USABLE PASTS
OMISSIONS IN THE JOURNAL OF MAJOR JOHN NORTON, 1816 AND THE FIGHT FOR HAUDENOSAUNEE SOVEREIGNTY IN THE EARLY NINETEENTH-CENTURY
Abstract
Abstract
John Norton was a Mohawk war chief primarily remembered for his loyal
support of the British during the War of 1812. Norton was more than
just a loyalist, however. Norton, like his predecessor Joseph Brant, was a
fierce proponent of Haudenosaunee land rights. No scholars have asked
whether Norton used his journal, which he intended to be published, to
assert Haudenosaunee rights to settler audiences. I argue that through
carefully selected omissions of Haudenosaunee acts of violence and disloyalty,
and through emphasis of American brutality, Norton sought to
show settlers that the Haudenosaunee were worthy of self-governance.
References
Primary Sources
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Cruikshank, Ernest. Campaigns of 1812-1814. Niagara: Niagara Histori¬cal Society, 1902. Accessed from https://scholar.uwindsor.ca/cgi/ viewcontent.cgi?article=1016&context=swoda-windsor-region
Cruikshank, Ernest. The Documentary History of the Campaign Upon the Niagara Frontier in the Year 1812. Niagara: Lundy’s Lane Histor¬ical Society, 1900. Accessed from https://archive.org/details/ cihm_05284/page/n3
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Letter from Francis Gore to Lord Bathurst, 27 December 1815 in Benn, “Missed Opportunities and the Problem of Mohawk Chief John Norton’s Cherokee Ancestry.” Ethnohistory Vol. 59, Issue 2 (2012): 261-291.
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Letter from Thomas Jefferson to William Duane, 4 August 1812. Accessed from https://www.loc.gov/resource/mtj1.046_0212_0213/?st=text
“Memorandum, 9 January 1814,” in Charles Murray Johnston, The Val¬ley of the Six Nations: A Collection of Documents on the Indian Lands of the Grand River. Toronto: Champlain Society, 1964.
Norton, John. The Journal of Major John Norton, 1816, edited by Carl F. Klinck and James J. Talman. Toronto: The Champlain Society, 2011.
Norton, John. A Mohawk Memoir from the War of 1812, Introduced, An¬notated, and Edited by Carl Benn. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2019.
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