Hendrick Theyanoguin

This engraving was sold in London after Hendrick's death at the Battle of Lake George. He was wearing a British officer's uniform.

Hendrick Theyanoguin (* around 1691 in Westfield, Massachusetts ; † September 8, 1755 in the Battle of Lake George ), also Tiyanoga , King Hendrick and, after 1750, Hendrick Peters , was an influential chief and orator of the Mohawk , the most populous tribe in the Iroquois League . He was a member of the Bear Clan (German Bear Clan ) and lived temporarily in Canajoharie (English Upper Mohawk Castle, German Upper Mohawk Castle) in the British colony of New York. Hendrick had a close alliance with Sir William Johnson , Superintendent of Indian Affairs .

The two Hendricks

There were two tribal leaders among the Mohawk with the same Christian first name Hendrick , which they had received when they were baptized, namely Hendrick Theyanoguin (1691-1755) and Hendrick Tejonihokarawa (1660-1735). Since both were also called Hendrick Peters for a time , their biographies were interwoven until the late 20th century. In contrast: Tejonihokarawa belonged to the Wolf Clan and lived in Tionondaga , the Lower Castle (dt. Lower Castle ), the closer to the present-day Albany is. Together with three other Mohawk chiefs, Tejonihokarawa visited England and Queen Anne in 1710 . They asked the Queen of England to stop French influence in North America and to send English missionaries. The diplomacy of the Mohawk strengthened their hold on power in the colonial period of North America.

Life

Hendrick Theyanoguin was born in Westfield, Massachusetts in 1691 . His father was a Mahican and his mother was from the Mohawk tribe. Since the Iroquois were structured matrilinearly , Hendrick became a tribesman of the Mohawk in their eyes. In 1692 he was baptized by Godfridius Dellius from the Dutch Reformed Church. As a child he was called Long Bow and was later called Theyanoguin as an adult . The English called him Hendrick Peters or King Hendrik , the French gave him the name Tête Blanche (German: white head) because of his white hair.

As a young man, Hendrick came to the Mohawk settlement of Canajoharie , called Upper Castle by the English . It was on the Mohawk River west of today's city of Schenectady in the US state of New York. Here he was elected chief of the Bear Klan and was thus also a member of the Mohawk Council (dt. Mohawk Tribal Council). However, he was not one of the fifty league sachems of the Iroquois Grand Council (dt. Great Council of the Iroquois), in which all five or six tribes of the Iroquois were represented. Theyanoguin tried to consolidate the alliance of the Iroquois with the English and to maintain the neutrality of the Iroquois in the permanent conflict between the French and the English in North America. The Iroquois League remained neutral in King George's War (1744-1748), although many Mohawk warriors wanted to support the British troops. Conrad Weiser , a German immigrant and successful diplomat between the colonists and the Iroquois, visited Theyanoguin and other chiefs in Canajoharie in July 1745.

Missionary David Zeisberger visited Theyanoguin on February 3, 1745 and noted in his diary that the Indian king was baptized and was called Hendrick . In 1746 appointed Governor George Clinton of New York William Johnson for Commissary of New York Indian Affairs (. Commissioner of Indian Affairs dt in New York). Johnson was allied with Theyanoguin at this time, which confirms his expense account from 1746 to 1747 with the listing of corresponding donations to the Indians. In the fall of 1746 Theyanoguin traveled to Montreal with a Mohawk delegation . They accepted gifts from the French governor Charles de Beauharnois. On the way back, they attacked and killed some French carpenters on La Motte Island at the northern end of Lake Champlain . To catch and punish Theyanoguin, the French sent a search party. But to no avail, because the Mohawk chief and his company returned safe and sound.

In the French and Indian War ( Seven Years War ) (1754-1763) Johnson was commissioned to lead an expedition together with his Indian allies against Fort Saint-Frédéric in order to stop the French advance southwards. Under Theyanoguin's command were about 300 Mohawk warriors who joined Johnson's expedition on Lake George. They intended to surprise the French but were lured into a trap by them. On September 8, 1755, Theyanoguin rode a horse that Johnson had given him. The horse, hit by a bullet, fell to the ground and Theyanoguin was killed under French bayonets. The Mohawk lost two war chiefs and thirty other warriors in the Battle of Lake George . The British withdrew as they suffered heavy losses and Johnson was also wounded. In the course of the battle, however, the English were able to defeat the French expeditionary force under the German general Ludwig August von Dieskau .

literature

• Fred Anderson: Crucible of War: The Seven Years' War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754–1766, New York: Knopf, 2000. ISBN 0-375-40642-5 .
• Barbara Sivertsen: Turtles, Wolves, and Bears: A Mohawk Family History (1996), genealogy, reprint Heritage Books, 2007
• Dean R. Snow: Searching for Hendrick: Correction of a Historic Conflation , New York History, Summer 2007.

Web links

• Hendrick Theyanoguin

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Dean R. Snow: Searching for Hendrick , p. 1 ( Memento of May 20, 2008 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on August 20, 2012
2. ^ Dean R. Snow: Searching for Hendrick , p. 7.
3. ^ Dean R. Snow: Searching for Hendrick , p. 7; 9
4. ^ Dean R. Snow: Searching for Hendrick , p. 9.
5. ^ Dean R. Snow: Searching for Hendrick , p. 12.