Mohawk chief, born along the Ohio R in present-day Ohio, USA. As a young man, he sided with the British in their war against the French and was befriended by Sir William Johnson, who sent him to a school in Connecticut. He converted to Christianity, returned to his people as a missionary, and translated the Episcopal Prayer Book and part of the New Testament into Mohawk. During the American Revolution, now fighting with the British against the colonists, he participated in various raids in New York State's Mohawk Valley, including the infamous Cherry Valley Massacre (1778). He ended the war with the British rank of colonel and had to move with his people into Canada. In 1785 he went to England to obtain compensation for the Indians' losses in the war. He built one of the first Episcopalian churches in Canada and, although he became an advocate for peace in the 1790s, he was not afraid to stand up against those who tried to take away the Mohawks' land.
Thayendanegea or Joseph Brant (sometimes spelled Brandt or Brand) (c. 1742 – 24 November 1807) was a Mohawk leader and British military officer during the American Revolutionary War. Brant was perhaps the most well-known North American Indian of his generation.
Early Years
Brant was born at Cuyahoga Ohio Country on the banks of the Cuyahoga River, near present-day Akron, Ohio, during the hunting season when Mohawks travelled to the area. 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 she 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 sachem of the tribe. However, Brant's stepfather was also a friend of William Johnson, who was to become General Sir William Johnson, Superintendent for Northern Indian Affairs. Johnson married Joseph’s sister, Molly, and arranged for 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 Mr. Eleazar Wheelock
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 expedition against Fort Niagara, and Jeffery Amherst's 1760 siege of Montreal via the St. Lawrence River. He also acted as interpreter for an Anglican missionary named John Stuart, with whom he translated the Gospel of Mark into the Mohawk language. He became a lifelong Anglican, and would build the first Protestant church in Canada, St. Paul's, Her Majesty's Chapel of the Mohawks, which is now one of twelve Royal Chapels supported by the Crown throughout the world.
American Revolution
The new British Superintendent for Northern Indian affairs, Guy Johnson, took Brant to London in 1775-76, where he became a celebrity. Brant returned in July, 1776 and immediately became involved with Howe's forces as they prepared to retake New York. He headed home to the Mohawk Valley after New York, and subsequently played a major role at Oriskany (6 August 1777), and many other battles, either as leader of his Indian forces, or Brant's Volunteers, or together with British regulars, Butler's Rangers, or other loyalist forces. He raised a combined force of Indian warriors and white loyalists after the failure of the Burgoyne campaign, and led them in a series of raids on American settlements in New York and Pennsylvania in 1777-1778. Brant was made a captain in the British army. In July 1779, Brant defeated a rebel force at the Battle of Minisink. He was defeated by General John Sullivan on August 29, 1779 in the Battle of Newtown, as the Americans swept away all Indian resistance in New York, burned their villages, and forced the Indians permanently into Canada. After wintering at Niagara in 1779-80, Brant moved west to Ohio where he joined with Simon Girty to lead a large war raid by Tories and western Indians on American boats using the Ohio River.
Brant became infamous for the Wyoming Valley "massacre", which it was widely believed he led, although he was not present at the battle.
In negotiating the Paris peace treaty that ended the war, Britain ignored the needs of its Six Nations allies, and ceded Indian territory to the United States. At Brant's urging, British General Sir Frederick Haldimand arranged for a grant of land for a Mohawk reserve on the Grand River in Ontario (see Six Nations of the Grand River). For the next twenty years, Brant would act as a tireless negotiator for the Six Nations, playing on British fears of Indian alliances with the Americans and/or the French, to preserve the Grand River land from encroachment by whites in and out of the Canadian government.
After the American Revolution, Brant also worked to bring about a confederation of the Six Nations with the tribes of the western United States, in order to resist U.S. expansion into the Northwest Territory. When the resistance in the Northwest became full-scale warfare (the Northwest Indian War), Brant was asked to negotiate a settlement by the administration of U.S. President George Washington. Brant was unable to arrange a truce, and the war continued, ending with the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794.
Later Years, Legacy, Some Descendants
Although a War Chief, Brant was not an hereditary Mohawk sachem. More than anything, Brant's life was marked by frustration and struggle. His conflicts with British administrators in Canada regarding tribal land claims were only exacerbated by his relations with American leaders after the War.
During his lifetime, Brant was the subject of many portrait artists, both here and abroad.
Joseph Brant was married three times, the first to Neggen (Peggy) on 25 July 1765, and had two children, Isaac and Christine. In 1780, he married Catherine Adonwentishon Croghan, the daughter of the prominent American colonist, Indian agent, fur trader, and New York-Pennsylvania-Ohio landowner/speculator George Croghan and a Mohawk mother, Catharine Tekarihoga. They had seven children: Joseph, Jacob, John, Margaret, Catharine, Mary and Elizabeth. Her birthright was to name the Tekarihoga, the principal sachem of the Mohawk nation. After Joseph and Henry's deaths, she then named her youngest son John, who died unmarried. Elizabeth, a daughter of his 3rd marriage, was married to William Johnson Kerr, grandson of Sir William Johnson and Molly Brant, and their child subsequently became Chief. United Empire Loyalists, Thayendanegea's surviving sons, Joseph, Jacob, and John fought in the War of 1812.
Generations 2-4. Both Jacob and his brother Joseph attended Dartmouth College under the aegis of President John Wheelock, the son of Joseph Brant's early mentor, Eleazar Wheelock. Jacob married Lucy McCoy, a Mohawk, in 1804 and had six children: John, Jacob, Squire, Christrina, Charlotte, and Peter. John Brant (Gen.
Lieutenant Cameron D. Brant, son of Robert D. Brant and Lydia Lewis, was the first of thirty members of the Six Nations, as well as the first Native North American, to die in WWI.
Jacob Shelby Brant (1924-1944), son of Austin Brant and Bessie Battice (Gen.
Another Joseph Brant descendant (4th great-grandson), Terence M. He was the great-grandson of Lucy Brant and James Walton (Gen.
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. The house was owned by descendants until the late 19th century, and is now the Joseph Brant Museum. 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. The City of Brantford and the County of Brant, Ontario, located on part of his land grant, is named for him as is the Erie County, New York Town of Brant. A statue of Brant, located in Victoria Square, Brantford, was dedicated in 1886. The township of Tyendinaga and the Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory Indian reserve are also named for Brant, taking their name from an alternate spelling of his traditional Mohawk name. The neighborhood of Tyandaga in Burlington is also named after Brant, using a simplified spelling of his Mohawk name.
Thayendanegea is one of the 14 leading Canadian military figures commemorated at the Valiants Memorial in Ottawa.
Alternate spellings
Brant signed his name in various ways, including:
Tyandaga Thayendanegea Thaienteneka Thayendanega Joseph Thayendanegea Joseph Brant Jos. Brant
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