The Three Faces of Molly Brant

Kerry Abel is a professor of history at Carleton University. She is the author of Drum Songs: Glimpses of Dene History, co-editor of Aboriginal Resource Use in Canada: Historical and Legal Aspects, and co-editor of Northern Visions: New Perspectives on the North in Canadian History.

Molly Brant is one of the most intriguing figures in 18th-century North
American history. Instrumental in keeping much of the Six Nations
Confederacy allied to the British during the American Revolution, she
probably deserves more attention than her more-famous brother Joseph.
Unfortunately, so little about her remains in the historical record that
writing a full-scale biography is impossible. Intended to fill the gaps,
Earle Thomas’s “life and times” study ultimately disappoints.

The book is carefully researched and attractively presented. However,
the author does not know enough about the social history and Iroquois
politics of the era to place Molly Brant’s life in context or assess
her choices convincingly. There are problems with documentation and with
the use of evidence. For example, Thomas will provide conflicting
interpretations of an event, and then propose a third scenario that he
believes is the truth, but without providing either the sources of the
rejected alternatives or evidence to convince us of the superiority of
his own position. More careful editing would have helped eliminate such
other problems as repeated information or references to people who are
not introduced until later in the book. Too much of the primary source
material is simply taken at face value; a more imaginative
interpretation would have made for a more interesting narrative.

The book succeeds in drawing together what little is known about Molly
Brant from a variety of sources, but in the end it fails to provide
fresh insight into the significance of her life.