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Joseph Brant, Mohawk Chief (25)

John R. Smith, after George Romney. Joseph Fayadeneega, called the Brant, the Great Captain of the Six Nations. Engraving, 1779. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress (25)
[Digital ID# ppmsca-15712]

Joseph Brant, Mohawk Chief 

Angered by attacks on Indian villages, Tayadenaga or Joseph Brant (1742—1807), a Mohawk chief educated at Eleazar Wheelock’s Indian School in Connecticut, joined with American loyalists and British rangers, to terrorize the New York–Pennsylvania border regions during the American Revolution. In November 1778, loyalist rangers and Brant’s native forces attacked the Cherry Valley, New York, settlement, killing forty-seven, most of them women and children. Brant’s frontier attacks—in particular the Cherry Valley Massacre—led to General Sullivan’s retaliatory campaign of 1779.