1. Objectifs

Intentions :
« This article analyzes the ways in which some members of one prominent, highly controversial, and much-mythologized Six Nations family, the Brants, used marriage politics and gender relationships over time to pursue individual and collective benefit in their relationships with the British in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century northeastern North America. » (page non disponible)

Questions/Hypothèses :
« In what follows below I will suggest that as the Mohawk became far less significant militarily to the British in the aftermath of the loss of American independence, and as the British administration reneged on previous promises, the politics of marriage and sexuality shifted. » (page non disponible)

2. Méthode

Échantillon/Matériau :
Entre autres documents, l’auteure a utilisé plusieurs biographies de Mary (Moly) Brant et Joseph Brant.

Type de traitement des données :
Réflexion critique

3. Résumé

« I focus first on Koñwatsiãtsiaiéñni or Mary (’Molly’) Brant, the partner of British Indian Superintendent William Johnson from the late 1750s until his death in 1774, and later a key ally of the British during the American revolutionary war. I then consider the family political strategies of the descendants of both Koñwatsiãtsiaiéñni and of her brother Thayendenegea (Joseph Brant), and their performance of gender roles between the mid-eighteenth century and the 1830s. » (page non disponible) « More pointedly, however, I also want to point to the necessity for First Nations interlocutors of the British to act out roles with political implications in the effort to communicate appropriate familiarity with British meaning systems. If Mary Brant presented herself as a wealthy hostess, and Joseph Brant presented himself as a courteous warrior who spared women and children, for example, such roles had political meaning in different cultural contexts, and their performance required a degree of self-consciousness. The necessity for performances that could be read in different cultural contexts was sharpened by the fact that Mary Brant’s partnership with Johnson was part of inter-related family and military alliances as well as being an individual relationship. It is consonant with this that Molly Brant played an important and very public, diplomatic role in Mohawk-British relations. » (page non disponible)