Treaty Rights an American Wrong

Eleven years after the end of the American Revolutionary War the Haudenosaunee (Six Nations) and the fifteen states then comprising the United States concluded a peace treaty at Canandaigua, New York on November 11, 1794.

President George Washington signed the treaty; the Congress ratified it in January 1795. To quote John C. Mohawk (Seneca) “The 1794 Treaty was also a defining document for the Native American Nations because it established a federal responsibility to guard the rights of Indians against the ambitions and abuses of the States.”

Article III of the Canandaigua Treaty states: “Now the United States acknowledge all land within the aforementioned boundaries to be the property of the Seneca Nation; and the United States will never claim the same, nor disturb the Seneca Nation nor any of the Six Nations or their Indian Friends residing there on and united with them, in the free uses and enjoyment thereof.”

In reality, New York State pursued an aggressive policy with individual Haudenosaunee Nations to dispossess them of their lands in violation of the 1790 Trade and Intercourse Act, a Federal law. The Trade and Intercourse Act called for direct involvement of the Federal Government in any purchase of Indian lands. There was however no Federal involvement in the purchase of Cayuga Nation land. Later, still one excuse after another has been found to take our land for flood control, electric power, highways and expansion of development.

In 1964, the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers completed construction and opened the Kinzua Dam which condemned 9,000 acres of Seneca land flooding the majority of those acres. This was to protect Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania from floods and avoid costly insurance claims; President John F. Kennedy signed the bill.

There has been a succession of acts to take land and disturb the Six Nations in the free use of their lands in direct violation of the Canandaigua Treaty which acknowledged the rights or our people. The United States has proven its word cannot be trusted and contrary to the United States Constitution treaties are not the supreme law of the land in Indian country.

Peter Jemison