Joseph Brant
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Image:Joseph Brant painting by George Romney 1776.jpg
Thayendanegea or Joseph Brant (sometimes spelled Brandt or Brand) (c. 1742 – 24 November 1807) was a Mohawk leader and British military officer during the American Revolutionary War. Brant was perhaps the most well-known North American Indian of his generation. He met many of the most significant people of the age, including George Washington and King George III. The American folk image emphasized the atrocities his forces committed against settlers on the western frontier.
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Early years
Brant was born of undistinguished parents in the Ohio Country on the banks of the Cuyahoga River, near present-day Akron, Ohio, and was named Thayendanegea. His father died while Brant was an infant, and his mother (Margaret, or Owandah) took Joseph and his older sister Mary (known as Molly) to Canajoharie, on the Mohawk River in east-central New York, where she had lived before her family moved to the Ohio River. There, his mother remarried a widower named Brant Canagaraduncka, who was a sachem of the tribe. While this bettered his mother’s fortunes, it conferred little status on her children, as Mohawk titles descended through the female line. However, Brant’s stepfather was also a friend of William Johnson, who was to become General Sir William Johnson, superintendent for Indian Affairs. Johnson married Joseph’s sister, Molly, and arranged for Joseph to be educated at Eleazar Wheelock’s Moor's Indian Charity School in Connecticut, where he studied under the guidance of the Reverend Mr. Eleazar Wheelock
Starting at about age 15, Brant took part in a number of French and Indian War expeditions, including James Abercrombie’s 1758 invasion of Canada via Lake George, William Johnson's 1759 expedition against Fort Niagara, and Jeffery Amherst's 1760 siege of Montreal via the St. Lawrence River. He also acted as interpreter for an Anglican missionary named John Stuart, with whom he translated the Gospel of Mark into the Mohawk language. He became a lifelong supporter of Christianity, and would build the first Anglican church in Ontario.
Image:Joseph Brant by Gilbert Stuart 1786.jpg
American Revolution
The new British suprintendent of Indian affairs, Guy Johnson, took Brant to London in 1775-76, where he became a celebrity. Brant returned in 1776 and made his way in disguise to the Mohawk lands in western new York, but he discovered his close association with Johnson made him suspect to the British commander. He raised about 300 Indian warriors and 100 white loyalists, after the failure of the Burgoyne campaign, led them in a series of raids on American settlements in New York and Pennsylvania in 1777-1778. Brant was made a captain in the British army. George Washington sent an army to reconquer new York in 1779. In July 1779, Brant defeated a patriot force at at Minisink, New York. He was defeated by General John Sullivan on August 29, 1779 in the Battle of Newtown, as the Americans swept away all Indian resistance in New York, burned their villages, and forced the Indians permanently into Canada. Brant broke with Guy Johnson and in 1781 moved west to Ohio where he joined with Simon Girty to lead a large war raid by Tories and western Indians on American boats using the Ohio River. {See for example[1]}. In 1781-82 he was a diplomat trying to keep the disaffected western tribes loyal to the Crown in the aftermath of the British surrender at Yorktown.
Brant became infamous for the Wyoming Valley "massacre", which it was widely believed he led, although he was not present at the battle. During the war, he was known as the Monster Brant and stories of his massacres and atrocities created a hatred of Indians that soured relations for 50 years. In later years historians have argued that he actually been a force for restraint in the violence that characterized many of the actions in which he was involved.
In negotiating the Paris peace treaty that ended the war, Britain ignored the needs of its Six Nations allies, and ceded Indian territory to the United States. At Brant's urging, British General Sir Frederick Haldimand arranged for a grant of land for a Mohawk reservation on the Grand River in Ontario (see Six Nations of the Grand River). For the next twenty years, Brant would act as a tireless negotiator for the Six Nations, playing on British fears of Indian alliances with the Americans and/or the French, to preserve the Grand River land from encroachment by whites in and out of the Canadian government.
After the American Revolution, Brant also worked to bring about a confederation of the Six Nations with the tribes of the western United States, in order to resist U.S. expansion into the Northwest Territory. His attempt to create pan-tribal unity proved unsuccessful, though his efforts would be taken up a generation later by the Shawnee leader Tecumseh. When the resistance in the Northwest became full-scale warfare (the Northwest Indian War), Brant was asked to negotiate a settlement by the administration of U.S. President George Washington. Brant was unable to arrange a truce, and the war continued, ending with the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794.
Later years and legacy
In all of his efforts, he was hindered by his lowly birth: he could never be a true sachem, one of the hereditary Iroquois office holders. However, his natural ability, his early education, and the connections he was able to form made him one of the great leaders of his people. In 1780, he married Catharine Adonwentishon Croghan (his previous two wives having died), the daughter of the prominent American colonist, Indian agent, fur trader, and New York-Ohio landowner/speculator George Croghan and a Mohawk mother. Catherine's birthright was to name the Tekarihoga, the principal sachem of the Mohawk nation. She named her brother, Henry; through Henry and Catherine, Joseph was able to wield considerable power. Elizabeth, a daugther of his 3rd marriage, was married to William Johnson Kerr grandson of Sir William Johnson and Molly Brant [2]
He died in his house at the head of Lake Ontario (site of what would become the city of Burlington, Ontario) on November 24, 1807. The house was owned by descendants until the late 19th century, and is now the Joseph Brant Museum. In 1850, his remains were carried 34 miles (55 km) in relays on the shoulders of young men of Grand River to a tomb at Her Majesty's Chapel of the Mohawks in Brantford. The City of Brantford and the County of Brant, Ontario, located on part of his land grant, is named for him. A statue of Brant, located in Victoria Square, Brantford, was dedicated in 1886.
Alternate spellings
Brant signed his name in various ways, including:
- Thayendanegea
- Joseph Thayendanegea
- Joseph Brant
- Jos. Brant
References
- Abler, Thomas S. "Joseph Brant" in John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes, eds., American National Biography. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. ISBN 0195206355.
- Harvey Chalmers and E. B. Monture, Joseph Brant: Mohawk Michigan State University Press, (1955)
- James O'Donnell, "Joseph Brant" in R. David Edmunds; ed, American Indian Leaders: Studies in Diversity. University of Nebraska Press 1980. pp 21-40
- Graymont, Barbara. "Joseph Brant" Dictionary of Canadian Biography (2000) online version
- Kelsay, Isabel Thompson. Joseph Brant, 1743–1807, Man of Two Worlds. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 1984. ISBN 0815601824 (hardback); ISBN 0815602081 (1986 paperback).
- Williams, Glenn F. Year of the Hangman: George Washington's Campaign Against the Iroquois. Yardley: Westholme Publishing, 2005. ISBN 1594160139.
External links
- Joseph Brant (Thayendanegea), Mohawk, by Tom Penick or
- Portraits of Joseph Brant (Thayendanegea), Mohawk
- Joseph Brant: The Demise of the Iroquois League
- Brant's 1777 and 1778 letter to Percifer Carr
- Biography at the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online
- "The Myth of the Loyalist Iroquois", argues that it is misleading to describe Brant and other Iroquois leaders as "Loyalists" in the American Revolution
