{"title":"John Norton Reconsidered: Influence, Blood, and Belonging in the British Empire and Haudenosaunee Confederacy, 1786–1823","authors":"Nathan Ince","doi":"10.1215/00141801-10999200","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"\n John Norton (fl. 1770–1823) has long fascinated historians. After having been taken in by the prominent Mohawk leader Thayendanegea Joseph Brant as a young man, Norton claimed to imperial outsiders that he occupied a position of great influence among the Haudenosaunee. Norton bolstered this assertion with the improbable story that his own father had been Cherokee. While many historians have accepted Norton’s claims, there is good reason to reconsider this view. Existing records, including Six Nations council minutes, suggest that not only did Norton misrepresent his ancestry, he greatly exaggerated his standing among the Grand River communities. Rather than an authentic representative of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, it appears much more likely that Norton mobilized his claims of Cherokee blood and Six Nations belonging in order to gain remarkable influence in the British Atlantic World. Recognizing the power of these claims, his opponents eventually succeeded in undermining Norton’s self-presentation, eventually resulting in his political marginalization and ultimately in his exile from the Grand River under pain of death.","PeriodicalId":51776,"journal":{"name":"Ethnohistory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3000,"publicationDate":"2024-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Ethnohistory","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1215/00141801-10999200","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q4","JCRName":"ANTHROPOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
John Norton (fl. 1770–1823) has long fascinated historians. After having been taken in by the prominent Mohawk leader Thayendanegea Joseph Brant as a young man, Norton claimed to imperial outsiders that he occupied a position of great influence among the Haudenosaunee. Norton bolstered this assertion with the improbable story that his own father had been Cherokee. While many historians have accepted Norton’s claims, there is good reason to reconsider this view. Existing records, including Six Nations council minutes, suggest that not only did Norton misrepresent his ancestry, he greatly exaggerated his standing among the Grand River communities. Rather than an authentic representative of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, it appears much more likely that Norton mobilized his claims of Cherokee blood and Six Nations belonging in order to gain remarkable influence in the British Atlantic World. Recognizing the power of these claims, his opponents eventually succeeded in undermining Norton’s self-presentation, eventually resulting in his political marginalization and ultimately in his exile from the Grand River under pain of death.
期刊介绍:
Ethnohistory reflects the wide range of current scholarship inspired by anthropological and historical approaches to the human condition. Of particular interest are those analyses and interpretations that seek to make evident the experience, organization, and identities of indigenous, diasporic, and minority peoples that otherwise elude the histories and anthropologies of nations, states, and colonial empires. The journal publishes work from the disciplines of geography, literature, sociology, and archaeology, as well as anthropology and history. It welcomes theoretical and cross-cultural discussion of ethnohistorical materials and recognizes the wide range of academic disciplines.