Major-General Sir William Johnson, 1st Baronet (c. 1715 – 11 July 1774), was a British Army officer and colonial administrator. As a young man, Johnson moved to the Province of New York to manage an estate purchased by his uncle, the Royal Navy officer Sir Peter Warren, which was located in territory of the Mohawk people, one of the six peoples of the Iroquois confederation. Johnson learned the Mohawk language and customs, and was appointed the British agent to the Iroquois.
Johnson commanded Iroquois and colonial militia forces against the French and their allies during the French and Indian War. Commissioned as a
major general in the British army, his role in the victory at the Battle of Lake George in 1755 earned him a baronetcy of New York. His capture of Fort Niagara from the French in 1759 brought him additional renown. Throughout his career as a British official among the Iroquois, Johnson combined personal business with official diplomacy, acquiring tens of thousands of acres of Native land and becoming very wealthy.
William Johnson was born around 1715 in County Meath, in the Kingdom of Ireland. He was the eldest son of Christopher Johnson (1687–1764) of Smithstown, County Meath, and Anne Warren, daughter of Michael Warren of Warrenstown, County Meath and Catherine Aylmer, sister of Admiral Matthew Aylmer, 1st Baron Aylmer.
His mother Anne was from an "Old English" Catholic gentry family who had, in previous generations, lost much of their status to the "New English". His father was descended from the O'Neill dynasty of County Armagh. William Johnson's paternal grandfather was originally known as William MacShane, but changed his surname to Johnson, the Anglicization of the Gaelic Mac Seáin or Seagháin.
Some early biographers portrayed William Johnson as living in poverty in Ireland, but modern studies reveal that his family lived a comfortable, if modest, lifestyle. Although the Johnson family had a history of Jacobitism, William Johnson's maternal uncle Peter Warren was raised as a Protestant to enable him to pursue a career in the British Royal Navy. He achieved considerable success, gaining wealth along the way.
Peter Warren had purchased a large tract of undeveloped land along the south side of the Mohawk River in the province of New York then known as Warrensberg (or Warrensbush) (now present day Florida, NY). Warren convinced Johnson to lead an effort to establish a settlement there, to be known as Warrensburgh, with the implied understanding that Johnson would inherit much of the land. Johnson arrived in about 1738 with twelve Irish Protestant families and began to clear the land. He purchased enslaved Africans to do the heavy labor of clearance; they were the first of many slaves bought by Johnson.
Warren intended Johnson to become involved in trading with American Indians, largely the Mohawk and other of the Six Nations of the Iroquois, tribes who dominated the area west of Albany. Johnson soon discovered that the trade routes were to the north, on the opposite side of the river from Warrensburgh. Acting on his own initiative, in 1739 Johnson bought a house and small farm on the north side of the river, where he built a store and a sawmill. From this location, which he called "Mount Johnson", Johnson was able to cut into Albany's Indian trade. He supplied goods to traders who were headed to Fort Oswego, and bought furs from them when they returned downriver. He dealt directly with New York City merchants, thus avoiding the middlemen at Albany. The Albany merchants were irate, and Warren was not pleased that his nephew was becoming independent.
Johnson became closely associated with the Mohawk, the easternmost nation of the Six Nations of the Iroquois League. By the time Johnson arrived, their population had collapsed to 580 persons, due to chronic infectious diseases unwittingly introduced by Europeans and warfare with competing tribes related to the lucrative beaver trade. The Mohawk thought an alliance with Johnson could advance their interests in the British imperial system. Around 1742, they adopted him as an honorary sachem, or civil chief, and gave him the name Warraghiyagey, which he translated as "A Man who undertakes great Things".
In 1744, the War of the Austrian Succession spread to colonial America, where it was known as King George's War. Because of his close relationship with the Mohawk, in 1746 Johnson was appointed by the British colonial government as New York's sole agent to the Iroquois, replacing the ineffective Albany-based Indian commissioners.
The newly created "Colonel of the Warriors of the Six Nations" was instructed to enlist and equip colonists and Indians for a campaign against the French. Recruiting Iroquois warriors was difficult: ever since the so-called Grand Settlement of 1701, the Iroquois nations had maintained a policy of neutrality in colonial wars between France and Great Britain. Working with the Mohawk chief Hendrick Theyanoguin, Johnson recruited Mohawk warriors to fight on the side of the British.
Johnson organized small raiding parties, which were sent against the settlements of the French and their Indian allies. In accordance with New York's Scalp Act of 1747, Johnson paid bounties for scalps, although he realized this encouraged the scalping of non-combatants of all ages and both sexes. In June 1748, Johnson was appointed as "Colonel of the New York levies", a position that gave him additional responsibility for the colonial militias at Albany. In July 1748, word was received of a peace settlement. The Mohawk had suffered heavy casualties in the war, which lessened Johnson's prestige among them for a while.
In 1748, Johnson built a new stone house upriver from Mount Johnson, which became known as Fort Johnson. The home was strongly fortified when the next war approached.
After King George's War, Johnson was caught between rival New York political factions. One faction was led by Governor George Clinton, who had appointed Johnson as New York's Indian agent and, in 1750, appointed him to the Governor's Council. Governor Clinton urged the New York Assembly to repay Johnson's outstanding wartime expenses, which amounted to £2,000. Repayment was blocked by Clinton's political rivals led by Lieutenant Governor James De Lancey, who was connected to the Albany Indian commissioners whom Johnson had supplanted. De Lancey was also the brother-in-law of Admiral Warren, which added to the strain in the relationship between Johnson and Warren.
An exasperated Johnson resigned as New York's Indian commissioner in 1751, focusing instead on his business interests. When Warren died in July 1752, he left nothing to Johnson in his will; instead, he stipulated that his nephew was now responsible for all outstanding expenses from the establishment of Warrensberg.
In 1755, Johnson shifted the primary meeting place for diplomatic councils between the British and the Iroquois from Albany to Fort Johnson. He also bought houses in Schenectady and Albany to stop at on his business trips to New York.
In June 1753, Hendrick Theyanoguin and a delegation of Mohawk traveled to New York City, where they announced to Governor Clinton that the Covenant Chain—the diplomatic relationship between the British and the Iroquois—was broken. The British government ordered Clinton to convene the Albany Congress of 1754 to repair the Covenant Chain. At the Congress, the Mohawk insisted that the alliance would be restored only if Johnson were reinstated as their agent.
Johnson's reinstatement as Indian agent came the following year, just as the French and Indian War, the North American theater of the Seven Years' War, was escalating. In 1755, Major General Edward Braddock, sent to North America to direct the British war effort, turned to Johnson for assistance in obtaining Native scouts. Although Johnson had little military experience, he was commissioned as a major general and instructed to lead an expedition against the French fort at Crown Point. His troops were provincial soldiers paid for by the colonies, rather than regular soldiers of the British Army, which meant that he had to deal with six different colonial governments while organizing the expedition.