William Johnson

William Johnson was Britain's superintendent of Indian affairs in the north, and the most effective intermediary between the Crown and the Iroquois Confederacy that either side produced. He came from County Meath to the Mohawk valley in 1738 to manage an uncle's land, learned the Mohawk language, traded honestly enough to be trusted, and was adopted into the nation with a Mohawk name meaning a great business. His household at Johnson Hall was effectively a diplomatic centre; his long-term partner Molly Brant, a Mohawk woman of consequence in her own right, was central to his influence, and her brother Joseph Brant grew up in that orbit and was educated at Johnson's expense. He raised Iroquois and colonial forces for the Seven Years' War, won the battle of Lake George in 1755 - one of the few British successes of that season - and was made a baronet for it, and later took Fort Niagara. After the war he negotiated the settlement of Pontiac's War and then the Treaty of Fort Stanwix in 1768, which moved the boundary line west and opened enormous tracts to settlement, benefiting speculators including himself while ceding land belonging largely to peoples who were not at the table. He died suddenly in 1774 after speaking for hours at a council in the heat. The relationships he had built held long enough that most of the Iroquois sided with Britain in the Revolution the following year, which cost them their homeland. He had a large number of children by Molly Brant and by Catherine Weissenberg before her, and provided for them all. His estate passed to his son John and his nephew Guy, both of whom served the Crown in the Revolution and were attainted and dispossessed by New York. Johnson Hall still stands. The Iroquois Confederacy itself split over which side to take in that war, the first time it had divided since its founding.

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