By Edgar A. Brown and edited by Jeanette Miller

New York State in the last decades of the 18th century was considered part of the great American frontier. The land west of the Niagara River was a wilderness known as the Northwest Territory, and the Indians living there - the Shawnee, Delaware, Miami, Wyandot, Potawotami, Chippewa, Odawa, and Cherokee - were called the Western Indians.

In 1784, an infant but rapidly growing United States of America was still healing the financial wounds of war for independence. The Haudenosaunee (Iroquois Nations), most of whom had been pro-British during that war, were interested in an honorable peace with the United States, since Americans at that time, present no threats of territorial conquest. The Haudenosaunee desired to "polish the chain of friendship" that had been forged with the first white settlers in the area. Soon though, the citizens of New York and Massachusetts, hungry for soil, began gnawing at Haudenosaunee homelands. The Americans couldn't finance an Indian war, but they still wanted Indian land. The only logical federal policy became one of negotiation based on the premise that Indians, not the conquering Americans, possessed the first right to the land.

Between 1790 and 1794, a series of major conferences brought together the leading dignitaries of the day from both the American and the Haudenosaunee worlds. George Washington, Henry Knox, and Timothy Pickering, among dozens of American officials, met with Cornplanter, Red Jacket, Blacksnake, Joseph Brant, Farmer's Brother, Handsome Lake, and hundreds of men and women. Together they formed a generation of political thinkers in which "Indian Affairs" was the major business of the times. Against the backdrop of a possible Haudenosaunee union with the still land-protective Western Indians, Haudenosaunee leaders demanded - and received- promises to correct abuses that stemmed largely from poorly negotiated and broken treaties of the past, but also included various frontier outrages at the hands of an encroaching white civilization.

The last and most important conference of that time produced the 1794 Treaty of Canandaigua. The Canandaigua Treaty, or the Pickering Treaty, was negotiated by Timothy Pickering, an American colonel from Massachusetts. He had been sent to the newly formed white settlement of Canandaigua by George Washington to secure a permanent friendship with the Six Nations. The intent was to prevent them from forming an alliance with the Western Indians as much as it was to address Indian grievances. And Pickering had become a trusted and respected federal agent among the Haudenosaunee. After a lengthy council that held daily sessions for a month, a treaty was signed on November 11, 1794, that did establish a firm peace and friendship between the Haudenosaunee and the United States. The treaty also acknowledged forever the Indian ownership of the lands reserved for the Oneida, Onondaga, and Cayuga nations. It defined the boundaries of the Seneca nation and acknowledged forever their ownership of it. It specified, too, an annual annuity of $4,500 payable to the Six Nations forever. And lastly, the treaty specified the difference arising between the Six Nations and the United States should be resolved by the President or his agent.

The Canandaigua Treaty is still recognized by both parties today, but is especially significant to the Haudenosaunee. It is one of the many treaties made between the United States and Native Americans that still exists today and, along with the Jay Treaty (1794), is key to understanding concepts of the Haudenosaunee sovereignty. Each nation of the Haudenosaunee , and the Iroquois Confederacy itself, is a distinct and separate political entity from the United States of America. The concept of Indian sovereignty is the foundation upon which all land claims and resistance to state and federal policies has rested and still rests to this day. The annual annuity includes a small payment and one yard of trade cloth for each member of the Six Nations. The importance of the annuity should not be overlooked. To the Haudenosaunee, it is a constant reaffirmation of the validity and existence of the treaty. Throughout the twentieth century, the Haudenosaunee have been vigilant in defending themselves against actions that threatened their political sovereignty, and hence their existence, by calling on these historic negotiations. There have been contests with challengers as diverse as state and federal Indian policy makers, immigration officials, the New York State Power Authority, the New York State department of Enviromental Conservation and Transportation, the United State Selective Service System, and the Army Corps of Engineers.

This tenacious adherence to sovereignty beliefs has kept the Haudenosaunee social visible and helped to make the continued survival of their way of life possible. There have been sit down demonstrations and there are annual border-crossing celebrations on the bridges connecting the United States and Canada. There have been dramatic appeals to the United Nations, the League of Nations, and other international organizations. Haudenosaunee delegates attend national conferences and international convocations dealing with aboriginal and human rights as well as treaty rights. There has been resistance to the draft, rejection of state and federal legislation, and assertion of land claims. In 1973 Haudenosaunee representatives were sent in support of the takeover at Wounded Knee. There was a forced occupation in Mohawk territory and, more recently, protests and demonstrations on the Allegheny and Cattaraugus reservations of the Seneca Nation over tax issues. In the 1960's, the United States openly abdicated their treaty obligations. Chief Irving Powless, Jr., an Onondaga Chief and a past frequent speaker at the Canandaigua Treaty commemorations, says that although the treaty is still in full effect it has not always been honored. "If the treaty had been honored," said Chief Powless, "the Kinzua Dam would not have been build and there wouldn't have been confrontations over state taxation on the Seneca reserves." George Heron, former president of the Seneca Nation, once remarked: "To us it is more than a contract, more than a symbol; to us the 1794 Treaty is a way of life."

Please join us to commemorate the Canandaigua Treaty of 1794 on November 11 - See the calendar of events for more details.