One of the most versatile and remarkable men in American history, Joseph Brant (Thayendanegea, "He Places Together Two Bets") is best remembered as a Loyalist military leader during the American War of Independence, the promoter of a pan-tribal confederacy to defend Indian land in postrevolutionary years, and the founder of an Indian community on the Grand River in Ontario.
———Brant was born in Ohio, the son of Tehonwaghkwangeraghkwa of Canajoharie, New York, and his wife, Margaret. Joseph took his last name from his stepfather, Brant, a Mohawk sachem, and gained from connections with the British after his sister, Mary (Molly), became mistress to Sir William Johnson. He acquired a facility in English at Eleazar Wheelock's school in Lebanon, Connecticut (1761-63), and after returning to Canajoharie to farm in the European fashion he assisted Christian missionaries and the Johnsons — Sir William's nephew, Guy, succeeded his uncle as Superintendent of Indian Affairs — as a translator, interpreter, and aide.
———Although personally indebted to the British, and a man with a foot in both the Indian and white cultures, Brant grew concerned about the threats to Indian land before the outbreak of the American Revolution. After a visit to London in 1775-76, during which he was received by George III and patronized by such luminaries as James Boswell, he attempted to break the Iroquois Confederacy's policy of neutrality, convinced by British pledges of support and future protection. Raising a party of Indians and white volunteers, he goaded the powerful Senecas into supporting him in a bloody ambush of American militia at Oriskany, New York, on August 6, 1777, and for five years operated with outstanding military talent against the Americans in New York and Ohio.
———Brant was not the head war chief of Britain's iroquois allies, as is sometimes represented. He owed his influence to his abilities, the support of his sister, Mary (whose influence was reckoned "far superior to that of all the chiefs put together"), and later to his marriage to Catherine, sister of the leading Mohawk sachem, and to the captaincy in the British Indian Department. Undoubtedly his services were of strategic value to the British. Cooperating with other Loyalists and Indians, he struck unpredictably across a wide front, helping to paralyze superior bodies of militia, destroy provisions and settlements, and divert Continental troops from the east. In 1781 he and his troops frustrated an expedition against Detroit. Despite his battlefield success, however, Brant's cause was doomed. The war divided the Iroquois Confederacy and wasted Iroquois villages. Worse, Britain abandoned its Indian allies in the Treaty of Paris (1783), when it ceded the Crown's claim to land south of the Great Lakes and accepted peace terms that contained no mention of native rights.
———After the war Brant moved quickly to represent the king's late Indian allies. In 1784 a large and fertile tract on the Grand River in Ontario was awarded to his people. Almost two thousand Indian Loyalists, principally Iroquois, ultimately settled the grant, the Mohawks settled at the site of modern-day Brantford. In another visit to London in 1786 Brant further secured financial indemnification for losses suffered by the Mohawks in the war.
———Brant urged the Indians south of the Great Lakes to resist the pretensions of the United States to have won land north of the Ohio River by conquest, and under his guidance they formed a pan-tribal alliance at a congress upon the Sandusjy in 1783. Embracing Indians from the Great Lakes and Ohio regions, and even southern Creeks and Cherokees, this grand and unprecedented confederacy upheld the old Indian boundary line along the Ohio established at the Treaty of Fort Stanwix in 1768. British fears of losing Indian support had led to their retention of western posts such as Detroit and Niagara, in contravention of the Treaty of Paris, and they continued to provision the Indian confederacy and supply it with ammunition. Brant regarded armed resistance as a last resort, however, and hoped that Indian solidarity would force the United States to negotiate and reorganize a permanent Indian claim in Ohio. Unfortunately, the Americans exploited divisions among the Indians to secure recognition of their aspirations in treaties at Fort Harmar (1789). Nevertheless, the young (and weak) U.S. government was brought to repudiate the principle of conquest and to accept that lands should be acquired by purchase and treaty.
———Thereafter Brant yielded his leadership of the confederacy to the Shawnees, Delawares, and Miamis, but he continued to urge both the Indians and the United States to settle their differences in Ohio with a compromise boundary based upon the Muskingum River. Both sides held out for total victory, and the Indians were defeated at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794, but the pan-tribal ideals Brant nurtured influenced history until the death of Tecumseh in 1813.
———At his new home on the Grand River, Brant exhibited the ambiguities of a man rooted in contrasting cultures. He encouraged the Indians to improve their economy, adopted Christianity, and support British schooling. His translations of Saint Mark's Gospel and the Book of Common Prayer into Mohawk were published in 1787. He associated with the elite on both sides of the Atlantic, lived in European style at his house at Burlington, Ontario, attended by liveried servants, and sat to the fashionable portrait painters of the day. Yet he maintained fiercely proud of his Indian ancestry, encouraged many aboriginal ceremonies, and was doubtful about wholesale acculturation. Comparing British and Iroquois societies, he remarked, "After every exertion to divest myself of prejudice, I am obliged to give my opinion in favor of my own people."
———Brant's most disastrous policy was his sale or lease of land on the Grand to invest stocks for an annuity for the Indians. Despite resistance from British officials, who denied that the Indian held the tract in fee simple, in 1798 Brant alienated some 350,000 acres for sums that ultimately yielded the Indians little benefit. He thus encountered the frustration of grappling with the problem of creating a satisfactory livelihood for people whose land resources had been reduced.
———Joseph Brant was tall, muscular, and fine featured. Ambitious and vain, he was also generous, humane, and dedicated not only to the Mohawks but also to Indians in general. Equally at home on the battlefield or in council, he was a man of rare energy and vision. He was thrice married, but had only one wife at a time. Nine of his children reached maturity; one, John (1794-1832), distinguished himself in the War of 1812 and briefly took a seat in the Upper Canadian House of Assembly. Joseph Brant died at Burlington on November 24, 1807.

JOHN SUGDEN
Hereward College
Coventry, England