03/12/2022
Joseph Brant was born this month in 1742 to Mohawk parents living in the Ohio territory. Given the Mohawk name Thayendanegea, His father died while Joseph was an infant. In the mid-1750s his mother moved back to her home settlement of Canajoharie (near modern day Little Falls) and remarried. It was through his stepfather that Thayendanegea would become known as Joseph Brant.
When British Superintendent of Indian Affairs Sir William Johnson took Joseph’s older sister Molly as his common law wife, he also took Joseph under his wing. Brant accompanied Johnson during the failed British attack on French Fort Carillon (Ticonderoga) in 1758, and the successful British sieges of French Fort Niagara and Montreal in 1759 and 1760, respectively. Also, in 1760, Johnson sent Brant to be educated at Reverend Wheelock’s Indian school in Connecticut, where he became a classmate of the future Reverend Samuel Kirkland and tutored him in the Mohawk language. In 1763, Brant was forced to leave the school as the Mohawk elders wished to have him home.
Brant worked as a secretary and interpreter in the Indian department and with his strong ties to the Johnson family, he retained his loyalty to England with the coming of the American Revolution. A trip to England with new Indian Superintendent Guy Johnson in the winter of 1775-1776 further exposed him to England’s might and power. He became convinced that the wisest course for the Six Nations to pursue was to maintain British alliances. Brant participated in the battle of Long Island in 1776 and then returned overland to Six Nations territory to gather support for the British.
Brant’s efforts led him to gather a mixed group of Indians and Whites that has gone down in history as “Brant’s Volunteers.” Brant was never acknowledged by Six Nations leadership as an official War Captain, and in truth, it was the Whites among both the British and the Rebels that mistakenly gave him more prominence among the Six Nations during the war then what he actually had. Brant’s Volunteers would see their first major action as part of the British force besieging Fort Stanwix and at the Battle of Oriskany in August of 1777. It is generally believed that Brant’s force was responsible for destroying the Oneida Indian village of Oriska in retaliation for them having joined the Rebel militia.
On their own or as part of larger British forces, Brant’s Volunteers went on to participate in the raids on German Flatts (modern Herkimer, NY), Cobleskill and Cherry Valley in 1778, Minisink in 1779, the White settlement of Canajoharie and the large Mohawk-Schoharie Valley raid in 1780. Also, in 1780, Brant’s force destroyed the principle Oneida Indian villages.
The British demanded no concessions to their Indian allies during the peace negotiations with the Americans in 1783, giving all British claimed territory as far west as the Mississippi River to the United States. This move led Brant to bitterly comment that “England has sold the Indians to Congress.” Brant was at Fort Stanwix in September of 1784 to help frustrate New York State’s attempts to negotiate separate treaties with the Six Nations. He left before the discussions with federal representatives which led to the Treaty of Fort Stanwix in October, however. Brant represented the Six Nations in negotiations with the British government in Canada to obtain land in compensation for what they had lost during the war. This led to the Indians receiving a huge grant along the Grand River in the fall of 1784.
Brant would spend most of the rest of his life attempting to maintain total Indian sovereignty over their Grand River land and to forge a large confederacy composed of the Six Nations and other Indian nations that could take a stronger stand against White encroachment. His attempts only ever achieved limited success and he died in modern day Burlington, Ontario in 1807.
Image description: A tall man points into the distance. He wears plain clothes covered in a striking red, long blanket on his shoulders.
Short podcasts looking at little areas of local military history that had great impacts.
