Two Hendricks Are Better Than One

Eric Hinderaker tells the story of two famous eighteenth-century Mohawk sachems (chiefs). The Mohawks were the easternmost of the nations that constituted the League of the Iroquois, which had its homeland across what is now upstate New York, and from there they dominated many other American Indian nations in northeastern North America. The Iroquois were key players in the colonial struggles between Dutch, English, and French interests, and because of their proximity to Albany the Mohawks were often first amongst equals in the effort to preserve native interests in the face of contentious and expanding European colonial powers. The balance shifted dramatically through the first half of the eighteenth century.

The two Hendricks had Tejonihokarawa and Theyanoguin (both spelled variously) as their adult Mohawk names, difficult words for Europeans to remember, pronounce, or write. The English and Dutch tended to call both men by the name "Hendrick" or "Henry" after they were baptized. Theyanoguin was baptized as an infant by the same Dutch Reformed minister who baptized Tejonihokarawa. The former also acquired the surname "Peters," but it was their shared "Hendrick" first name that caused later confusion.

Tejonihokarawa, the older Hendrick, was born around 1660 and died sometime after 1735. Theyanoguin, the younger Hendrick, was born around 1691 and died in battle with the English against French forces near Lake George in 1755. The younger Hendrick came to prominence in the 1740s, shortly after the documented career of the older Hendrick came to an end. The younger Hendrick had white hair at a young age, unusual for an Indian, and Hinderaker suggests that this might have helped lead colonial officials to conflate the two men as early as 1744 (p. 161). The two were explicitly conflated in the records of a 1755 Philadelphia conference (p. 253). Anthropologists and historians subsequently followed that lead for well over two centuries.

There were two Hendricks, not one, and Hinderaker uses their tandem careers as the organizing thread for this beautifully written book. The mystery referred to in the book's title is resolved quickly in the introduction, and what follows is a lucid narrative of the colonial struggle between England and France for northeastern North America. Hinderaker's deft narrative reveals a deep understanding of the internal conflicts within the English colonies in particular. The hodgepodge of chartered, proprietary, and crown colonies was afflicted by contention between economic, religious, ethnic, military, political, and other interests, which differed along a continuum from the local to the imperial and shifted over time. The individual English actors made history as their personalities, motives, and opportunities played out, and Hinderaker's is an unusually good description of the complex skein that resulted. Less clear are the personalities, motives, and opportunities of the Mohawks. This is partly due to the smaller amount of documentation relating to them. The sources we have are mainly English, less often Dutch or French, and almost never native ones. All documentary sources are in some sense biased and self-serving, of course, and Hinderaker's source criticism is rarely off the mark. For example, he clearly describes Caldwallader Colden's 1747 History of the Five Indian Nations as the political document that it was (p. 142).

Despite unavoidable limitations, Hinderaker provides excellent historical context for understanding the interactions of natives and newcomers in the decades leading up to France's expulsion from most of New France. The significance of the separation of the conflated Hendricks into two rather different historical figures remains to be explored further by anthropologists and ethnohistorians. The two Hendricks were different in several important ways.

Tejonihokarawa, the older Hendrick, was a Mohawk Wolf Clan sachem of the Iroquois League, a religious leader, and a diplomat. He lived at the Lower Mohawk "castle" at the junction of the Schoharie and Mohawk Rivers, a place now commonly referred to as Fort Hunter. He converted to Christianity as an adult, probably with all or much of the commitment that adult conversion usually implies. His...