working that trick.

Another stage-property that he pulled out of his box pretty frequently was the broken twig. He prized his broken twig above all the rest of his effects, and worked it the hardest. It is a restful chapter in any book of his when somebody doesn’t step on a dry twig and alarm all the reds and whites for two hundred yards around. Every time a Cooper person is in peril and absolute silence is worth four dollars a minute, he is sure to step on a dry twig. There may be a hundred other handier things to step on, but that wouldn’t satisfy Cooper. Cooper requires him to turn out and find a dry twig; and if he can’t do it, go and borrow one. In fact, the Leatherstocking Series ought to have been called the Broken Twig Series."

Elizabeth Warren and obama may be descended from Cooper!! LOL!

http://www.bewilderingstories.com/issue345/mark_twain.html

Funny stuff. Am close to half Scottish myself, and the Indians who were giving me weird looks were in a reservation store. My friend who was driving stopped there (East of Las Vegas) to get some fireworks. Could care less for the fireworks myself. Picked up a bottle of Johnnie Walker Green Label Scotch. Was walking it to the counter, when I noticed the weird stares from the Indians. The older Indian said, that is good stuff. I replied. Too good.