The second part of a three-part examination of the life of Chief Joseph Brant. For more information on his early years, see part one.
Jeffrey R Gudzune, MA
In his capacity as Northern Superintendent of Indian Affairs, it was Sir William Johnson's responsibility to ensure the loyalty of Native American nations to the crown and its policies with respect to North America. He embraced his task and treated the Iroquois well. In fact, Johnson was so respected by the Mohawk that they invited him into their nation and gave him the Mohawk name of Warraghiyagey, meaning "man who does much business." When his wife died suddenly in 1759, Johnson took as his new bride a young Mohawk woman named Degonwadonti-Joseph Brant's sister. This union effectively made Sir William Johnson the brother-in-law of Joseph Brant.
Johnson took Joseph Brant under his wing and employed him as a translator and good will ambassador to the various Iroquois villages under his scope of authority. Brant excelled at his assigned duties, and in his free time undertook the task of translating the Gospel of Mark and an Anglican prayer book into Mohawk. Despite traveling throughout the Iroquois confederacy with Johnson, and in addition to his academic efforts, Joseph still managed to settle down and start his own family. In 1768, Brant married the daughter of an Oneida chief, whose English name was Christine. The couple settled on the Canajoharie, the Brant family farm, that same year. Turning his attention back to his religous studies, Brant continued to make revisions to his earlier translations and worked on a comprehensive translation of the Acts of the Apostles. When Christine died in 1771, Joseph was left to raise their two children and run the farm. In 1773, he married his sister-in-law, Susannah-unfortunately she died within months as a result of the same epidemic of tuberculosis that had claimed Christine.
Joseph Brant continued his association with the Johnson family and quickly gained recognition by Sir William's adherents. He supported Johnson and the policies of the crown towards the American colonies. Moreoever, he sided with the Johnson family in thier disputes with the Butler family of the region. When the faint stirrings of revolution began to gather in earnest, Johnson quickly moved to reaffirm the loyalty of the Iroquois. The first indication of trouble within the colonies, at least with regard to the Iroquois, was the Shawnee-Virginia border war. Following the contentious settlement in the Seven Years' War, white settlers had begun encroaching on Shawnee land. The Shawnee nation was itself a dependency of the Iroquois Confederacy and these actions generated a sense of profound injustice among the Iroquois. With Brant's assistance, Sir William called the Six Nations to a special council at his home in New York in July of 1774. Before he could express his desires that the Iroquois remain neutral in the coming border war, he died. With the sudden death of his patron, Joseph Brant was now in doubt over his future...and the future of the Mohawk. However, the rapidly shifting winds of fate were about to blow Brant into the spotlight.
