Brant-Sero, John Ojojatekha

  • DICTIONARY OF CANADIAN BIOGRAPHY ARTICLE: S. Penny Petrone, “BRANT-SERO, JOHN OJIJATEKHA (baptized John Sero, rebaptized John Brant-Sero) (Ojijatekha),” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 14, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–.See full biography at: https://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/brant_sero_john_ojijatekha_14E.html
  • DCB profile notes:
    • Mohawk celebrity, actor, interpreter, and lecturer; b. 10 June 1867 on the Six Nations Reserve near Brantford, Upper Canada, first child of Dennis Sero (Shero), a farmer, and Ellen Funn; m. 29 June 1896 Frances Baynes Kirby, née Pinder, of Fishwick (Preston), England; d. 7 May 1914 in London, England.
    • John Ojijatekha Brant-Sero’s descent on his mother’s side from Isaac, first son of Joseph Brant, and on his father’s from the Bay of Quinte Mohawks joined the two traditions of Mohawk loyalist heritage. Few details are known about his early life other than that he attended the reserve school and the Mohawk Institute to study carpentry. As he grew older he realized the value of education and wanted to learn, as he put it, “the business ways of the whites.” Accordingly, he petitioned the Six Nations Council, which granted him money to help defray the costs of a business course.
    • While in Toronto he became fascinated with the theatre. By his own account he spent a number of years there on the stage, appearing in “one of Joe Murphy’s plays.” In August 1889 he spoke on the government of the Six Nations at the Toronto meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 1891 he left for England, where, again by his own admission, he spent some time on the stage; he claimed to have appeared in the American spectacle On the frontier, which played in Liverpool in the spring of 1891. While in England, at the age of 29, he married the 48-year-old widow of a clergyman.
    • Following his return, Brant-Sero had attracted the attention of Ontario’s literati through his knowledge of the Mohawk language and the myths, songs, and traditions of his people. He was engaged as an informant and interpreter by David Boyle, curator of the archaeology department of the Ontario Provincial Museum in Toronto, who, in his report of 1898, admired Brant-Sero as “one of the brightest and most intelligent Iroquois ever born on the Reserve.” Witty, outgoing, and ambitious, Brant-Sero was elected second vice-president in 1899 of the Wentworth Historical Society and also of the Ontario Historical Society.
    • In the spring of 1900 he went to Chicago and made a successful lecture tour of the United States, enlivening and enriching “his lectures with Indian songs, giving them in the original and then explaining the meaning of the Indian words and the peculiarities of the Indian music.” In one lecture he recited from Shakespeare’s Othello in both English and Mohawk.
    • With his dashing good looks, flair for the dramatic, and fluency in English he quickly won the notice of’ London’s men of science. In 1900 he read a paper before the British Association for the Advancement of Science. The next year he was elected a fellow of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, but he resigned in 1902. His lecture tours in England attracted enthusiastic crowds. On 13 Feb. 1902, for example, he spoke to an audience of 1,311 in Liverpool on “Canada and the Indians” and used musical and lantern illustrations.
    • Much that has been written about Brant-Sero, by himself and others, cannot be verified: his attendance at the University of Cambridge; his stage appearances; his lecture to the Royal Saxon Geographical Society in Dresden, Germany, in 1900; and his full-length portrait in costume at the British Museum. Brant-Sero appears to have distinguished between the sort of genuine historical information that he gave Boyle and the historical societies, and what he gave out at public lectures in Britain and the United States. His mention of “backward races” on one occasion, “perfect equality” on another, and the theatricality of his lectures suggest a shrewd appreciation of what white audiences wanted to hear and see. He may have created a personal mythology in his restless travels, but his extant letters and articles reveal an articulate, likeable, and romantic character whose passionate attachment to the British crown and his Mohawk heritage gained him many admirers during his lifetime.
  • Second Great Grandson of proven United Empire Loyalist listed in Loyalist Directory: https://uelac.ca/loyalist-directory/detail/?wpda_search_column_id=835
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