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Thayendanegea or Joseph Brant (c. 1743 – 24 November 1807) was a Mohawk leader and British military officer during the American Revolution. 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.

In March, 1743, Brant was born at Cuyahoga Ohio Country on the banks of the Cuyahoga River, near present-day Akron, Ohio.[1] This was during the hunting season when Mohawks traveled to the area. He was named Thayendanegea, which can mean two wagers (sticks) bound together for strength, or possibly "he who places two bets." He was a Mohawk of the Wolf Clan (his mother's clan).

His mother Margaret, or Owandah, the niece of Tiaogeara, a Caughnawaga sachem, took Joseph and his older sister Mary (known as Molly) to Canajoharie, on the Mohawk River in east-central New York, where they had lived before her family moved to the Ohio River. His mother remarried on 9 September 1753 in Fort Hunter (Church of England) a widower named Brant Canagaraduncka, who was a Mohawk sachem. Her new husband's grandfather was Sagayendwarahton, or "Old Smoke," who visited England in 1710. The marriage bettered Margaret's fortunes and the family lived in the best house in Canajoharie, but 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 Northern Indian Affairs. During Johnson's frequent visits to the Mohawks he always stayed at the Brant's house. Johnson married Joseph’s sister, Molly.

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 Battle of Fort Niagara, and Jeffery Amherst's 1760 siege of Montreal via the St. Lawrence River. He was one of 182 Indians who received a silver medal for good conduct.

In 1761, Johnson arranged for three Mohawks including Joseph to be educated at Eleazar Wheelock's Moor's Indian Charity School in Connecticut, the forerunner of Dartmouth College, where he studied under the guidance of the Reverend Eleazar Wheelock. Wheelock wrote Brant was "of a sprightly genius, a manly and gentle deportment, and of a modest, courteous and benevolent temper". Brant learned to speak, read, and write English. Brant meet Samuel Kirkland at the school. In 1763, Johnson prepared to place Brant at King's College in New York City, but the outbreak of Pontiac's Rebellion upset these plans and Brant returned home. After Pontiac's rebellion Johnson thought it was not safe for Brant to return to the school.

In March 1764, Brant participated in one of the Iroquois war parties which attacked Delaware Indian villages in the Susquehanna and Chemung valleys. They destroyed three good sized towns and burned 130 houses and killed their cattle. No enemy warriors were even seen.

On July 22, 1765, he married Peggie in Canajoharie. Peggie was a white captive sent back from western Indians and said to be the daughter of a Virginia gentleman. They moved into Brant's parent's house and when his father died in the mid-1760's the house became Joseph's. He owned a large and fertile farm of 80 acres near the village of Canajoharie on the south shore of the Mohawk. He raised corn, kept cattle, sheep, horses, and hogs. He also kept a small store. Brant dressed in "the English mode" wearing "a suit of blue broad cloth". With Johnson's encouragement the Mohawk's made Brant a war chief and their primary spokesman. In March, 1771 he wife died from consumption.

In the spring of 1772, he moved to Fort Hunter to live with the Reverend John Stuart. He became Stuart's interpreter, teacher of Mohawk, and collaborated with him in translating the Anglican catechism and the Gospel of Mark into the Mohawk language. Brant became a lifelong Anglican.

In 1773, Brant moved back to Canajoharie and married Peggie's half-sister Susanna.

Brant spoke at least three and possibly all of the Six Nations languages. He was a translator for the department of Indian affairs since at least 1766 and in 1775, was appointed as departmental secretary with the rank of Captain for the new British Superintendent for Northern Indian affairs, Guy Johnson. In May, 1775 he fled the Mohawk valley with Guy Johnson and most of the Indian warriors from Canajoharie to Canada, arriving in Montreal on July 17. His wife and children went to Onoquaga. On November 11, 1775, Guy Johnson took Brant along with him when he traveled to London. Brant hoped to get the Crown to address past Mohawk land grievances, and the government promised the Iroquois people land in Canada if he and the Iroquois nations were to fight on the British side. In London, Brant became a celebrity, and was interviewed for publication by James Boswell. While in public he carefully dressed in the Indian style. He also became a Mason, and received his apron personally from king George III.

Brant returned to Staten Island, New York in July 1776 and immediately became involved with Howe's forces as they prepared to retake New York. Although the details of his service that summer and fall were not officially recorded, he was said to have distinguished himself for bravery, and it has deduced that he was with Clinton, Cornwallis, and Percy in the flanking movement at Jamaica Pass in the Battle of Long Island in August 1776. It was at this time that he embarked on a lifelong relationship with Lord Percy, later Duke of Northumberland, the only lasting friendship he shared with a white man.

In November, Brant left New York City traveling northwest through American held territory. Disguised, traveling at night and sleeping during the day, he reached Onoquaga where he met up with his family. At the end of December he was at Fort Niagara. He traveled from village to village in the confederacy urging the Iroquois to abandon neutrality and to enter the war on the side of the British. The Iroquois balked at Brant's plans because the full council of the Six Nations had previously decided on a policy of neutrality and had signed a treaty of neutrality at Albany in 1775, and also because they considered Brant a minor war chief from a relatively weak people, the Mohawks. Frustrated, Brant freelanced by heading in the spring to Onoquaga to conduct war his way. Few Onoquaga villagers joined him, but in May he was successful in recruiting Loyalists who wished to strike back. This group became know as Brant's Volunteers. In June, he was confronted at Unadilla by 380 men of the Tryon County militia led by Nicholas Herkimer. Herkimer requested that the Iroquois remain neutral while Brant said the Indians owed their loyalty to the King.

In July, 1777 the Six Nations council decided to abandon neutrality and to enter the war on the British side. Brant was not present at this council. Sayenqueraghta and Cornplanter were named to be the war chiefs of the confederacy. In July, Brant led his Brant's Volunteers north to link up with St. Leger at Fort Stanwix.

In August 1777, Brant played a major role at the Battle of Oriskany in support of a major offensive led by General John Burgoyne. Brant returned to Onoquaga from where he become the most active partisan commander engaging in raids mostly with his Brant's Volunteers on the Americans to steal their cattle, burn their houses, and to kill the Americans. Notably, on May 30, 1778 he led an attack on Cobleskill (Battle of Cobleskill) and in September 1778, he along with Captain William Caldwell led a mixed force of Indians and Loyalists in a raid on German Flatts.

In October, 1777, Continental soldiers and local militia attacked Onoquaga while Brant's Volunteers were away on a raid. The American commander described Onoquaga as "the finest Indian town I ever saw; on both sides [of] the river there was about 40 good houses, square logs, shingles & stone chimneys, good floors, glass windows". The soldiers burned the houses, killed the cattle, chopped down the apple trees, spoiled the growing corn crop, and killed some native children they found in the corn fields. On November 11, 1778 Brant was a leader in the attack in the Cherry Valley massacre.

In 1779, he traveled to Quebec to meet with Frederick Haldimand who had replaced Carleton as Commander and Governor in Canada. Frederick Haldimand gave Brant a commission of Captain of the Northern Confederated Indians. He also promised provisions, but no pay, for his Brant's Volunteers. Haldimand also pledged that after the war had ended the Mohawks would be restored, at the expense of the government, to the state they were before the conflict started.

In May, he returned to Fort Niagara where with his new salary and plunder from his raids he acquired a farm on the Niagara river six miles from the fort. To work the farm and to serve the household, he used slaves he had captured on his raids. Brant's honors and gifts caused jealousy from rival chiefs, in particular Sayenqueraghta. A British general said that Brant "would be much happier and would have more weight with the Indians, which he in some measure forfeits by their knowing that he receives pay". In late 1779, Haldimand decides when a commission for Brant as a colonel arrives from Lord Germain to pocketing it and to not tell Brant.

In early July, 1779, the British learned of plans for a major American expedition into Seneca country. In an attempt to disrupt the Americans plans John Butler sent Brant along with some Loyalists and Iroquois on a quest for provisions and to gather intelligence on the Delaware in the vicinity of Minisink. After stopping at Onaquaga Brant attacked and defeated the Americans at the Battle of Minisink on July 22, 1779. Brant's raid failed to disrupt the American expedition.

In the Sullivan Campaign the Americans sent a large force deep into Iroquois territory to defeat the Iroquois and to destroy their villages. The Iroquois were defeated on August 29, 1779 at the Battle of Newtown. The Americans swept away all Indian resistance in New York, burned their villages, and forced the Iroquois to fall back to Fort Niagara. Brant wintering at Niagara in 1779-80.

Brant resumed small scale attacks on the Mohawk valley. In February, 1780, he and his party went to blockade Fort Stanwix and cut off its supplies. The blockade continued until May when the fort was burned and abandoned. In mid-July, 1780 Brant led an attack on the Oneida village of Kanonwalohale. Some of the Oneida surrendered, but most took refuge at Fort Stanwix. Brant's raiders destroyed the Oneida houses, horses, and crops. He then took part in a major raid on the Mohawk Valley with Butler's Rangers and King's Royal Regiment of New York. He was wounded in the heel at the Battle of Klock's Field. He burned his former home town of Canajoharie because it had become inhabited by whites.

In April, 1781 Brant was sent west to Fort Detroit to help defend against an expedition into the Ohio Country to be led by the Virginian George Rogers Clark. In August 1781, Brant completely defeated a detachment of Clark's army, ending the threat to Detroit. He spent the winter 1781-1782 at Fort Detroit. From 1781 to 1782, Brant tried to keep the disaffected western tribes loyal to the Crown in the aftermath of the British surrender at Yorktown.

In July, 1782 he and 460 Iroquois were leaving Fort Oswego on a raid when a letter from Frederick Haldimand arrived recalling the party and asking for a cessation of hostilities. Brant denounced the defensive policy as a betrayal of the Iroquois. Brant urged the Indians to continue the war, but they were unable without British supplies.

In negotiating the Paris peace treaty that ended the war, Britain and the United States ignored the sovereignty of the Indians, and sovereign Six Nation lands were agreed to be part of the United States. Promises of protection of their domain had been an important factor in inducing the Iroquois to fight on the side of the British. The Treaty of Fort Stanwix (1784) served as a peace treaty between the Americans and the Iroquois.

In 1783, he was sent to Montreal for discussion with Haldimand in order to get him away from Fort Niagara. At Brant's urging, British General Sir Frederick Haldimand made a grant of land for a Mohawk reserve on the Grand River in Ontario in October, 1784. (Haldimand Proclamation, see also Six Nations of the Grand River). In the fall of 1784, at a meeting at Buffalo Creek, the clan matrons decided that the Six Nations should divide with half going to the Haldimand grant and the other half staying in New York. In 1785, the government built the first Protestant church in Canada, St. Paul's, Her Majesty's Chapel of the Mohawks on this land. It is now one of twelve Royal Chapels supported by the Crown throughout the world. Brant built his own house at Brant's Town which was described as "a handsome two story house, built after the manner of the white people. Compared with the other houses, it may be called a palace." He had about twenty white and black servants and slaves.

In the summer of 1783, Brant initiated the formation of the Western Confederacy consisting of the Iroquois and twenty-nine other Indian nations to defend the Fort Stanwix Treaty line of 1768 by denying any nation the ability to cede any land without the common consent. In November, 1785 he traveled to London to ask for assistance for the Indian confederacy from attack from the Americans. Brant was granted a generous pension and an agreement to fully compensate the Mohawk for their loses. (This was in contrast to the Loyalists who only received a fraction of their losses.), but no promises of support for the Western Confederacy. He returned to Canada in June, 1786.

In 1790, after the Western Confederacy had been attacked in the Northwest Indian War they asked Brant and the Six Nations to enter the war on their side. Brant refused, he instead asked Lord Dorchester for the British to assist the Western Confederacy. Dorchester also refused, but he later in 1794 did provide the Indians with arms and provisions. In 1792, Brant was invited and traveling to Philadelphia where he meet the President and his cabinet. The Americans offered him a large pension, and a reservation in the United States for the Mohawks to lure them into the United States. Brant refused, but Pickering said the Brant did take some cash payments. Brant attempted a compromise peace settlement between the Western Confederacy and the Americans, but he failed. The war continued, and the Indians were defeated in 1794 at the Battle of Fallen Timbers. The unity of the Western Confederacy was broken with the peace Treaty of Greenville in 1795.

In early 1797, he traveled to Philadelphia where he met the British Minister, Robert Liston and United States government officials. He assured the Americans that he "would never again take up the tomahawk against the United States". At this time the British were at war with France and Spain and while Brant was meeting with the French minister Pierre August Ader, Brant stated: "he would offer his services to the French Minister Adet, and march his Mohawks to assist in effecting a revolution & overturning the British government in the province".[9] When he returned home, there were fears of a French attack. Russell wrote: "the present alarming aspect of affairs - when we are threatened with an invasion by the French and Spaniards from the Mississippi, and the information we have received of emissaries being dispersed among the Indian tribes to incite them to take up the hatchet against the King's subjects". He also wrote Brant "only seeks a feasible excuse for joining the French, should they invade this province." To appease Brant, Russell issued deeds for the Haldimand grant. Brant then declared: "they would now all fight for the King to the last drop of their blood".

In late 1800 and early 1801 Brant wrote to Governor George Clinton (vice president) to secure a large tract of land near Sandusky which could serve as a refuge should the Grand River Indians rebel, but suffer defeat. In September, 1801 Brant is recorded as saying: "He says he will go away, yet the Grand River Lands will [still] be in his hands, that no man shall meddle with it amongst us. He says the British Government shall not get it, but the Americans shall and will have it, the Grand River Lands, because the war is very close to break out."[10] In January, 1802 the Executive Council of Upper Canada learned of this plot which was lead by Aaron Burr and George Clinton (vice president) to overthrow British rule in cooperation with some inhabitants and a create a republican state to join the United States. September, 1802 (the planned date of invasion), passed uneventfully and the plot evaporated.

Around 1802 he moved to the head of Burlington Bay where he built a mansion which was intended to be a half-scale version of Johnson Hall. He had a prosperous farm in the colonial style with 100 acres of crops.

Joseph Brant died in his house at the head of Lake Ontario (site of what would become the city of Burlington, Ontario) on November 24, 1807. His last words, spoken to his adopted nephew John Norton, reflect his life-long commitment to his people: "Have pity on the poor Indians. If you have any influence with the great, endeavor to use it for their good." 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.

Brant acted as a tireless negotiator for the Six Nations to control their land without crown oversight or control. He used British fears of his dealings with the Americans and the French to extract concessions. His conflicts with British administrators in Canada regarding tribal land claims were exacerbated by his relations with the American leaders.

Brant was a war chief, and not a hereditary Mohawk sachem. His decisions could and were sometimes overruled by the sachems and clan matrons. 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 and of his time. The situation of the Six Nations on the Grand River was better than the Iroquois had who remained in New York. His lifelong mission was to help the Indian to survive the transition from one culture to another, transcending the political, social and economic challenges of one the most volatile, dynamic periods of American history. He put his loyalty to the Six Nations before loyalty to the British. A summing up of his life cannot be described in terms of success or failure, although he had known both. More than anything, Brant's life was marked by frustration and struggle. In his various roles as a youthful warrior, student, farmer, husband and father, British army officer, and Anglican convert and New Testament translator, he was completely committed. In his later years, as a politician-diplomat-negotiator, frustrations were constant.

His attempt to create pan-tribal unity proved unsuccessful, though his efforts would be taken up a generation later by the Shawnee leader Tecumseh.
 

 

  Brant's Grave