Molly Brant: Clan Mother, Diplomat, Intelligence Operative

Konwatsi'tsiaienni, known to the British as Molly Brant, held authority that British officers repeatedly documented and that American commanders tried and failed to counter. A Mohawk clan mother, she wielded influence over the Six Nations through traditional Haudenosaunee political structures that had nothing to do with British military rank. She was also a practical intelligence operative who sent a warning in August 1777 that changed the outcome of a battle. The primary sources are in the Public Archives of Canada.

In Haudenosaunee society, clan mothers held substantial political authority. They selected the sachems who represented their clans in council, and they retained the authority to remove sachems who failed to serve the people well. The clan mother's voice in council carried weight that no British military commission could replicate or replace. Molly Brant held this position within the Mohawk Turtle Clan, and she had reinforced it through her long relationship with Sir William Johnson, the British Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Northern Colonies, with whom she had eight children.

Johnson died in 1774. Molly Brant returned to Canajoharie, the Mohawk village where she had been raised. When the war began in 1775, she was living there with her children. She chose to support the British cause, sheltering Loyalists who were fleeing through the region, sending arms and supplies to British-allied forces, and maintaining the intelligence networks that her position and relationships gave her access to.

In August 1777, American General Nicholas Herkimer was marching a militia column north toward Fort Stanwix, besieged by British and Haudenosaunee forces. Molly Brant, at Canajoharie, learned of the column's approach and dispatched runners to warn the British commander. The warning reached the British and their Haudenosaunee allies in time to position their forces before Herkimer's column arrived. The resulting ambush at Oriskany on August 6, 1777 was one of the bloodiest engagements of the war.

The Patriots discovered that Brant had sent intelligence to the Loyalists. Twice they came at night to search her house. The searches confirmed what she had done but could not undo what the warning had enabled. She and her children fled Canajoharie after the Patriot retaliation, losing most of their belongings. She moved to Fort Niagara, where she continued her diplomatic and intelligence work on behalf of the British and the Haudenosaunee.

Molly Brant to Daniel Claus, October 5, 1779. Claus was the deputy British Indian Department commissioner. The letter is in the Claus Papers at the Public Archives of Canada, MG 19-F1, reel 2, page 135. It documents her diplomatic activities at Onondaga in 1778, where she addressed the wavering Six Nations council and persuaded chiefs who had been considering a separate peace with the Americans to remain committed to the British alliance.

After the war, the British government recognized her contributions with a pension of 100 pounds per year, a house in Kingston, Ontario, and a land grant of 116 acres. The American government offered her compensation to return to the Mohawk Valley. She refused. She remained in Kingston until her death in 1796. The United States New York legislature had ruled that Brant and her children, as Indians, could not own the 15,000 acres bequeathed to them by Sir William Johnson's will, and declared it legally belonging to his heir.