The Mohawk ancestors of Johnson's father, Chief George Henry Martin Johnson, had historically lived in what became the state of New York, United States. Theirs was the easternmost territory in the homelands of the Five Nations of the Iroquois League (later the Six Nations), also known as the Haudenosaunee. In 1758, her great-grandfather Tekahionwake was born in the province of New York. When he was baptized, he took the name Jacob Johnson. He was named after Sir William Johnson, the influential British Superintendent of Indian Affairs, who acted as his godfather.[3] The Johnson surname was subsequently passed down in the family.
After the American Revolutionary War started, Loyalists in the Mohawk Valley came under intense pressure. The Mohawk and three other Iroquois tribes had allied with the British rather than the rebel colonists. Jacob Johnson and his family moved to Canada. After the war they settled permanently in Ontario on land given by the Crown in partial compensation for Haudenosaunee losses of territory in New York.
His son John Smoke Johnson spoke English and Mohawk fluently and had a talent for oration. Due to his demonstrated patriotism to the Crown during the War of 1812, Smoke Johnson was made a Pine Tree Chief at the request of the British government. Although his title could not be inherited, his wife Helen Martin was a descendant of the Wolf Clan and a founding family of the Six Nations reserve.[4][5] Through her lineage and influence (as the Mohawk had a matrilineal kinship system), their son George Johnson was named chief.
Six Nations survivors of the War of 1812George Johnson inherited his father's gift for languages and began his career as an Anglican Church missionary translator on the Six Nations reserve. Whilst working with the Anglican missionary assigned there, Johnson met the man's sister-in-law, Emily Howells.
Emily Howells was born in Bristol, England, to a well-established British family who had immigrated to the United States in 1832. Her father, Henry Howells, was a Quaker and intended to join the American abolitionist movement. Emily's mother, Mary Best Howells, died when the girl was five, when they were still in England. Her widowed father married again before they left for the US. In the US, he moved his family to several American cities, where he founded schools to gain an income, before settling in Eaglewood, New Jersey. After his second wife died (women had a high mortality in childbirth), Howells married a third time; he fathered a total of 24 children. He opposed slavery and encouraged his children to "pray for the blacks and to pity the poor Indians". His compassion did not preclude his believing that his own race was superior to others.
At the age of 21, Emily Howells moved to the Six Nations reserve in Ontario, Canada, to join her older sister, who had moved there with her Anglican missionary husband. Emily helped her sister care for her growing family. After falling in love with George Johnson, Howells gained a better understanding of the Native peoples and some perspective on her father's beliefs.
Much to the chagrin and displeasure of both their families, Johnson and Howells married in 1853. The birth of their first child reconciled the rift between their respective families. Several prominent Canadian families were descended from 18th- and 19th-century marriages between British fur traders, who had capital and social standing, and elite daughters of First Nations chiefs, in what were considered valuable economic and social alliances by both sides. Shortly after their marriage George became a chief of the Six Nations and was appointed as Crown interpreter for the Six Nations.[6] In 1856 Johnson built Chiefswood, a wood mansion at his 225-acre estate. He and his family lived here for years at the Six Nations reserve outside Brantford, Ontario.
In his roles as government interpreter and hereditary chief, George Johnson developed a reputation as a talented mediator between Native and European interests. He was well respected in Ontario. He also made enemies because of his efforts to stop illegal trading of reserve timber. Physically attacked by Native and non-Native men involved in this and liquor traffic, Johnson suffered from severe health problems; he died of a fever in 1884.[7]
