The American Revolution (1776 - 1783) created English Upper Canada (later, Canada West, Ontario).

 

But, swayed by our ignorance via colonial propaganda, those of us who are interested in the life of Thayendanegea Joseph Brant ought to avoid making a grave mistake: The Mohawk Pine Tree Chief, though allied with the Crown in the American Revolution, was not an English-loving loyalist (United Empire Loyalist/UEL).

 

In British North America (BNA), other establishment members of the Haudenosaunee (post 1812–1815) may have declared their loyalty to the British Crown. Brant, who died in 1807, cannot be counted among them.

 

When it came to European wars fought on this continent, Brant, like Pontiac, Tecumseh or even John Norton, felt his people were caught between a rock and a hard place. In the matrix social game, one would call Brant's situation "the prisoner's dilemma." There was no right answer. No right side to pick. No running from the problem. No defecting. (See Chapter 9, "Abandon Cooperation, O Ye Who Walk Here," in Culture Clubs: The Real Fate of Societies.)

 

After European pathogens killed millions of Indigenous, several Euro populations administered the coup de grâce: Foreigners swamped the extant First Nations and laid claim to their territories. For over three hundred years (before the American Revolution), the North American continent witnessed nothing but war and death. Eighteenth-century European savagery and illnesses turned their New World, a huge territory, into Indigenous bloodlands. The American "patriots" brought European matters to a head. Thanks largely to Joseph Brant and John Butler, the nascent United States could not, and did not claim the entirety of eastern North America.

 

BNA was born.

 

After the revolution, if we are to believe John Norton and not the nasty William Claus or the cynical C. M. Johnston, the statesman Brant, now dealing with British colonial officials, remained "loyal" to his Grand River home and his people. From 1784 until he moved to Burlington (c 1802), Brant lived within the Grand River settlement, only to confront constant backlash and challenges to his "Pine Tree" status. The main criticism: Brant had become too great a man. And further: Why were the people not sovereign over their own territory – the way Brant promised? People blamed Brant for just about everything. But Brant could not perform a miracle – his people, scattered hither and yon, suffered from diminishing clout with colonial authorities.(See Chapter 2, "Mother," in Culture Clubs: The Real Fate of Societies.)

 

Post revolution, the Indigenous population issue was especially salient because the Haudenosaunee's Upper Canadian territory, the Haldimand Tract, was far larger than a small number of displaced persons could control, or patrol. To protect the idea of the confederacy's sovereignty on the Grand River, Thayendanegea was relentless in seeking ways to make alliances to increase the people's influence if not their critical mass.

 

Historian James Paxton describes Brant as a "Canajoharie Mohawk."

 

Arising from his leadership experience with the German Palatines of the Mohawk Valley during the revolutionary war, Captain Brant felt grateful to the non-Indigenous volunteers, who fought with him. And Brant was kind to his own loyalists, even though many were "white" and not from "the people."

 

Brant was a visionary. Yes, the vision backfired. Brant was also a man of his time. He was a Christian. (See Chapter 3, "Love is God," in Culture Clubs: The Real Fate of Societies.) Brant owned enslaved people. Brant allowed his non-Indigenous followers to settle within the Haldimand tract. Never mind the cancel culture, though. Amazingly astute in his day, Thayendanegea foresaw and tried to forestall the mess that awaited a fractured native diaspora, a cultural mess, which the revolution had created. The patriots were no kinder to the Indigenous than Britain. At least Britain had made the right promises. Yes, sure, agreements the Crown later denied. But Brant kept trying to make the Crown's colonial proxies see the importance to BNA of the old Anglo-Mohawk alliance.

 

As a "Canajoharie Mohawk" in BNA, Brant believed Haudenosaunee sovereignty on the Grand River, just as it had done in the Mohawk Valley, could oversee the territory and unify diverse cultural groups. Haudenosaunee sovereignty could readily accommodate and bring under manners an ethnically varied but law-abiding citizenry – Blacks included. (*See Angela Files, African Hope Renewed.) The Six Nations needed to grow, and grow fast.

 

Brant sought ways to give the Grand River confederacy some bargaining clout. But how could Brant re-rebuild communities to make them large, strong and united? The Six Nations – Onondaga, Mohawk, Oneida, Seneca, Cayuga, Tuscarora, and some Delaware – had to be powerful enough to challenge the Crown's authority and the Crown's history of reneging on promises, (to say nothing of the latter's criminal negligence). For securing the Mohawk's vital help in helping Britain hold part of the continent, Britain made promises about sovereignty in the upper country (above the Niagara escarpment). Britain broke its promise. Britain did not even acknowledge its allies. Not in the Treaty of Paris, 1783, nor in the Treaty of Ghent, 1814. By this time, British intransigence and the Crown's diplomatic duplicity were becoming famous. When you believe you're too big to fail, as the Crown obviously did feel despite the loss of the Thirteen Colonies, you ride roughshod over smaller herds.

 

But in life before the revolution, the Haudenosaunee held sovereignty over the Mohawk Valley. For Thayendanegea, therefore, it stood to reason: A significant population size was the primary mover in the people's gaining sovereignty over the Grand River Valley. To make any noise, the settlement needed people, people, more and more people. Until there was a large "united" population, the Six Nations couldn't threaten or disobey the traitorous Crown, a Crown now operating at full throttle – more determined than ever to control if not sweep aside all Indigenous nations living within BNA-claimed territory.

 

For the Crown (1800), the situation was straightforward. The Crown's behaviour perfectly illustrated the child's game of "make me." No united Indigenous threat? No need to keep a promise. Unifying nations against a common foe, be the nations European or Indigenous, is always hard to do. It takes serious chutzpah. The Indigenous nations just couldn't form a pan alliance, not one that would stick.

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By 1805, it seemed that the task of quickly bumping up Grand-River-Settlement numbers was impossible. After the War of 1812, matters within the Haldimand Tract worsened.

 

More settlers arrived and at once (1830s) the term UEL ("we came here first") took on additional prestige, especially in imperialistic Toronto.

 

Late loyalists (Quakers and Anabaptists), Americans, refugees from the British isles, and other Europeans arrived by the thousands. Against waves of foreign settlement, a divided Indigenous community's chances of keeping and protecting the Grand River territory proved futile.

 

Though long deceased, more often than not eighteenth-century Brant took the blame for nineteenth-century land scoops, which transferred their surrendered land back not to any one of the deserving Haudenosaunee but to the grasping Crown.

 

But one can be absolutely certain of this: In the immediate aftermath of the Treaty of Paris, which ignored promises made to him, Brant cared little about being any part of Britain's united empire.

 

If, later in the nineteenth century, such a moniker as UEL added cachet to subsequent members of the Haudenosaunee (like, say, Shakoyen·kwaráhton John Smoke Johnson), we can be sure that Thayendanegea, stung by the Crown's treaty-making duplicity, would not have been not among them. 

 

For residents of Canada West (1845–1846), ongoing socio-cultural events brought individuals and peoples into conflict and exacerbated many feuds.

 

The spirit of Thayendanegea hovers in the background of the Mohawk trilogy.

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What gives a culture enough club clout to tackle its enemies? Size, for sure. Also knowledge (intel and spies). Prestige as influencers. Military readiness.

 

Oh, and yes: Money. 

 

In the early nineteenth-century, did the Grand River Haudenosaunee have money? You bet. The confederacy was rich. Filthy rich. Richer than anyone. How rich? Rich enough to finance a canal system.

 

Did the Crown's colonial governance take care of Haudenosaunee riches? Did they ever. Thayendanegea would have wept.

 

On behalf of the Six Nations, John Brant, Ahyonwaeghs, tried to question the "Crown's investment of Six Nations' funds" in the Grand River Navigation Company. But no. Determined (corrupt? conflicted?) colonial authorities (Lieutenant-Governor John Colborne - first Baron Seaton; and, Receiver-General John Henry Dunn) knew the Crown would win either way, would win whether the canal system worked or didn't work. Sadly, John Brant died in the cholera epidemic, which also killed Peter the Runner and Peter Davis, ancestors of the writer.

 

The canal system didn't work. Not well enough to turn a profit. But the system worked well enough to impoverish the wealthy confederacy. No money. No clout. For the Crown, a great success.

 

Heavens, the wealthy confederacy was suddenly poor? Broke? Never a culturally united Indigenous community and now no longer a financial threat, the Haudenosaunee remained stuck in time and place. The Crown had finally vanquished all Indigenous markers of clout. The Haudenosaunee lost territory, minerals, and its substantial investment in the canal system – every last dime. For a colossal Indigenous travesty, which was the Navigation, a newly impoverished, fractious settlement could not reasonably pin the blame on Joseph Brant, on he who paved the way for the Six Nations' riches and, when you want to defy authority, on he who understood the value of a large, united critical mass. (See Chapter 1, "Setting the Course," in Culture Clubs: The Real Fate of Societies.)

 

In contemporary Canada, though, the memory of Joseph Brant has almost disappeared. Except for citizens of the Grand River settlement (many of whom didn't and still don't like Brant) and except for areas within or near the Haldimand Tract, the name Thayendanegea has fallen into an historical sinkhole. Another British victory: Anglo Canada can ignore the allies who gained it a nation.

 

So, not provoked into action by his own people, Canada ignores Brant.

 

Britain and the UEL turned Canada into a White man's country, fawning over Britain's authorities and manners.

 

Notwithstanding the Mohawk war chief's timely alliance with the Crown, notwithstanding his vital contribution to the British side in the revolutionary war, notwithstanding his numerous exotic portraits (Gilbert Stuart, George Romney, Ezra Ames), and ultimately, notwithstanding his serving the cause of the Haudenosaunee in British North America/Canada rather than the United States, the man is largely forgotten. If you hate Canada, the matter is moot. If you seek to understand the complexity of contemporary Canada, you soon come to realize why the Canadian public should know the name Thayendanegea Joseph Brant. With all his warts and brilliance. Whatever good/bad the American public believes about Brant's primary foe, George Washington, most recognize Washington's name. In twenty-one years of teaching at the University of Alberta, many of those years in Canadian Studies, I frequently asked about Brant but no one had heard of him, notwithstanding his remarkable story.

 

Could things be better for contemporary Indigenous nations? Certainly. In the eighteenth century, with only two reasonable wartime options to choose from, could Thayendanegea have made a better choice than allying with the English? Doubtful.

 

History is complex, and often a rock and hard-place squeeze. A person's reaction to impossible affordances cannot be reduced to a bunch of memes. Facts cannot be rewritten and certain leaders forgotten just because some of you don't like them – indeed, it may be because one does not like the cold hard facts, one ought to feel obliged to remember them.

 

Individuals, as they seek to survive in the face of contemporary affordances, should be judged in perpetuity less by the prisoner's dilemma and more by their kindness to others. AI can give you the math behind Thayendanegea Jospeh Brant's decisions when he faced a no-way-out scenario. But wait, there's more. Did he try to reach critical mass to gain prestige for his people? He did. Are there records showing Brant's kindness to others – Red, White and Black? There are.

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A child understands you can't escape the prisoner's dilemma, but the brave among us don't give up: “I tried my best, because that's the best anyone can do.” 

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Elephants in the room need air. Let us listen to their stories.