Mohawk Political Leader

Influence.

Elder sister of the Mohawk leader Joseph Brant (Thayendanegea), Mary, called Molly, was the common-law wife of the most powerful British official west of the Allegheny Mountains. She was also the most influential Mohawk leader during the French and Indian War and the Revolution. Molly Brant looked after the interests of her people and spared them the devastation visited upon other Iroquois tribes.

Marriage.

Molly's station in life improved markedly when she was seventeen: her mother, Margaret, married the sachem Brant, a military leader and trader. At the age of twenty-one Brant was already a mature woman by Iroquois standards. She had become an important political figure around the council fire at Canajoharie. She was adept as a healer, apparently having some command of herbal medicines. Brant took another step up in the world in 1759, when she entered the household...