White Savage: William Johnson and the Invention of America

by Fintan O'Toole

Book Overview

A provocative new biography of the man who forged America's alliance with the IroquoisWilliam Johnson was scarcely more than a boy when he left Ireland and his Gaelic, Catholic family to become a Protestant in the service of Britain's North American empire. In New York by 1738, Johnson moved to the frontiers along the Mohawk River, where he established himself as a fur trader and eventually became a landowner with vast estates; served as principal...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0374281289
• ISBN13: 9780374281281
• Release Date: October 2005
• Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux
• Length: 402 Pages
• Weight: 1.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Fascinating biography, masterfully told

This is an immensely enjoyable book. As a fan of Colonial history, I find Johnson himself is a subject of inexhaustible interest. Author O'Toole brings to the table a lyrical yet droll Anglo-Irish style and a master's hand at story telling. Many of the chapters are framed with illustrative incidents from Johnson's life that give theme and sweep to the historical accounts sandwiched between them. O'Toole also uses Johnson to bring the vast and complex colonial frontier (when upstate New York and Ohio were exciting places) to life with a boundless appreciation for all the many participants - Native Americans of many ethnicities, British agents, soldiers, English, Dutch, French, Scots-Irish and African colonists. I haven't enjoyed a biography this much in quite some time.

Sir Paradox

Once I started reading, I found this book hard to put down. It is about a paradoxical man and a fascinating period of history. Unlike some reviewers, I thought the references to Irish history were a logical link to understanding William Johnson's identity and actions. In the process, I also learned something about Irish history.

The Many Worlds of William Johnson

It is refreshing to see a new biography of the fascinating giant of colonial America, Sir William Johnson, a figure who is both crucially important in American history and terribly neglected in the popular American imagination. Fintan O'Toole's book is not the definitive biography of Johnson - for that you need to read `Mohawk Baronet' by James Thomas Flexner. It does, however, cover ground not before fully explored. O'Toole focuses on Johnson's amazing ability to be a man of two worlds - fully integrated into the British imperial world while simultaneously wholly comprehending and moving effortlessly within the world and mindset of Native Americans. He explains this by examining Johnson's heritage and upbringing as the son of Irish Catholic Jacobites, a family that had to learn to survive under the hostile control of the Protestant British power. O'Toole's book is really much more than a biography. It even goes beyond the scope of its subtitle, which mentions Johnson's role in the invention of America. O'Toole spends so much time on examining the world of Catholic Jacobites in Ireland and Scotland, and explaining how they came to cope with their position of defeat and banishment, that this book is almost as much a study on that lost world as it is of Johnson's life. It is perhaps the best book that I have seen for showing just what impact these defeated Jacobites had on the formation of America. Sir William Johnson is arguably second only to George Washington in his significance to the early history and formation of the United States of America, and he is second to none in his personal story and colorfulness. This book adds to the literature already available by fleshing out what it was that made this amazing man tick. If you have already read Flexner's definitive biography of Johnson, you will still gain much from reading this one. This book should appeal to anyone with an interest in colonial American history, the Iroquois Confederation, and the French and Indian War. It should likewise appeal to anyone interested in Irish history, particularly as it applies to the last days of Jacobite culture and diaspora - highly recommended. Theo Logos

An Englishman Among The Mohawks in the 1700's

William Johnson was an ambitious, flexible, manipulative chameleon. Born an Irish Catholic under British rule, he became a Protestant, a British servant of their policy toward the Iroquois Confederacy, an "adopted" Mohawk with numerous children by different women, and a land speculator. He was foremost an advocate of his family's and his own economic interests (though to the best of his ability, he did look after the needs of the Mohawks when those needs collided with British policy). A devastating portrait of him as a greedy rascal can be found in Kenneth Robert's classic historical novel, "Northwest Passage"--1936. An Irish writer himself, Mr. O'Toole interprets William Johnson in a more favorable light. He draws upon Johnson's Irish heritage and his successive transformations to move further in society (both English and Native American). His immigration to the frontier wilderness of upstate New York was his final move as Johnson went "native" for the last three decades of his life. He played a crucial role in securing a British alliance with the Six Nations during the French and Indian Wars. A womanizer, he had a German and then a Mohawk wife (though it was unclear whether he was actually married to either). Mr. O'Toole has written a multifaceted biography of the Irish/English/Mohawk William Johnson. I recommend this account for any reader interested in the early colonial history of America.

Chief Much Business

The history of how European settlers to America treated the natives they found there is generally a pretty sorry one. Perhaps this was inevitable, simply a struggle of a powerful and technologically advanced civilization moving aside another, but there were colonists from time to time who showed sympathy and understanding, and even championed the Indian cause. Among the most important of these was William Johnson, a man with many family connections in Ireland but little money who came here in about 1738 and was for the years before the American Revolution the voice of the Six Nations of Indians. One of the reasons he was successful was that he became a member of the Iroquois, and in _White Savage: William Johnson and the Invention of America_ (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux), Irish writer Fintan O'Toole makes the claim that Johnson's success in straddling colonial and Indian cultures was because he had already had an "amphibian" background of conversion to Protestantism and adoption of a British identity. Whatever the cause, he was a gifted and adaptable fellow, with his adaptability becoming internationally significant, and this biography is a good source of information about pre-Revolutionary times. Johnson was a shrewd businessman and land speculator. He became adept at trading furs with the Indians, and always had respect for his partners in trade and dealt fairly with them. He had an instinctive respect for Mohawk culture, and began to make political alliances as well as commercial. He became prosperous and influential enough within a decade that he went through the ceremony of becoming a sachem himself, and was given the name Waraghiyagey, meaning "a man who undertakes great things," or more pithily, "Chief Much Business." He did not at all give up his own culture. In fact, he was at pains to make a nostalgic display of being a Gaelic chieftain when he was at home. He was an untraditional family man, with a common-law European wife, an Iroquois wife, and many mistresses from both worlds. He sired children from different women, but was responsible in caring for them and remembering them in his will. He became the most important intermediary between the Indians and the British. He fought against prejudiced politicians and soldiers who dismissed the Indians as mere savages who had no rights. One English governor expressed a simple policy toward the Indians: exterminate every one, possibly by smallpox-infected blankets. Johnson got England to remove him, but this was one victory when there were many setbacks. Johnson knew how the tribes worked, but time and again London would ignore his advice or break the word he had given to the Indians. Johnson's efforts to keep Indian goodwill during the wars against the French were crucial. Johnson died just before the American Revolution. He probably would have sided with the British; although he had sympathy for those who were protesting such impositions as the Stamp Tax, he thought th