On the Town: William Johnson was the model for the dashing hero, Hawkeye, in The Last of the Mohicans, the great classic by James Fenimore Cooper.
Now Johnson is the focus of White Savage, the newly published book by Irish Times columnist Fintan O'Toole. He tells the real-life story of Johnson, who was born in Meath in 1715. White Savage was launched this week in Newman House on Dublin's St Stephen's Green.
"I was working in New York in the Daily News and I came across him when I was reading about the French-Indian War. A little footnote said that he was Irish," said Fintan O'Toole.
White Savage aims to understand "the potency of the American myth", he added. "I grew up in Ireland in the 1960s. Everyone talks about the Irish language but the big influence was cowboys and indians. We played and we dressed up as well. Why were we all sucked into this myth? I wanted to demythologise the myth and to get to grips with the reality behind it."
Faber and Faber editor Neil Belton explained that O'Toole's subject, William Johnson, led a life which "is one of these great forgotten stories . . . He's an extraordinary figure, an Irishman who emigrated to America to become the linchpin of the British empire".
Among those who came to the launch was director Garry Hynes, who was heading off the next day to the Edinburgh Theatre Festival with Druid's productions of John Millington Synge's six plays. When it returns, the company will go to Inis Meáin and perform in the open at Dún Chonchúir, an iron-age fort, "weather permitting", said Hynes.
Other friends who attended the launch were Catríona Crowe, archivist with the National Archives, Shay Cody, a trade unionist with Impact, and Senan Turnbull, a local government official originally from Foxford, Co Mayo.
White Savage, by Fintan O'Toole, is published by Faber and Faber