Thayendanegea (Joseph Brant)

This ca. 1785 portrait of Thayendanegea (anglicanized to “Joseph Brant”) is in the collections of the British Museum. The portrait has for years been attributed to the American artist Gilbert Stuart, but recent scholarship has cast doubt on that attribution. Brant, whose mother was Shawnee and whose father was a Mohawk Wolf Clan chief, attended Eleazar Wheelock’s Indian Charity School in Lebanon, Connecticut, gaining a strong understanding of European religion and cultural mores. His sister, Konwatsi’tsiaienni (or Molly Brant), had eight children with Sir William Johnson, the British superintendent of Indian affairs for the northern district. After leading a company of Mohawk and Oneida volunteers against Pontiac’s forces during Pontiac’s War, Brant became something of a cultural ambassador between the Haudenosaunee (Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy) and the British. He attended the negotiations of the Treaty of Fort Stanwix in 1768, traveled to London from 1775 to 1776 to represent the Mohawk in land negotiations, and advised Johnson and his successor Guy Johnson on their interactions with the Haudenosaunee. Brant sided with the British during the American Revolution, receiving a land grant in Ontario for his service. Brant’s Canadian property eventually became the Six Nations Reserve.