Six Nations Diplomat

At the dawn of the American Revolution, Molly Brant, a Mohawk Indian, was the thirty-nine-year-old widowed partner of the legendary Sir William Johnson, and mother of their eight young children. For the past fifteen years, she had assisted Sir William, Britain's Superintendent for Indian Affairs, and hero of the French and Indian War, as he negotiated the relationship between Britain and its colonies with her people, the Six Nations confederacy, sometimes called the Iroquois. For all her adult life, her personal identity and her children's property rights had been shaped by her deceased partner's loyalty to the king of Great Britain. Now a time of decision was coming. Brant was still recovering from the agonizing pain of Sir William's death shortly before the outbreak of war: would she cast her lot with the colonists who were trying to seize power in a region her people regarded as the Six Nations heartland, or would she remain loyal to the king, and use her great influence to convince her people to do the same? Drawing heavily on primary sources, this full biography of the Mohawk leader chronicles her task to carve out a decent future for her children and her people in a world that threatened to make homeless refugees of them all.