Commemoration of Molly Brant: a Canadian and American dichotomy in memorialization of an Indigenous woman

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Monuments and Statues to Women: Arrival of an Historical Reckoning of Memory and Commemoration", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Mohawk matriarch Molly Brant (c. 1736-1796) asserted considerable influence over her people and homeland in the British colony of New York (later part of the United States of America), before and during the American Revolutionary War. She maintained a dignified presence in whatever community she travelled to or lived in, including the British strongholds of Niagara, Montreal, and Carleton Island. The culmination of her travels in 1783 was in the fledgling town of Cataraqui, now Kingston, Ontario, Canada, where she continued to quietly assert her influence. Molly Brant’s presence in Kingston is as large more than two hundred years after her death, as it was in her brief lifetime here – or is it? Archival, and archaeological details of her last 13 years in Kingston are reviewed, and 20th and 21st century commemorations of this National Historic Person of Canada are highlighted.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023   •
• Monuments and Statues to Women: Arrival of an Historical Reckoning of Memory and Commemoration

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow