Chief Canaqueese

Canaqueese was a Mohawk war chief and intercultural mediator who lived in the 17th century in the Mohawk Valley, an area of central present-day New York state, United States. He was of mixed race, with a Mohawk mother and Dutch father, brought up with and identifying as Mohawk. He was an important intermediary among the French, Dutch, the Algonquian-speaking Mahican (Mohican), and the Iroquoian-speaking Mohawk peoples. This was especially so during the Beaver Wars, which arose over competition for the lucrative fur trade. He participated in numerous attempts to reach a peace agreement between the Mohawk and the French based in Quebec (or New France).

He was referred to by different names by representatives of the various national groups with whom he interacted. Canaqueese was his Mohawk name. Smits Jan was his Dutch name, one that he was probably given at baptism or while dealing with the Dutch in New Netherland. Smits Jon was an anglicized version of his Dutch name, given to him by the British after they conquered New Netherland in 1664 (renaming it as New York). "Flemish Bastard" was the name given to him by French Jesuit missionaries, who described him as "an execrable issue of sin, the monstrous offspring of a Dutch Heretic father and a pagan woman."

Since the late 20th century, historians are reassessing the area of the upper Hudson River, Mohawk River and St. Lawrence River as a shifting borderland of alliances and conflicts. There were no national boundaries between the English and French colonies, nor between the territories of the Algonquian-speaking nations along the Hudson and the New England coast, for instance, and the Five Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy. Certain Native Americans such as Canaqueese played a role with each of the ethnic groups. He always acted to protect the interests of the Mohawk.

Canaqueese was born in the 17th century near the site of the Dutch frontier village of Schenectady to a Mohawk mother and a Dutch father. In the matrilineal kinship system of the Mohawk, children were considered born into the mother's clan and deriving their status from her family, through which inheritance and property were passed. The mother's eldest brother was more important to the children than their biological father. Canaqueese likely was brought up by his mother with her people and identifying as Mohawk, while learning Dutch and making use of familiarity with Dutch culture.

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