Indian Agent: Sir William Johnson

Being an Indian Agent for either Britain or America was a demanding job.  Some Agents respected the Native tribes they worked with and tried to keep Settlers from encroaching on their lands and rights as best they could.  Others saw their role as promoting the interests of the Nation that appointed them no matter the needs and concerns of the Natives.  And some sought to use their power to acquire land and monetary kickbacks from all sides.  The first of such men, who demonstrates all of the above, is Sir William Johnson, who was British Agent to the Iroquois/Haudenosaunee and later Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the British Independent in the Northern Colonies.  While he took a genuine interest in the Mohawk people with whom he dealt, he also became the owner of thousands of acres of their property. 

William Johnson was born in 1715 in County Meath, Ireland.  His uncle, Admiral Peter Warren, purchased a tract of undeveloped land along the south side of the Mohawk River.  Warren wanted to establish a township in New York and convinced his nephew, William, to head up the project.  In 1738, William arrived with twelve Protestant Irish families to clear and develop the land.  To assist with the work, he purchased several African slaves.  He soon realized how lucrative trade with the Natives could be and bought his own land on the other side of the river, erecting a store and sawmill.  During this time, the Mohawk were experiencing a population decline due to European diseases and constant warfare with other tribes.  They hoped that establishing closer ties with Great Britain through Johnson might give them greater leverage in New York. 

In 1744, during the American phase of King George's War (War of the Austrian Succession), Johnson was appointed as New York's Agent to the Iroquois, made a Colonel and ordered to raise and equip a regiment of Natives and Colonists to fight against the French.  Working with Theyanoguin, a Mohawk leader, Johnson did raise and equip several raiding parties of warriors to fight against the French.  At the end of the War, though, the casualties among the Mohawk were causing them to rethink their relationship with him.  Johnson had also cut ties with his uncle, Peter Warren, over running conflicts among New York's colonial officials and personal family drama not relevant here.  In 1751, fed up, Johnson resigned as Indian Agent.  Theyanoguin and a delegation of Mohawk came to Governor Clinton in 1753 and announced that they believed the Covenant Chain of Treaties to be broken for a variety of reasons.  They demanded that Johnson be reinstated as Indian Agent, which he was.

Having learned several valuable lessons from the earlier fiasco, Johnson determined to be better prepared for the French and Indian War, 1755-1762.  Fate would once again intervene in the form of squabbling bureaucrats, but this time Johnson knew how to play the various competing sides.  In 1755, his forces prevented the French from fortifying Crown Point in 1755.  As a result of his conduct, Johnson was made a baronet and entitled to be called Sir William.  Meanwhile, as the War progressed, the Crown stripped colonial officials of control of diplomatic affairs with the Natives and created their own Indian Department.  Johnson became the first Superintendent for Indian Affairs in the Northern Colonies.  Johnson hoped to use his office to the benefit of the Natives with whom he was most closely associated, the Iroquois in general and the Mohawk in particular. 

Johnson had varied success throughout the War recruiting Natives to fight for Great Britain, depending on the successes and failures of succeeding British commanders.  In 1758, when the British commander besieging Fort Niagara was killed, Johnson, who was leading almost a thousand Six Nations warriors, took overall command and captured the Fort.  With the defeat of the French in the final battles in America by 1760, Johnson and his deputy George Croghan were engaged in diplomacy with various tribes who had been allies of the French, trying to conciliate them to the British Crown. 

The Mohawk gifted Johnson with a tract of several thousand acres of land.  By the time of his death, Johnson was in possession of over 170,000 acres of former Mohawk territory.  In 1762, he founded the city of Johnstown, where he established a school for both White and Mohawk children.  There he built Johnson Hall, his estate which still survives to this day.  He was also one of the largest slaveholders in the Northern colonies.  He later built Anglican Churches at Johnstown and Canajoharie.  He assisted the British to bring about a diplomatic solution to Pontiac's War in 1764, through the Treaty of Fort Niagara.  He was a proponent of the Royal Proclamation of 1763, which forbade White settlement beyond the Appalachian Mountains.  During the negotiations for the Treaty of Fort Stanwix in 1768, his speculator's eye for land caught the best of him.  He pushed the treaty boundary 400 miles further to the West than the original Proclamation line, which would enable him and other White land speculators to get access to more land.  In the years following the Fort Stanwix Treaty, he continued to work among the Natives, trying to prevent the re-emergence of an alliance that might bring on another Native rebellion.  His final success was the treaty negotiations that ended Lord Dunmore's War in 1774.  He died the same year.

In additional to his controversial land deals, Johnson's dealing with the Brant family have also brought him into question.  Johnson had relationships with both European and Native women.  One source estimated that he had over 100 children.  Not all of them were mixed-race.  In his will, he acknowledged children he had by Catherine Weisenberg, a German immigrant, and Molly Brant, as well as several children by unnamed mothers.  Molly and Johnson had 8 children who survived to inherit from their father's will.  Johnson's relationship with Molly put him in close contact with her brother, Joseph, a rising war leader among the Mohawks.  Perhaps realizing that another war was looming on the horizon, Johnson is alleged to have said to Joseph Brant on his deathbed, "control your people."  The Iroquois demanded that Johnson's nephew, Guy, take his place as Indian Agent and the Crown acceded to their wish. 

Though Johnson's land acquisitions remain controversial, his overall record indicates that he tried to represent the interests of the Natives as best he could, gaining favorable terms for them in several treaties.  He was willing to butt heads with colonial and British officials, including Lord Jeffrey Amherst, who had no love for Natives.  For this reason, Natives preferred dealing with Johnson more than any other White official and Pontiac insisted that he would surrender only to Johnson.