Hijack - Iroquois to ask for Syracuse, NY.
As reported in yesterday’s N.Y. Times, the Onondaga nation of the Iroquois Confederacy is expected to sue in Federal court for the return of its original reservation along the shores of Lake Onondaga. That territory consists of the current city of Syracuse and most of its eastern and southern suburbs.
The Onondaga had long complained that their current small reservation was a result of a series of dishonest land deals engineered by New York Governor George Clinton and his land “agents”, Simeon DeWitt and John Cantine.
Some Background:
The Iroquois Confederacy (or the People of the Long Houses) supported Great Britain in the Revolutionary War. They were upset about continuing European encroachment on their territory along the Mohawk river west from Albany. Of course not every Iroquois backed England and clan/individual loyalty to each of the 6 constituent nations of the Iroquois was not always fast. Some individuals/clans were loyal to the American revolutionaries.
The war on the frontier was often nasty, with civilian casualties, atrocities, and long memories. Nonetheless, President Washington decided that the best way to maintain peace on the frontier was to negotiate and keep treaties.
The Washington Administration passed the Trade & Intercourse Act of 1790, which among other things, required Federal approval of all land sales with Indian nations. The subsequent Treaty of Canandaigua in 1794 pledged that the U.S. government would respect the Iroquois land and that if they chose to sell, the Iroquois would sell only to the U.S. government.
But Governor Clinton had no intention of following the law. He had already signed a separate peace treaty in 1788 that dramatically reduced Iroquois land holdings. His intention was to eliminate any concept of Iroquois independence (or any future Iroquois alliance with British Canada.)
The treaty left the Onondaga nation with 100 square miles around the Salt Lake (now called Lake Onondaga).
So by 1795, his “agents” had acquired the salt mining rights (and 1 mile territory inland) along Salt Lake for $10. Working piece by piece, by 1822, New York state land agents had reduced the Onondaga reservation to 7,300 acres.
With salt being a somewhat scarce commodity and a needed preservative, the area around Salt Lake quickly developed into a town and then the city of Syracuse. It became a minor industrial center with heavy industry dumping huge amounts of toxins and heavy metals into Lake Onondaga. The same forces that made the lake saline in the first place concentrated the pollution and even after pollution controls were implemented, the lake is considered one of (if not the) most polluted in the U.S.
The Onondaga continued to protest the land “acquisitions” throughout the 19th & 20th century only to be blocked by the refusal of New York State courts to hear their case. They (and the other nations) argued that the state had set up phony chiefs who signed away the land without the people’s consent.
When the Supreme Court ruled in 1974 that New York had illegally negotiated treaties and land sales without the consent of the Federal government (which might well haved agreed to the sales), the Iroqouis got their chance. Hundreds of thousands of acres are under dispute, mostly in rural areas, but Syracuse (granted, a depressed, dingy, rust-belt backwash along a polluted lake) would easily be the largest jurisdiction under native control.
Will it happen? The courts would prefer the Iroqouis and New York to work it out. New York still practices its old pattern of recognizing “chiefs” who lean their way. Current landowners are lobbying the U.S. Congress to intervene.
And Hillary and Rudy? They probably know that Syracuse has an o.k. college basketball team.
) I realize that you and I agree on a great many things, but there is still one very important point on which I think we disagree.