The Two Hendricks: Unraveling a Mohawk Mystery by Eric Hinderaker

Abstract

400 ■ NEW YORK HISTORY In any case, these are minor criticisms of a thought-provoking and original book which more than proves its claim that ordinary people “built the early modern empire from the bottom up” (19). Those interested in New Netherland or colonial New York will find this book indispensible. But, as the author suggests, her work should also open a rich vein of inquiry into the composition and role of intimate networks in other imperial settings. The Two Hendricks: Unraveling a Mohawk Mystery. By Eric Hinderaker. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011, 368 pages, $35.00 Cloth. Reviewed by Ryan Staude, Windward School The “mystery,” which Eric Hinderaker explores in The Two Hendricks: Unraveling a Mohawk Mystery, is how two Mohawk chiefs, Hendrick Tenjonihokarawa, and Hendrick Theyanoguin, became conflated in the historical record. It was not until the 1990s that scholars began to separate the two men, and it took some time to reach a scholarly consensus that they were not the same person. Even Hinderaker admits in a footnote that he started the project in 1995 “under the assumption that there was one Hendrick” (303). If any doubters remain this book should be enough to convince them of their error. Hinderaker quickly “unravels” the mystery of the book’s subtitle. By the second page the reader knows that there were two Mohawk chiefs who bore the name Hendrick, and that for over one hundred years historians believed that there was only one “King” Hendrick. This was in part due to the lack of written histories on the natives in the nineteenth century, but also because the confusion had begun as early as the 1750s (a decade after Hendrick Theyanoguin’s death) with a Trenton newspaper maintaining that the two men were the same person (297). Erasing any ambiguity about the existence of two separate men, Hinderaker clearly states the book’s central theme: the roles of the two Hendricks in the maintenance of the Iroquois Confederacy in the midst of the struggles between France and Britain for mastery of the North American continent, and the importance of the Iroquois-British alliance to the eventual British victory over their imperial adversaries. The Six Nations of the Iroquois “decisively shaped” the outcome of the imperial Book Reviews 401 struggle (298). For Hinderaker, the lives of the two Hendricks demonstrate the perilous waters which Indians had to navigate to survive amid the rising tension between France and Great Britain. Tejonihokarawa, the older Hendrick, was a sachem from the Wolf Clan of the Mohawk tribe (the eastern-most tribe of the Six Nations Confederacy). He came of age in the 1670s and 1680s when New York colonial governor Edmund Andros’s Covenant Chain with the Iroquois was in its infancy. He rose to power in his tribe, and was baptized into the Dutch Reformed Church in 1690. Adopting the Christian name “Hendrick,” he established close relations with the Dutch Reformed ministers , and prominent Albany citizens. In 1710, Tejonihokarawa traveled to England with New York colonial officials where he was feted by London high society as the “Emperor of the Six Nations” (86). He even received an audience with Queen Anne and sat for a state portrait at her insistence. Hinderaker portrays this visit as transformative for both Hendrick and the British. The former saw the power and splendor of the London metropolis, while government officials and English propagandists began to increasingly associate the stability of Britain’s North American possessions with the maintenance of the Iroquois alliance. As Tejonihokarawa was cementing his status as the “bedrock of the Anglo-Iroquois connection” during the first two decades of the 18th century , Theyanoguin, the younger Hendrick, was coming of age in the Upper Mohawk community of Canajoharie, near the present day city of the same name. He made his first appearance in the public record in the fall of 1741. Theyanoguin quickly moved to the center of the Anglo-Mohawk relationship , and, along with William Johnson, became crucial in facilitating diplomacy between colonial officials and other members of the Six Nations Confederacy. Although he never traveled to England, Theyanoguin journeyed to Massachusetts and Pennsylvania and met with several prominent colonial administrators. Subsequently, he...