Document Number: |
AJ-152 |
Author: |
Brant, Joseph, 1742-1807 |
Title: |
Speech to British Government Concerning Indian Land Claims, Niagara, October 22, 1796 [manuscript] |
Source: |
Draper Manuscripts: Joseph Brant Papers, 12 F 33 to 33-7, Wisconsin Historical Society. |
Pages/Illustrations: |
9 / 0 |
Citable URL: |
www.americanjourneys.org/aj-152/ |
Author Note
Brant (1743?-1807), or Thayendanegea in Mohawk (“He Places
Together Two Bets”) was the most important Indian leader between
Pontiac in the mid-eighteenth century (see AJ-160) and Tecumseh in the
early nineteenth century (see AJ-155).
He was born in Ohio to a Mohawk chief but went in 1761 as a
child to Eleazar Wheelock’s Indian school in Connecticut. When
he returned to New York, his sister Molly’s position as mistress
to the British Superintendent of Indian Affairs helped him
secure assignments as a translator and interpreter. His
character, education, and influential family connections led him
rise to positions of power among the Mohawks.
Foreseeing continued white expansion into Indian lands, he
convinced most of the Iroquois Confederacy in 1776 that they had
a greater chance of fair treatment under the English than under
the colonists. During the American Revolution he therefore
accepted a British commission and executed brilliant military
actions against the Americans in the northwest. When at the
Treaty of Paris (1783) the English sold out their Native
American allies, Brant organized a pan-tribal alliance to keep
American settlers out of the Old Northwest; many Indian nations
from the southeast through the Ohio Valley and into the Great
Lakes embraced his goals. Armed clandestinely by the British,
Brant's warriors carried on the struggle for another decade
until the Battle of Fallen Timbers (1794) ended resistance
against the U.S.
By that time Brant had secured more than 350,000 acres from
the British government on the Grand River in Ontario, sixty miles
west of Niagara Falls, to compensate Indians for the loss of
their homelands in the United States. British officials,
however, proved uncooperative and limited Indian rights to
utilize the grant, as revealed in this document.
Document Note
Brant gave this speech in defense of Indian claims to use
their Grand River land however they saw fit. It was collected by
Lyman Copeland Draper, probably between 1877 and 1880, and is
now in volume 12F (Brant Papers), pages 33-41, of the Draper
Manuscripts.
Other Internet and Reference Sources
An excellent biography is available online in the
Encyclopedia of North American Indians at
http://college.hmco.com/history/readerscomp/naind/html/
na_004800_brantjoseph.htm.
Related articles there on the Iroquois Confederacy and Mohawk
nation are similarly fine. The standard modern treatment of
Brant is Isabel Thompson Kelsay’s Joseph Brant, 1743-1807:
Man of Two Worlds (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University
Press, 1984). |
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