Early Life
Norton was born of a Cherokee father and a Scottish mother, in the early 1760s. His father was taken as a boy by British soldiers when his hometown of Keowee was destroyed by the British. It seems that Norton's father eventually joined the British Army and moved to Scotland, where he married. John Norton was likely educated in Scotland. He served an apprenticeship as a printer, but ran away to join the army. He was stationed in Ireland before being relocated to Lower Canada in 1785.
While with his regiment at Niagara (Upper Canada) in 1787, he deserted the army. For a time, Norton taught at Tyendinaga on the Bay of Quinte, west of Kingston, Ontario. In 1791 he traveled through the Ohio region as a trader and established many contacts. During this time, he became increasingly involved with the Six Nations of the Grand River. In 1794, he returned to Fort Niagara where he served as an interpreter for the Indian department. He was adopted by the Mohawks, with Joseph Brant as his uncle. Norton moved to Grand River where he married an Iroquois woman.
Read more about this topic: John Norton (Mohawk Chief)
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“In early days, I tried not to give librarians any trouble, which was where I made my primary mistake. Librarians like to be given trouble; they exist for it, they are geared to it. For the location of a mislaid volume, an uncatalogued item, your good librarian has a ferrets nose. Give her a scent and she jumps the leash, her eye bright with battle.”
—Catherine Drinker Bowen (18971973)
“The man Shelley, in very truth, is not entirely sane, and Shelleys poetry is not entirely sane either. The Shelley of actual life is a vision of beauty and radiance, indeed, but availing nothing, effecting nothing. And in poetry, no less than in life, he is a beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating in the void his luminous wings in vain.”
—Matthew Arnold (18221888)