A provocative new biography of the man who forged America's
alliance with the Iroquois
William Johnson was scarcely more than a boy when he left Ireland
and his Gaelic, Catholic family to become a Protestant in the
service of Britain's North American empire. In New York by 1738,
Johnson moved to the frontiers along the Mohawk River, where he
established himself as a fur trader and eventually became a
landowner with vast estates; served as principal British
intermediary with the Iroquois Confederacy; command British,
colonial, and Iroquois forces that defeated the French in the
battle of Lake George in 1755; and created the first groups of
"rangers," who fought like Indians and led the way to the Patriots'
victories in the Revolution.
As Fintan O'Toole's superbly researched, colorfully dramatic
narrative makes clear, the key to Johnson's signal effectiveness
was the style in which he lived as a "white savage." Johnson had
two wives, one European, one Mohawk; became fluent in Mohawk; and
pioneered the use of Indians as active partners in the making of a
new America. O'Toole's masterful use of the extraordinary (often
hilariously misspelled) documents written by Irish, Dutch, German,
French, and Native American participants in Johnson's drama
enlivens the account of this heroic figure's legendary career; it
also suggests why Johnson's early multiculturalism unraveled, and
why the contradictions of his enterprise created a historical dead
end.
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