Mohawks on the Nile

On August 20, 1884, Governor General of Canada, Henry Charles Keith Petty-Fitzmaurice, received an encrypted cablegram from the Colonial Office in London that requested “good voyageurs” for an expedition to Egypt on the Nile River. Specifically, England wanted Mohawk and Ojibway Indian men to guide boats full of troops and supplies on the Nile River to rescue Major-General Charles Gordon from the besieged city of Khartoum. This book highlights this largely forgotten event in Canadian and Native history where First Nations men voluntarily join British forces in an empirical mission on another continent. The author illustrates how this partnership “fell within a number of important norms in Iroquois cultural practices, work patterns, and alliance relationships,” in reference to the Iroquois Confederacy, a participatory democracy that influenced our current U.S. governmental structure.

The book also contains reproductions of the memoirs of two Mohawk voyageurs, James Deer and Louis Jackson, and annotated muster rolls, maps, photographs, and illustrations.