The White Savage Summary

The reading I chose is the White Savage: William Johnson and the Invention of America, by Fintan O’Toole pp. 299-325. It is a short passage of what was happening in Canada during a conflict then developed into a global war, which the Patriots (and later their French, Spanish, and Dutch allies) fought the British and Loyalists in what became known as the American Revolutionary War (1775–83).

These two chapters talk about Johnson who wants to provide his uncle's company with a good profit in lumber and furs, gaining the reputation of an honest trader with the locals. Unfortunately, as it began with Johnson, his uncle would not keep his promises. Therefore he made alliances of his own. Instinctively respecting Mohawk culture, he carved out

territory and a homestead for himself. His collaborations with the Iroquois suited their political and enabled him to become one of pre-revolutionary America's most exceptional power brokers. By a mixture of political knowledge and personal courage, Johnson countered every London-conceived folly, becoming a baronet in the process. Unfortunately, whenever he achieved stability, the opposite parties return to fight again. For the French and Indian wars, Johnson’s advice was ignored and his word broken by his masters, setting the Indians backs on the warpath or into alliances with the French.

The author talks about William Johnson, an Irish Catholic-turned-Protestant, who became a New York Indian Agent between the British official with Iroquois to reported directly to London.

He has served as principal British intermediary with the Iroquois Confederacy. He commanded British, colonial, and Iroquois forces that defeated the French in the battle of Lake George in 1755, and he created the first groups of "rangers," who fought like

American.

O'Toole's narrative offers romantic reasons of why Johnson went native while remaining the very model of a colonial administrator that is loyal to his to king and country. Johnson tries everything he could to protect his fellow Iroquois, and he fought prejudiced Whitehall politicians and military men, including his uncle. Unfortunately, it did not impress the English governor Amherst, who's confessed public policy was to "exterminate" every native, preferably by offering him or her blankets exposed to smallpox.

The clues to Johnson’s Catholicism sympathies that O'Toole teases out of these sources are even slimmer.

O’Toole says does a great job showing how Johnson was able smoothly to mold himself into Iroquois culture and how his skill in negotiation was. He elegantly highlights the era's military developments and putting them into the context of the relations between the British, the French and the Indians. Johnson's personal feelings about the Iroquois are unclear, and O'Toole does not attempt to speculate here. Example, O'Toole argues that by hanging a map of Ireland in his home and seeking out Irish musicians, Johnson imagined himself as "a Gaelic lord, an idealized feudal chieftain [...] gathered around him broken shards of the old Irish order (p.304)." It merely demonstrates that Johnson wanted to recreate himself as a loyal imperial agent of British Crown.Fintan O'Toole, have attempted to explain Johnson's actions among the Iroquois by re-creating in a white, mostly Irish setting to combine his supposed Gaelic cultural norms and suppressed Catholicism.

(p.321)

I understand that because Johnson was Irishess, it was what helped him forge unique and comprehensive relationships with Native American tribes across the region. The similarities between the Irish and the Native American culture are the spiritual life that both cultures believe in, the Catholic faith, and the Protestant way of life all at the same time.

To conclude, O'Toole treads new ground with his thesis that Johnson represented one of the first examples of the Irish invention of America, which he means as a means culturally Gaelic and spiritually Catholic. He also shows circumstantial evidence to make Johnson as living as a "white savage." Johnson had two wives, one European, one Mohawk; became fluent in Mohawk; and pioneered the use of American Indians as active partners in the making of a new America.