George Henry Martin Johnson

George Henry Martin Johnson ( Onwanonsyshon ; October 7, 1816 , † February 19, 1884 ) was a chief of the Mohawk .

Chief John "Smoke" Johnson's eldest son was born in his mother's family home on the Grand River . In the early 1830s he attended the Mohawk Institute in Brantford , headed by Abram Belles , where he stood out for his particular thirst for learning and a talent for languages. In 1840 the Reverend Adam Elliot made him an interpreter for the Anglican Mission on the reservation.

This was followed by other posts such as the interpreter for the property manager and the wood forester in the reservation. In addition, there were various functions in the Council of the Six Nations , which made him an important figure in shaping relationships between whites and Indians in the region for decades. In the house of Reverend Elliot he met his sister-in-law Emily Susanna Howells , a cousin of the writer William Dean Howells . They married against the wishes of their two families in 1853. For the wedding, Johnson built a large house, Chiefswood , on the banks of the Great River, after which he got his Indian name (Onwanonsyshon - lord of the big house). His four children grew up here, including the poet E. Pauline Johnson .

Johnson's campaign against the illegal alcohol trade and theft of timber resulted in two attacks on his life. In 1865 he was passed out for five days after being beaten by two men, and in 1873 he was gunned down near his home. He survived both attacks, but subsequently suffered from neuralgia and erysipelas .

In the last decade of his life, Johnson devoted himself primarily to the affairs of the agricultural society he founded on the reservation, and he was also a member of the Provincial Horticultural Society . As a well-known representative of his people, he was often invited to official occasions (including Alexander Graham Bell's demonstration of his telephone in 1876). He advised students of Iroquois culture and social organization and was friends with the American philologist Horatio Emmons Hale . He died in 1884 of an erysipelas infection that led to his pyaemia .

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• Dictionary of Canadian Biography - Johnson, George Henry Martin
• George Henry Martin Johnson in the database of Find a Grave (English)