Episode 53: By Being Almost Murdered

Kathryn Gehred  00:06

Hello and welcome to Your Most Obedient & Humble Servant. This is a women's history podcast where we feature 18th and early 19th century women's letters that don't get as much attention as we think they should. I'm your host. Kathryn Gehred. Today I am thrilled to welcome Dr. Maeve Kane to the podcast. Maeve is an Associate Professor and the Director of Graduate Studies for the History Department at the University of Albany. Her book Shirts Powdered Red: Haudenosaunee Gender, Trade, and Exchange is about what we can learn about Haudenosaunee women through their labor and consumer choices over three centuries. Hello, Maeve.

Maeve Kane  00:41

Hi, thank you for having me.

Kathryn Gehred  00:43

Thank you so much for coming on the show. I'm really excited to talk to you before we get started about the podcast. I want to talk a little bit about your book.

Maeve Kane  00:51

Yeah, the elevator pitch for the book is, what can you know about what Indigenous women thought, specifically about issues of race, gender conversion, attempts at assimilation from what they were making and wearing. A lot of those questions historians approach from the writings of Europeans and white settlers, mostly men, sometimes women, but we don't have a lot of written archival work by indigenous women. There's oral history stuff that's really interesting, and I tried to incorporate that in the book, but mostly the book asks if you approach those questions that historians have more commonly answered with archival material by white Europeans and settlers, but instead ask them of Indigenous women and use clothing as a way to get at that, what does that say about what those people thought about the enormous changes of the 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries.

Kathryn Gehred  01:42

Well, that's super interesting. Who make up the Haudenosaunee? Who are the Haudenosaunee?

Maeve Kane  01:47

The Haudenosaunee are six nations, independent, distinct and separate. They are the Mohawk, Oneida, Cayuga, Onondaga, Seneca, and Tuscarora in the 18th century, and today, in the 21st century, they occupy their historic territories in what's now the state of New York and southern Canada.

Kathryn Gehred  02:05

How would you describe Haudenosaunee women in the 18th century and the relationship to material culture?

Maeve Kane  02:10

One of the things that I find really interesting about this period, and about how Haudenosaunee people, how Haudenosaunee women were kind of positioning themselves, is that in a lot of cases, Haudenosaunee women were buying many of the same items that white women and families were often from the same traders. Some of the materials that I work with are count books from traders. These are basically like itemized credit card receipts, where it's listing exactly what people were buying and sometimes what they were going to use it for. And some of these traders, these are white, European descent traders. They're selling to both white families and Haudenosaunee families, same exact fabric, same exact clothing. And yet you can tell in both what they're buying alongside those things and then how they use it later, that they're using it in completely different kinds of clothing. So like white families will buy buttons. They'll buy kind of interfacing type material for very structured, tailored kind of coats and things like that. And that's not what Haudenosaunee families are buying, no buttons, none of the stiff kind of tailoring materials. They're buying materials that are more or less in line with pre contact forms of dress. So they'll buy the same kind of woolens that white families were wearing, but they'll buy it for a blanket that's to be wrapped around and decorated with silk ribbons that's similar in form to like a beaver fur coat, but it's not the same kind of like structured, tailored coats that Europeans are wearing same thing with, like women's skirts, both white women and Haudenosaunee women wore skirts. White women tended to go down to about their ankles, and Haudenosaunee women's were a less full around the waist and B, about knee length, because they're doing different kinds of agricultural and household work, same materials, same sources, but radically different use cases because of kind of the gendered labor roles and the distinct cultural identity of those two groups.

Kathryn Gehred  04:03

That's so fascinating. And I think it sort of goes against the way that movies portray indigenous people at this time, the sort of imagined what an indigenous person would look like in stuff like Dances with Wolves and things like that. You don't see somebody wearing paisley, but maybe there was some similarities there, but in a unique way.

Maeve Kane  04:23

Yeah, looking towards the American Revolution, one of the things that I think brought together these communities, especially like the Mohawk and the Oneida, whose lands were increasingly encroached on by white settlers. These families are living side by side in the late 18th century. They know what each other look like. They know what each other are buying. So it's a really conscious choice to, like, not do those things. Europeans settlers in this area were really hopeful that Haudenosaunee people buying, just like, absolutely enormous amounts of cloth. And they were really buying huge amounts of cloth and clothing. Settlers took this as like, Oh, these Haudenosaunee people will be converted to Christian. Vanity really easily. From the settler side, it seemed like they were starting to assimilate to like European modes of dress. Wearing white shirts and buying a lot of woolens was taken as a hopeful sign for cushioning conversion. But Haudenosaunee people were not interested in that. They were very selective in what they bought and what they wore, and you can see that at these very deliberate choices, that they're aware of, what white settlers were wearing, aware of what was available, and they made choices that were very distinctly Haudenosaunee in that context.

Kathryn Gehred  05:28

And that makes perfect sense. It's just a new type of fabric that you can work into the culture that you already have. It doesn't mean that you're like, Well, my culture is bad now I'm completely moving into this new one. Yeah, exactly. But can use it in the way that you want to. How would you say that sort of women's roles were different between Indigenous and Haudenosaunee women and white women?

Maeve Kane  05:47

in some ways, they're very similar. Like Haudenosaunee and white women are both responsible for things like child care, household like laundry, buying cloth and clothing, maintaining and making cloth and clothing. There's a lot of similarities in some ways, in those gendered roles, but there's a really different roles when it comes to agriculture, especially especially more like working class white women in this period, where, you know, they would do some agricultural work in like market gardens or kitchen gardens, also some dairy work. Haudenosaunee women are primarily responsible for, like large scale field, plow based agriculture. Haudenosaunee women are the ones that are primarily responsible for large scale agriculture, because the way that agriculture works for the Haudenosaunee is, instead of an individual piece of land being held and worked by an individual farmer. For Haudenosaunee communities, the land is kind of cooperatively owned and managed by clan mothers, the eldest woman in a clan or a family lineage, who would kind of manage the work of her daughters in that clan. And so they're working a large piece of land cooperatively, and it's not individually held by a single person. And that's the basis of both Haudenosaunee culture. There's a lot of religious rituals and ceremonies tied to that, like cycles of the seasons and everything, but also like military and economic power, what's now the state of New York, before there's irrigation in the American Midwest in the 19th century is the most productive agricultural area in the 13 colonies, or not in the 13 colonies, because it's Haudenosaunee territory, but it's like astoundingly agriculturally productive, and that's all Haudenosaunee women's work, and it comes under military attack in the revolution.

Kathryn Gehred  07:33

And that's something that's sort of directly oppositional to white gender roles or farming seen as sort of like a masculine role for what we're talking about, specifically for this season of your most obedient and humble servant. We're talking about the American Revolution. What impact did the American Revolution have on the lives of Haudenosaunee women?

Maeve Kane  07:52

The American Revolution, in older histories of indigenous people, was often figured as this like huge moment of crisis, a big rupture with the past, and like the moment where colonialism becomes inevitable and national sovereignty is forever destroyed for indigenous nations. And I think the newer scholarship would say, and this is also what I argue in the book, that the American Revolution is enormous crisis point. It's a huge point of eventual land loss after the American Revolution. But I think the newer scholarship would argue, and I argue that it's not a point of inevitable decline, that these nations still continue to exist in the present and their sovereignty is uninterrupted in the moment of the American Revolution, though it's a huge disruption to women's lives. I mean, it is for basically all families in eastern North America at the time, but for Haudenosaunee women, specifically, the Six Nations of the Confederacy declare their neutrality in the conflict in 1775 but over the course of the next few years, after 1778 the Six Nations can no longer remain neutral. That's not really an option that's on the table anymore. And you see that in what happens in women's lives, the Six Nations have to pick sides. The Oneida and the Tuscarora ally with the Americans. The rest of the Six Nations formerly ally with the British. And for women, specifically, this means attacks on their bodies, on their homes, on their lands from various sides, a large part of the population after the American Revolution is refugees and have to resettle their own territories.

Kathryn Gehred  09:33

Wow. From the indigenous perspective, the American Revolution was just sort of one more conflict on top of many other conflicts. Was this something that felt like it was just a continuation of what they'd been living with? Or was this even bigger?

Maeve Kane  09:47

There's this moment where a set of Haudenosaunee diplomats say to Philip Schuyler, who's making overtures to the Oneida and other nations to ally with the Americans instead of the British. And these Haudenosaunee diplomats. Say to Schuyler, this is a conflict between a father and his children, and we want no part of it. And like, that's their argument for Haudenosaunee neutrality. They see this as a conflict that they don't really have part in. It's in large part because they have this existing diplomatic relationship with the British specifically, and they think it's very important to honor that diplomatic relationship. King George

Kathryn Gehred  10:21

probably saw it sort of like that as well as he's the father. There's the children. So what sort of things were indigenous people considering when they were deciding you talked about how the Haudenosaunee took their relationship with the British really seriously. So this entire idea of the American colonists being separate from the British, was that something that already kind of existed in their heads, or did they sort of see the American colonists who they were dealing with as British people?

Maeve Kane  10:44

So the Haudenosaunee were definitely aware of ethnic divisions between the American settlers. This was especially the case and kind of a point of concern for the British military during the French and Indian War a generation prior, where the Haudenosaunee were very aware of tensions between German settlers in the Mohawk Valley Dutch ancestry people at Albany and then the British military that they did not get along. The British military fear that the Haudenosaunee may have allied with the French during the French and Indian War, and that was a major concern because of Haudenosaunee military power in that conflict as well. And they were concerned that, like if the Mohawk and the Oneida or other Haudenosaunee allied with the French, that they would take along with them the Mohawk Valley Germans or the Dutch at Albany and exploit some of those kind of ethnic tensions. And when it gets to the American Revolution, I think that the Haudenosaunee were aware of the American the people who became the Continentals, they were aware of the impulse to separate, but they still viewed them as like they're all under one king, that this is a group of people that, just as Haudenosaunee had their diplomatic agreements and obligations that they'd made to the British government, that so too did The American colonists, and that the Haudenosaunee believed that that conflict would settle out because the British have been a presence on the continent for more than a century at that point, right.

Kathryn Gehred  12:10

Interesting. Now, for the purposes of this podcast, we like to get into very specifics of one document, and in this case, this is one of those unusual cases, sometimes where we have a letter that's actually from an indigenous woman. So this is a letter from the anglicized version of her name. Is Molly Brant, do you know how to pronounce her name?

Maeve Kane  12:31

Yeah. I will preface this with my Mohawk. Students tell me that my Mohawk pronunciation is very bad, so I will pronounce it, but my pronunciation is not great. Konwatsi'tsiaienni Molly Brant.

Kathryn Gehred  12:41

From my perspective, my first introduction to Molly Brant was because I work for an encyclopedia. We're writing an encyclopedia entry on Dunmore's War. And in that I was looking up Sir William Johnson, and I went to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. And I will say that this is the introductory paragraph of this encyclopedia entry about Sir William Johnson just makes him sound so messy in his personal life.

Maeve Kane  13:06

He is! Its part of what I love about him. But, yeah, he's real messy

Kathryn Gehred  13:12

Because normally they try to be so dry in this stuff, but it was just like there was no way that they could explain this and still be dry. So I'm just going to read a brief bit. By 1743 he had moved to several thousand acres of his own land near present day, Amsterdam, New York, where he called his home fort Johnson. Since 1739 he had been living with Catherine Weisenberg, a German servant who had run away from her New York City master at the age of 17. There's no record of illegal marriage, but Johnson called her his wife, and she was buried with what those who later exhumed his corpse assumed to be her wedding ring engraved with the date 16 June, 1739, the couple had three children. Catherine died in April 1759, perhaps even before that date, Johnson began a relationship with his housekeeper, Mary Molly Brant, sister of the Mohawk leader Joseph Brant, Johnson acknowledged paternity of her eight children, and in his will, which called her mother merely his prudent and faithful housekeeper, promised each the equivalent of a farmstead. So, okay, Sir William Johnson. Also okay, encyclopedia entry writer, by just saying, sister of Mohawk leader Joseph Brant.

Maeve Kane  14:17

Do you want even more messiness on top of that?

Kathryn Gehred  14:19

Oh, please, please.

Maeve Kane  14:20

Catherine Weisenberg's mother seemed to have been living at Johnson Hall after Catherine Weisenberg's death, while Molly Brant was his housekeeper slash wife.

Kathryn Gehred  14:30

Ah, very complicated.

Maeve Kane  14:32

Yeah, it's a really interesting set of family relationships.

Kathryn Gehred  14:35

So I saw that, and I'm like, there's gotta be more to this. This is like the encyclopedia, like dipping their toe into these sort of personal relationships. On your end, personally, what's your opinion of Sir William Johnson?

Maeve Kane  14:47

I find him really interesting. I don't think I would want to like go out to dinner with him. He's so interesting in the way that he positions himself. He's like his own greatest promoter. And I think that's a big part of his success, financially, militarily, etc. He's his own best booster, his own best hypeman. But like, as a person, there does seem to have been, I think, a lot of affection between both Johnson and Weisenberg and Johnson and Brant. But like, yeah, I don't think I would want to like work with the guy.

Kathryn Gehred  15:23

Yeah. So I guess I sort of jumped in there pretty deep. I do love to talk about men starting with their personal lives, because people do that with women a lot, and it's fun to do it with men too. So he was a colonial official, Sir William Johnson. It seems like he was also very interested in making money off of land acquisition, yeah, but he got this position basically as, what was his official title?

Maeve Kane  15:46

So he's eventually the Superintendent of British Indian Affairs. He was born in Ireland and sent over by his uncle to manage this parcel of land in the Mohawk Valley. And he eventually parlays that into trade and relationships with the Mohawk who are living there. And his uncle's not happy about that, because he's spending more time, like making money off of the fur trade than he is on managing his uncle's land, or spending more time speculating on additional land than actually managing his his uncle's land. And then he parlays that yet further in the French and Indian War into this baronetcy and military position, and he's the head guy of all diplomatic negotiations between the British and all indigenous nations in North America, which is a huge step up. And I think his relationship with Molly brand and her family was a huge part of that.

Kathryn Gehred  16:31

How much of that is him, and how much of that is he just happened to have this personal relationship with a mohawk woman, and he was able to sort of translate that into a position?

Maeve Kane  16:41

Molly and Joseph were members of the Mohawk Wolf Clan. Their father had been a really prominent diplomat. Their mother was probably a Clan Mother and William Johnson, before his relationship with Molly Brant, had this long standing diplomatic and trade relationship with their father, that seems to have been how they met. Some other historians of Johnson might disagree with me. I don't think Johnson was all that prominent before his relationship with that family. I think that that was a real key to his success, like a huge part of his training as a diplomat, was his relationship with this already very politically prominent Mohawk family, and then his marriage with Molly Brant was a huge part of his rise to success the way that he was able to parlay her connections into his own further formalized connections within the British system.

Kathryn Gehred  17:27

What do we know about Molly Brant's life?

Maeve Kane  17:30

Not a ton. She seemed to have met Johnson when she was fairly young, when Catherine Weisenberg was very ill. So Molly was a very noted beauty early in her life. There's kind of this apocryphal story that Johnson first saw her when she was racing horses at this big gathering, and he was so struck with her beauty, I think she was maybe 18 or 19, and he was just so struck by her beauty while she was racing horses, and became further acquainted. Then there's another apocryphal account that she may have helped take care of Catherine Weisenberg while she was dying, while she was very ill. And that was kind of part of how that connection between Johnson and Brant deepen. There's not a lot of definite stuff. She's very prominent in the background, is kind of an oxymoron. But like, she's very much in the background of Johnson's letters as like this fixture in his life, but the two letters that we're going to talk about are the only two letters that I know about that she's written, and I've done a lot of work on Molly Brant, so she's not got a lot of her own documentation, and means that her earlier life, before her marriage with Johnson, we just don't know those two accounts of like how they met, or her taking care of Catherine Weisenberg are apocryphal. They're stories told well after her death. So who knows if they're true or not.

Kathryn Gehred  18:46

In her encyclopedia entry, they mentioned that her brother was Joseph Brant. Is his anglicized name, and who was he?

Maeve Kane  18:55

Thayendanegea Joseph Brant again, Wolf Clan Mohawk. He's fairly young when Johnson and Brant marry, he's probably around 15 or so, and William Johnson talks about Joseph Brant as like my young protege, my young brother in law, Johnson arranges for Joseph Brandt to attend Eliezer Wheelock's Indian Charity School in Connecticut. This is the school that later becomes Dartmouth College. This is in like 1754, it seems to have been kind of like a college study abroad experience for Joseph Brant, in that he was there probably less than a year. He already spoke English, but it seems to have been an experience the Johnson/Brant household in the Mohawk Valley was noted from being kind of a genteel English gentry style space. Joseph Brant was very much in that space learning English style, manners and how to talk to English diplomats and politicians. And his experience at Eliezer Wheelock's Indian Charity School seemed to have been kind of a finishing school experience, like how he positioned himself. How does Joseph Brant understand? And the English and later American impulse to assimilate and erase indigenous cultures, and he reflects on that later in his life, as well of what he learned there and then after that experience, Joseph grant goes on to be a very prominent military leader in both the French and Indian War and the American Revolution. He's very much noted for his significance to the British war effort in both of those wars.

Kathryn Gehred  20:23

It seems like the whole brand family was they were politically influential family on their own within the Mohawk.

Maeve Kane  20:29

Yeah.

Kathryn Gehred  20:30

So this first letter that we're reading is from October 5, 1779 so this is after William Johnson's death, right?

Maeve Kane  20:38

Yeah. Johnson dies in 1774

Kathryn Gehred  20:40

Okay. And she is writing to Daniel Claus, who is Daniel Claus?

Maeve Kane  20:45

Daniel claus is her stepson in law. He married one of Johnson's daughters by Catherine Weisenberg, and Molly Brant seems to have been in charge of raising those girls. She is more or less his mother in law. From a Haudenosaunee perspective, is a very significant relationship. That's the most important figure in the family is the mother in law.

Kathryn Gehred  21:05

What's going on in the Revolutionary War and in Molly Brants life at this moment?

Maeve Kane  21:10

So 1777 Battle of Saratoga, the British have a huge defeat at the hands of the Continental Army at Saratoga. By 78 the Six Nations can no longer really remain neutral. In November of 1778 the Committee of Safety in the Mohawk Valley staged a middle of the night raid on Molly Brant's home at Canajoharie, in the home of many other Mohawk families at Canajoharie at about 2am rousted all of these families out of their homes, chased Molly Brant out of her home, stole her clothes, gave them to the wives and daughters of the Committee of Safety. So by the winter of 1778 Molly Brandt is at Carleton Island as a refugee, having lost her home. And then the following summer and fall, in the late summer of 1779 and finishing up as Molly Brant was writing this letter. In October of 79 George Washington had given orders for what's now called the Sullican Clionton Campaign to basically burn down Seneca, Cayuga, and Onondaga territories. By October of 79 they had burned more than 40 towns across those three nations territories hundreds of thousands of bushel of corn right before the fall harvest. So there's no food stored for the winter. There's no seed corn for the following spring. By the time that Molly was writing this letter, there's thousands of Seneca, Cayuga, and Onondaga refugees crowding into British Niagara for what's going to be a very bad winter.

Kathryn Gehred  22:37

That's so grim.

Maeve Kane  22:38

it's not a great moment for the Six Nations.

Kathryn Gehred  22:41

I guess Molly, who has something of a leadership position with the Mohawk, is going to take advantage of that a little bit at this moment. Any other context that you think would be helpful for all to understand before we read the letter?

Maeve Kane  22:52

The last piece of context would be after Saratoga fell in 1777 the previous British guy in charge, Carlton had been replaced with Frederick Haldimand. So at this point in 1779 Haldimand is fairly new in his post, and Carlton had lost his position, in part because of the loss of Saratoga, and in part because of he was not managing the diplomatic situation with the Six Nations. Well, and that's really important for understanding Molly Brandt's letter in this. Because without Saratoga, and the British loss at Saratoga, the Six Nations are the last British hold out, or last British military force in the northern department. They're not subjects of the British, but as a huge ally and a significant military power. They're the only bashion that the British have left in the northern department at that point in the war.

Kathryn Gehred  23:45

Okay, now, would you like to read this letter? Or do you want me to read the letter?

Maeve Kane  23:49

I can do the first one, and you do the second one.

Kathryn Gehred  23:52

That sounds good to me.

Maeve Kane  23:55

Molly Brant to Daniel Claus, Carleton Island, 5 October 1779

Maeve Kane  24:01

I have written to Col. [John] Butler and my brother [Joseph Brant] acquainting them with my situation, desiring their advice, as I was left no directions concerning myself and family. I have been promised by Col. [Guy] Johnson at Montreal, that I should hear from the Gen’l [Haldimand] and have his direction in order to be provided at whatever place my little service should be wanted which you know I am always ready to do. The Indians are a good deal dissatisfied on acct of the Col[onel] [Johnson’s] hasty temper, which I hope he will soon drop. Otherwise it may be disadvantageous. I need not tell you that whatever is promised or told them it ought to be performed.

Maeve Kane  24:38

Those from Canada [Kahnawake and Akwesasne] are most dissatisfied on account of [Johnson’s] taking more note of those that are suspected [of being disloyal, eg, American-allied Oneida and Tuscarora] than them that are known to be Loyal [British-allied Mohawk, Seneca, Onondaga, and Cayuga]. I tell this only to you that you advise him on that head.

Kathryn Gehred  25:00

First off, this is just a very well written letter. I think she gets right to the point. She's making her point very clearly when she talks at the beginning. It does seem what she says, whatever place my little service should be wanted. When she says her little service is she sort of being intentionally modest here. How would you interpret that line?

Maeve Kane  25:21

Yeah I think it's really strategic in a couple of ways. You see this in white women's letters of the 18th century. Molly Brant, she was responsible for hosting dinners and parties at Johnson Hall during William Johnson's lifetime. So she's really familiar with the British expectations for etiquette for women. She's familiar with that. And you see this kind of strategic modesty in white women's letters too, I think. But there's also a strain of Haudenosaunee rhetoric. Paul Williams is an Onondaga attorney who's written a lot on this, but there's this deployment of modesty and humility in Haudenosaunee oration in the 18th century, in rhetoric of like how you present yourself that always positions the speaker as humble, modest and not overstepping their own authority or their own knowledge. And I think she's kind of walking on both of those lines of the Haudenosaunee traditions of rhetoric and English expectations of kind of women's modesty in both those places.

Kathryn Gehred  26:19

Because when she gets into sort of the meat of the letter. She does say, I need not tell you that whatever is promised or told them it ought to be performed.

Maeve Kane  26:25

Molly Brant and Claus seem to have had a fairly warm working relationship. She's his mother in law, and he has his own by this point, more than 15 years service as a translator to the Mohawk as a diplomat, negotiator. So I think what's going on in this is he knows what the situation is, but she's laying out her directions as like his mother in law as a more seasoned diplomat, how are they going to approach Haldimand together? And like, here's how she wants to see him position this.

Kathryn Gehred  26:53

When she says otherwise, it may be disadvantageous. Is she saying that the British allied groups might cease to be allies? Is that sort of what she's threatening here?

Maeve Kane  27:01

Yeah there's another point. It's not in a letter by her, in one of Claus's letters, where he reports that Guy Johnson told Joseph Brant's people to go hunt to provide themselves with shoes, that Guy Johnson wasn't going to pay for him, and that Molly Brant said in response, if you tell my brothers people to go hunt for their own shoes, they will soon forget the war. So I think it's not like a threat that they'll join the Americans, but that they will no longer cease working in the British interest as allies as they had been.

Kathryn Gehred  27:33

Just give people shoes.

Maeve Kane  27:34

Yeah, Guy Johnson is kind of a jerk.

Kathryn Gehred  27:36

Yeah.

Maeve Kane  27:37

 Maybe not as messy, but like, yeah, he's not a great guy.

Maeve Kane  27:41

Who is Guy Johnson again?

Maeve Kane  27:42

Guy Johsnon is another one of Molly Brant's son in laws. Okay, so when William Johnson died in 1774 Guy Johnson was, at that point, married to Johnson's youngest daughter by Catherine Weisenberg, and Guy Johnson is the one who takes over William Johnson's job as superintendent of Indian Affairs, and he, like, kicked Molly out of her house.

Kathryn Gehred  28:03

Oh, my God.

Maeve Kane  28:04

Basically, as soon as William Johnson died, they do not seem to have had a good relationship. And in the second letter comes up a little bit more. But by late 1781 guy, Johnson lost his job as Superintendent of Indian Affairs because he was suspected of embezzling. So he's refusing, on the one hand, to provide shoes to these very important allies like Joseph Brant's people had been incredibly important throughout the war, and Johnson is like, No, I'm not going to pay for shoes. And then, on the other hand, he's dipping into royal funds for the war. He's never convicted, but he gets kicked out of his job for embezzlement.

Kathryn Gehred  28:40

Classic

Maeve Kane  28:41

Yeah.

Kathryn Gehred  28:42

The only other thing that stuck out to me from this letter is that her diplomatic advice is essentially, don't lie to us, like stop lying to us and don't make false promises, because that's bad treatment of your allies. Just from my limited knowledge, into indigenous and colonial relations, that seems like it's a theme. White colonists keep making promises and not keeping them.

Maeve Kane  29:03

Yeah and I think this is especially like, this letter is more it's not addressed to Frederick Haldimand, but it's about educating Haldimand as he's newly arrived governor and commander of the British in North America. It's written to Klaus, but it's aimed at educating Holdimand on like how you do diplomacy, and you can see that in that bit, keep the promises that are made. Guy Johnson is not keeping those promises, even though he has this long relationship with the Mohawk.

Kathryn Gehred  29:30

Huh. All right, so we've got another letter. This one's written a couple years later. I'll go ahead and read this one.

Kathryn Gehred  29:37

Molly Brant to Daniel Claus, Carleton Island, 12 April 1781

Kathryn Gehred  29:44

It touched me very sore to hear from Niagara how my younger brother Joseph Brant was used the 6th of April, by being almost murdered by Col Johnsons people, what adds to my grief and vexation is that being scarce returned safe from the rebel country, he must be thus treated by those of the kings people who always stay quietly at home and in the fort, while my brother continually exposes his life in going against the enemy taking prisoners etc as far as in his power. This usage of my brothers makes me dread the consequences, as some of the Six Nations were spectators of it, and well remember what Genl [Philip] Schuyler told them [Oneidas] that they would be ill used and despised by the Kings people for their services, of which they have now a proof for which reason I entreat his excellency General Haldimand to use his authority and settle this matter. It is hard for me to have an only brother whom I dearly love to see him thus treated, but what I am most concerned about is that it may affect the Kings Indian interest. The whole matter is, that the officers at Niagara are so haughty and proud, not knowing or considering that the King’s interest is so nearly connected with that of the Indians.

Kathryn Gehred  30:58

That last sentence, it just seems like this is sort of the summary of almost all of British relations with indigenous people. Is like the fate of your military mission is really tied with relationship with Native American people on the continent. And I think that that just seems to be the lesson that everybody just keeps forgetting over and over again. Do you think that's fair?

Maeve Kane  31:17

Indian diplomacy was a professional space. And what Molly Brant is dealing with is she's a professional and she's dealing with people who aren't professionals, these newly arrived British officers who think that they know what's going on and they don't. My colleague, Alyssa Mount Pleasant, she's a Tuscarora historian, and she calls this illiteracy in the language of diplomacy. And I think that's a really interesting way of looking at this, of like these British officers are moving into space, but they just have no concept that they don't even know what they don't know.

Kathryn Gehred  31:50

I mean, that seems like sort of specifically British and masculine kind of haughtiness, of like I can enter space and I've been given this military position, so therefore I know everything, and then just completely without even realizing it, just messing up. Yeah, but to get back to the content of the letter, what's she referencing here about the sixth of April?

Maeve Kane  32:10

So I don't actually know.

Kathryn Gehred  32:12

Oh, okay.

Maeve Kane  32:13

Joseph Brant's people in late March and early April had been preparing to attack the Oneida. The Oneida at this point are allied with the Americans, and Brant's people were preparing a raid, but they get called back from it, and by the eighth of April, Guy Johnson gives orders for Joseph Brant's people instead to go to Fort Detroit, so quite a ways away. I don't know what happened on the sixth of April, but it seems to have been in this moment where they're called back from this attack on the Oneida and then sent very far west. I'm not sure, like it seems from this, that it might have been like a friendly fire situation or some kind of situation where they were put in danger as a result of being called back. But I just don't know, GuyJohnson and Joseph Brandt never got along. That relationship deteriorated over the course of the war because he's a jerk, because he's not paying for shoes. But I have no idea what happened on the sixth of April.

Kathryn Gehred  33:10

When she says general Philip Skyler told the Oneidas that they would be ill, used and despised by the king's people. Could you tell me a little bit more about what's going on there?

Maeve Kane  33:18

Philip Schuyler had literally called it a plantation in the Saratoga area. He's living part time in Saratoga and part time in Albany, and he was the major point of diplomatic contact between the Continentals and the Oneida. He made overtures to some of the other Six Nations, including the Mohawk but the Oneida were the ones that he was able to convince to ally with the Americans. Because the Oneida, for a long time, beginning in the Seven Years' War period, had been kind of dissatisfied with Johnson. They had felt that Johnson kind of favored the Mohawk over their interests. They were dissatisfied with kind of how Johnson protected their land holding, and the Oneida ultimately allied with the Continental Army, or the Americans, because they believed that it was the best way to secure their own lands. So Skyler was really instrumental in cementing that relationship, likewise, with the Tuscarora who allied with the Americans, but Skyler was also the primary architect of the Sullivan Clinton Campaign that burned Onondaga, Cuyuga, Seneca territory. So early in the war, he was very invested in trying to keep the Six Nations who were not allied with the Americans neutral, at the very least. And then later in the war, like he uses this knowledge of diplomacy against the Six Nations who ally with the British.

Kathryn Gehred  34:37

And again, she sort of talks about her own concerns about her brother and her brother possibly dying, but then she says what I'm most concerned about is how it may affect the King's Indian interests. So that, again, seems like pretty clear diplomacy to me. How would you describe what she's trying to accomplish there?

Maeve Kane  34:53

I think it's another one of these deployments of female concern, like familial concern there with her. Concern for her brother, Joseph. She's got almost 30 years of experience as a diplomat. By the point of the American Revolution, she's got way more experience than these British officers at Niagara and especially thinking about that last couple of years from like Saratoga through the Sullivan Clinton campaign in the winter of 1779 underlining This is going very badly for the British, and they need these allies.

Kathryn Gehred  35:24

Molly Brant being such a professional diplomat, but it comes across sort of being so respectful to these people who are giving her and her people such little respect. And it just makes me frustrated when I read it, but she's doing an excellent job. She's doing an incredible job. But it's one of those things like, the more you learn about American history, the more you just get angry. Sometimes, angry sometimes. Yeah, so from all of your research into Molly Brant, do you feel like you have an understanding of what she was like as a person and her personality? I know that's a really tough question.

Maeve Kane  35:52

I feel like I have an understanding of her as a professional. I don't feel like I have an understanding of her as a person. These are the only two letters that I know of that are written by her. I'll be honest, I'm not even sure if they were written by her. If they were dictated by her, they're in it a copy book in the hand of other people. I think she was literate. There's a reference that she wrote to her brother, Joseph Brant at different points in Mohawk and like housekeeping in this period, especially a large house like Johnson Hall or Fort Johnson needed numeracy and literacy, so I think that she was probably literate in English and Mohawk, but we don't for sure have a letter in her hand. So the other piece of how, how I understand her as a person, is you get these little glimpses of her diplomatic negotiations, separate from the diplomatic negotiations of her husband William Johnson, where we don't have her own letters on this, but we get like these second hand reports through Johnson and his descriptions sometimes of what she's doing. And one of these instances that I find really interesting was during the early 1760s, late in the French and Indian War. There's this instance where this British officer, I think he was a lieutenant, had a son with a Seneca woman, and he had been stationed out in Seneca territory in what's now far western New York. And then the British lieutenant was recalled. He was stationed somewhere else, no longer in Seneca territory, and he wanted to take his son with him, and his Seneca wife just basically disappeared with the kid and said, No, you're not going to take my son. Because in Haudenosaunee, frameworks of family, children are part of the wife's family, part of the mother's family. They get their clan and their national belonging through their mother's line, and not their father. And divorce seems to have been pretty easy for Haudenosaunee families, just a matter of social separation, but the British officer had no framework for this. He was really upset by this, and kept writing Johnson letters of like, help me get my son back, and trying to get Johnson to intervene in this. And Johnson kept deferring to Molly, of like, she'll make inquiries on your behalf, and she'll do this and that, and she does seem to have done that, but the last letter on it was Johnson reported that Molly said that the Seneca wife's decision was final and that she wouldn't be further pursuing it. And I think that it shows that Molly Brant has her own diplomatic connections, separate from her husband. That she has these connections to pursue this Seneca Nation is a separate nation from Mohawk Nation, even if they're in the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. So she has her own diplomatic connections, and she's willing to at least use them to make connections on behalf of this British officer, but that she's still working within Haudenosaunee frameworks of family, that what the Seneca mother, what her decision on the custody of that child was, was ultimately about Seneca frameworks of family, and Molly Brant prioritized those.

Kathryn Gehred  38:53

That's fascinating.

Maeve Kane  38:55

There's so much stuff about her, like that apocryphal story of her on the horse, and she's so beautiful and whatever, that's so very like, steeped in this tradition of describing Indian women as like these sexually available beauties who are interested in marrying white men, it's hard to get a sense of her as a person through that lens. Other people write about her in her later life as like this very gracious hostess, both at Johnson Hall during Johnson's lifetime and later when she's living as a widow in Canada. And they write about her as this very gracious hostess who blends English manners with Haudenosaunee diplomacy. You get a sense of her in that and she seems to have been a very devoted mother to her own children, to her step daughters by Johnson, but there's not a lot of her you get these strategic deployments in these letters to Claus. She's very professional and on top of her stuff, but that doesn't tell you what somebody is like a person, especially when being a white woman, looking at her through this lens of all these other white people's letters about her, I don't feel like I have a sense of who she is.

Kathryn Gehred  40:11

And I think that's totally fair. Maybe she didn't want people to have a sense of who she was. Maybe she gets to keep that and that's okay. Yeah. What do you think is the most important thing that you want people who listen this podcast to sort of know or understand about Molly Brant's experience at the American Revolution.

Maeve Kane  40:28

The American Revolution is really easy to read as this huge loss for Indigenous women, especially Indigenous women who are members of nation, ballied with the British and Molly Brant is exceptional in some ways because of her marriage to William Johnson and her family's diplomatic and political prominence, but I think she's pretty typical in the losses that she experienced, that nighttime rate on her home, the loss of her home, her experience as a refugee at different points in the war. But I think you can see in her letters that, yes, she experienced those losses, and yes, she had to deal with Guy Johnson, these British officers at Niagara who didn't take her seriously. But she never lost her agency. What we don't see in these letters is that she is largely successful in shaping Haldimand's relationship with the Six Nations. Guy Johnson loses his job. Molly Brant gets a pension from the British government. So she experiences these loss other indigenous women, Mohawk, Oneida, other members of the Six Nations, experienced these loss during the American Revolution and the post war period especially was very hard with enormous punitive land losses in territories that would become New York. But those women and their nations persisted. The nations are still here in 2024 and the women like Molly Brant were able to exercise agency within that crisis, shape the diplomacy of that period and shape how their nations navigated that crisis. Family and diplomacy are not always that separate.

Kathryn Gehred  42:09

Wow. That was extremely well put.

Maeve Kane  42:12

Thank you.

Kathryn Gehred  42:12

Thank you so much for coming on the show. This has been such a fascinating conversation.

Maeve Kane  42:17

Yeah, thank you for having me.

Kathryn Gehred  42:19

So again, this is Dr Maeve Kane, her book is called Shirts Powdered Red: Haudenosaunee Gender, Trade, and Exchange, and you should read it immediately. So I will put links to everything in the show notes. And for my listeners, I am as ever, your most obedient and humble servant. Thank you.

Kathryn Gehred  42:41

Your Most Obedient & Humble Servant is a production of R2 Studios, part of the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. I'm Kathryn Gehred, the creator and host of this podcast, Jeanette Patrick and Jim Ambuske are the executive producers. Hayley Madl is our graduate assistant. Special thanks to Virginia Humanities for allowing me to use their recording studio. If you enjoyed this episode, please tell a friend and be sure to rate and review the series in your podcast app. For more great history podcasts, head to r2studios.org. Thanks for listening.