William Leete Stone’s 1838 biography of the Mohawk (Kanien’keha:ka) leader Thayendanegea, better known by his Christian name Joseph Brant, is one of the first full-length biographies of a Native American leader. It remains the most comprehensive account of his life. Stone wrote several biographies on significant Indigenous leaders of the Revolutionary Period (1765–1791) and on Indigenous conflict with the United States of America. He also published the works of other writers on Indigenous matters, most notably George Catlin’s account of his travels in the Great Plains in his newspaper, the New York Commercial Advertiser.
Brant was born in 1743 and rose to prominence during the Seven Years’ War (known in North America as the French and Indian War) allied with British forces in the region. He travelled to London in 1775 where he met political figures and had an audience with George III at St James's Palace in order to negotiate Mohawk support for Britain in the approaching American War of Independence. Establishing an irregular unit of Mohawk and Loyalists in New York known as ‘Brant’s Volunteers’, Brant fought alongside the British during the war following guarantees that Iroquois (a confederation consisting of the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca and Tuscarora Nations) land rights would be maintained. However, after the Treaty of Paris, Britain acceded to American claims on Iroquois territory and Brant and his fellow Mohawk were instead offered lands in Canada. This was seen as a betrayal by many, but Brant remained loyal to Britain, returning to London in 1785 to guarantee Mohawk rights in their new home and to seek compensation for the loss of lands now in the new United States. This compensation was granted in the form of a pension, but the British government was unwilling to offer military assistance against American aggression. It was also on this visit that Brant, with George III’s patronage, completed his translation of the Book of Common Prayer (see RCIN 1054767) to replace translations lost in the late war.
Throughout the 1780s, Brant’s influence among the Mohawk and other Indigenous groups grew and he sought to establish a loose confederation of Nations that could defend land rights and play both Britain and the United States off one another to their benefit. By the following decade his influence began to wane and the confederacy, which included many Nations of the Great Lakes region, started to fracture due to Brant’s reluctance to raise arms against American incursions. Brant died at his home in Canada in 1807 and was buried in the chapel granted to his people by George III. While his legacy as a tireless negotiator for Iroquois rights is celebrated, Brant was also one of several significant Indigenous leaders in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries who enslaved both white and Black people: at one point he enslaved 40 Black people on his estate. This was in accordance with Indigenous practices in which the enslavement of others was commonplace among important leaders and demonstrated the power of that individual within their community and consequentially Brant struggled to understand the moral arguments made by the growing abolitionist movement.