Joseph Brant was a Mohawk chief and ally of the British during the American Revolution. He was instrumental in moving the Mohawks to Canada following the winning of American independence.
Background
Joseph was born in March 1743, in the Ohio Country. His father was a sachem of the Iroquois Confederacy, to which the Mohawks belonged; however, Brant's mother was not a Mohawk, and as descent in the tribe was matrilineal, he never rose to the rank of sachem, although he did become a war chief.
Education
Sir William Johnson, superintendent of Indian affairs, sent him to Moor's Indian Charity School at Lebanon, Connecticut, which later became a part of Dartmouth College. There he was educated and converted to the Church of England.
Career
In 1763 left the school to work as an interpreter for a missionary. Thereafter he was constantly caught between a desire to convert his tribe to white ways and to lead them in the war against the whites.
In 1764 Brant left the missionary, whom he had helped to translate religious tracts into the Mohawk language, to join the Iroquois contingent fighting under Chief Pontiac. Ten years later, when Guy Johnson, son-in-law of Sir William Johnson, became Indian superintendent, Brant became his secretary. At the outbreak of the American Revolution, Brant used his influence to persuade the Iroquois to join the British side and to discredit the Reverend Samuel Kirkland, a missionary who had succeeded in persuading the Oneida and Tuscarora (tribes in the Iroquois Confederacy) to join with the Americans.
Brant was war chief of the Mohawks when he met Sir Guy Carleton at a conference in Montreal. Brant has commissioned a captain and sent to England to be presented at court as a Native American ally of the Crown. Returning to the New World, he fought as commander of a Native American contingent at the Battle of Long Island in 1776 and was with St. Leger's expedition at the Battle of Oriskany in 1777.
Between 1778 and 1780 Brant led his Indian troops on raids in the Mohawk Valley, southern New York, and northern Pennsylvania, warning his followers that an American victory would mean destruction for all Native Americans. He and his followers were accused of perpetrating massacres such as those at Cherry Valley in 1778 and at Wyoming in 1779; though Brant always claimed that he did not join in these bloody aspects of the fighting, his troops were responsible for some reprehensible killings.
At the close of the American Revolution, Brant frustrated the attempt of Red Jacket, a rival Mohawk chief, to negotiate a peace treaty with the United States. Later he unsuccessfully attempted such a negotiation himself, whereupon he persuaded Governor Haldimaud of Canada to assign the Mohawks a reservation on the Grand River in Upper Canada. His journey to England in 1785 was successful in attaining an indemnification for the Mohawks for their losses during the war. He also made a trip to Philadelphia during which he was unsuccessful in negotiating peace with the United States.
Brant's later years were spent translating the New Testament and other religious documents into Mohawk and promoting Native American acceptance of the white man's ways. He was able to prevent speculators from getting the Mohawk lands on the Grand River, but his last years were saddened by the actions of his dissolute eldest son and by his quarrels with his rival, Red Jacket. He died on November 24, 1807, at the Grand River Reservation.
Achievements
Religion
Brant became an Anglican, a faith he held for the remainder of his life.
Views
Quotations:
"No person among us desires any other reward for performing a brave and worthy action, but the consciousness of having served his nation. "
"Do you call yourselves Christians? Does then the religion of Him whom you call your Savior to inspire your spirit, and guide your practices? Surely not. It is recorded of him that a bruised reed he never broke. Cease, then, to call yourselves Christians, lest you declare to the world your hypocrisy. Cease, too, to call other nations savage, when you are tenfold more the children of cruelty than they. "
"The Mohawks have on all occasions shown their zeal and loyalty to the Great King, yet they have been very badly treated by his people. "
"We are tired out in making complaints and getting no redress. "
Personality
Brant dressed in "the English mode" wearing "a suit of blue broad cloth. " Aside from being fluent in English, Brant spoke at least three, and possibly all, of the Six Nations' Iroquoian languages.
Connections
On July 22, 1765, in Canajoharie, Brant married to Peggie also known as Margaret. Said to be the daughter of Virginia planters. They lived with his parents, who passed the house on to Brant after his stepfather's death. Peggie and Brant had two children together, Isaac and Christine before Peggie died from tuberculosis in March 1771.
Brant married a second wife, Susanna, but she died near the end of 1777. With Catherine Croghan, Brant had seven children.