Joseph Brant

Joseph Brant 1742-1807, chief of the Mohawk. His Mohawk name is usually rendered as Thayendanegea. He served under Sir William Johnson in the French and Indian War, and Johnson sent him (1761) to Eleazar Wheelock's school for Native Americans in Lebanon, Conn. Brant served (1763) under Johnson again in Pontiac's Rebellion . In the American Revolution he did much to bind the indigenous people to the British and Loyalist side. He fought (1777) at Oriskany in the Saratoga campaign. In 1778, leading the Native American forces, he joined Walter Butler , and together they raided Cherry Valley, where they massacred the defenseless inhabitants. He was an able leader in other raids. After the Revolution, failing to get a settlement of the Native American land question in the United States, he got lands and subsidies for his people in Canada around the present Brantford, Ont. A zealous Christian, he preached Christianity, translating the Book of Common Prayer and the Gospel of Mark into the Mohawk language.

Bibliography: See biographies by J. W. Jakes (1969), H. C. Robinson (1971), and I. T. Kelsay (1984).

Brant, Joseph (1742–1807) Mohawk chief. He served in the French and Indian Wars (1754–63) and in Pontiac's Rebellion (1763–66). He attended an Anglican school and became an interpreter for missionaries. In return for securing an alliance between the Iroquois and the British, Brant gained a commission in the British Army in 1775. He fought with great courage for the British during the American Revolution.

Brant, Joseph (1742–1807), British army officer and Mohawk leader.Brant was the son of a Mohawk chief and a woman of mixed English and Indian descent. After his father's death, Brant lived with his sister's husband, William Johnson, superintendent of Indian affairs north of the Ohio River from 1755 to 1774. This experience, combined with attendance at a Christian school in Connecticut, prepared him for work as a bicultural mediator between the English and Iroquois in the years leading up to the American Revolution.

When the Revolutionary War broke out, Brant traveled to England, and was commissioned captain, and expressed his allegiance to the British crown. He returned to the Hudson River Valley and rallied the Iroquois to the loyalist cause, leading highly effective expeditions against Americans living in the region. These brought harsh retaliation from American forces under Gen. John Sullivan in 1779. Brant continued to resist even after British troops ceased hostilities. The English rewarded him and a number of Mohawks for their services with a tract of land in Ontario, where Brant eventually died. Brant's leadership and skills as a mediator enabled him and his followers to carve out a degree of autonomy while facing Anglo‐American expansionist pressures.

Bibliography

Barbara Graymont , The Iroquois in the American Revolution, 1972.
Isabel Thompson Kelsay , Joseph Brant, 1743–1807: Man of Two Worlds, 1984.

James D. Drake