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CHAPTER 1
THE POLITICS OF BLAME
The Seneca Revolution of 1848
The revolution that produced a Seneca Nation elective system of government is largely misunderstood by contemporary Native Americans as well as by scholars today. Although non-Senecas, both Indian and non-Indian, are usually credited or blamed for this historic event, the Seneca revolutionaries were not automatons merely following orders. In part, the misconceptions are a result of overreliance on Quaker publications, especially the correspondence of Hicksite Friend Philip Evan Thomas. Both Seneca men and women were the principal actors and were most responsible themselves for the fateful decision to overturn their council of chiefs in 1848.
Although many immediate factors contributed to the change to an elected system, the major reason for this upheaval was clearly land loss. Seneca chiefs, fairly and unfairly, took most of the blame for dispossession and tribal decline. From the American Revolution until May 1842, the Seneca Nation was to be dispossessed of all its lands — fourteen counties of today's western New York State except for a one-square-mile uninhabitable territory, Oil Spring near Cuba, New York. In effect, by 1842 the Senecas were homeless people who were close to being fully removed to Indian Territory.
One can hardly comprehend the level of stress on the Senecas in the period from 1797 to 1848. The pressures came from all directions — land speculators such as the powerful Ogden Land Company; canal and railroad interests tied to Albany politicos; presidents of the United States, especially Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren, who were intent on full removal of the Six Nations from New York; Whig politicians intent on allowing the Senecas to remain in New York, but only as taxpaying citizens under New York State laws; and Quakers from Philadelphia and Baltimore who assumed they knew what was best for the Senecas and too often meddled in tribal affairs. Internally, the Senecas faced a chaotic political situation, in part caused by the great diversity within their population and by ten sets of chiefs who were forced from their eleven separate reservations onto four residential territories between 1797 and 1826. Often split about what course to pursue, these chiefs, some honest and others not, chose different strategies to meet the overwhelming challenges caused by the rise of the Empire State. Unfortunately for the Senecas, powerful New Yorkers lusted after these Indians' pivotal location — namely, the access routes to the Great Lakes and the Ohio Country, the gateways to the heart of the North American continent. In 1790, approximately 1,000 non-Indians lived west of Seneca Lake; sixty years later, more than 660,000 non- Indians lived in western New York. As a result of the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 and the construction of railroads from the 1830s onward, Rochester grew from nothing in 1814 to a thriving city of more than 36,000 people by 1850. Buffalo, a city incorporated in 1831, grew to 81,129 people by 1860, making it the ninth largest city in the United States by the Civil War.
To be fair, the chiefs who were overthrown in the Seneca Revolution of 1848 were not all incompetent or corrupt, but too often they were powerless to resist forces set in motion by a rising American nation. They were increasingly split in part because they were a diverse body representing local reservation interests. Their enemies, nevertheless, accused all of them of favoring emigration, land sales, and cooperating with the likes of the corrupt federal subagent James Stryker. Even when they expressed the need for reform, they could not extricate themselves from the web of shame surrounding the hated treaty of 1838.
On the other hand, some of the opponents of the chiefs' council in the 1840s also had baggage. They were hard-boiled Seneca politicians who skillfully used an approach that characterizes tribal elections right down to the present time: the politics of blame. After a final crisis in 1864–65, the majority of members of both sides agreed to fight future battles largely through the electoral process.
One of the problems faced in researching the creation of the Seneca Republic in 1848 is the dearth of materials about the revolutionaries and their opponents on the council of chiefs. The exceptions are the extensive writings of two very different chiefs who were bitter rivals: Dartmouth-educated Maris Pierce and Yale-educated Nathaniel T. Strong. The most important of the revolutionaries, Solomon W. McLane (also known as Solomon W. Lane), a schoolteacher and the first popularly elected president of the Seneca Nation, elected in May 1849, died shortly after he left office; only a few of his letters and petitions survive in the Quaker records and in the U.S. National Archives. McLane was born into the Turtle Clan on the Buffalo Creek Reservation, was five feet nine and stockily built, and was raised by the prominent chief Young King, a major Seneca opponent of Red Jacket. By the 1840s, McLane was an advocate of temperance among the Senecas and was residing at Allegany with his wife, Sara Two Guns, and six children, four of whom died at an early age. After he left the presidency, McLane served as a peacemaker judge. In 1850, he and his wife joined Asher Wright's United Mission Church. He died soon after.
No more than a bare majority of the Seneca people in 1848 were revolutionaries. As in most revolutions, a small number of people were actual plotters. Most of the revolutionaries as well as their opponents made their marks on petitions. Unlike McLane, most of the early leaders of the Seneca Republic could not read and write English and left no writings except petitions sent to Washington and Albany. According to anthropologist Thomas Abler, approximately 38 percent of the core group of chiefs and only 9 percent of the new governmental leadership could sign their names.
The revolutionaries were a diverse coalition loosely held together by one unifying reality: their opposition to the chiefs and their rule. In his excellent account, Abler claims that Indians who had been forcibly removed from the Buffalo Creek Reservation and who largely resettled at Cattaraugus were not in the ranks of the revolutionaries. Nevertheless, he appears to overlook that the population at Cattaraugus also included angry Senecas from other territories that had been lost between 1797 and 1842, and that a significant number of disgruntled Cayuga and Onondaga refugees from Buffalo had also resettled at Cattaraugus. Their presence was a constant reminder of the failings of chiefly rule.
Abler correctly has insisted that the U.S. government's distribution of annuity payments to Seneca heads of families rather than the chiefs contributed directly to the coming of the Seneca Revolution. The annuity question did significantly affect the events of 1848, but opponents of the chiefs and their rule had a great amount of ammunition to use to incite a revolution without this issue. Abler and others have also suggested that the chiefs' political decisions to lease reservation lands for sawmills also led to criticisms of their rule. However, this and other leasing issues appear to be far less important, only becoming significant after 1850.
While it is clear that a large number of Senecas appeared to be loyal to the chiefs even well after the revolution occurred, the Seneca Council of Chiefs and its actions had clearly alienated a significant number of the residents of Cattaraugus and Allegany. By the mid 1840s, the Seneca chiefs could not justify their questionable actions by employing appeals to the past glory of the Iroquois League. The ancient custom of consensus politics had long before disappeared and now internecine conflict was tearing apart the chiefs' council as well as the nation as a whole. After 1845, there was no way to turn back the clock. Early that year, the Seneca Council of Chiefs began to discuss what reforms they needed to undertake to redeem themselves in the eyes of reservation residents.
The first problem the chiefs had to face was how to distance themselves from the popularly held view that they were not protective enough of the Seneca estate. Despite the federal government's return of Allegany and Cattaraugus in 1842, the residents of these two communities had little confidence in federal and state officials' insistence that the treaty marked a new day, since the Buffalo Creek and Tonawanda Reservations were not returned in the same treaty. After all, federal and state officials had constantly ignored treaty guarantees since 1794. Washington's promises of protection were seen as worthless, since its "commitments" changed upon each new administration entering office. If some of the chiefs could be tricked and/or corrupted to sell all their residential territories, including Buffalo Creek, the largest Seneca reservation and the ritual center of the Iroquois Confederacy after the American Revolution, would Allegany and Cattaraugus be next?
The politics of blame was increasingly noticeable in the Seneca polity in the years approaching the revolution of 1848. The presence of six deposed Seneca leaders who supported emigration — Chiefs George Jemison, Thompson S. Harris, Billy Shanks, White Seneca, William Tall Chief and Sachem Little Johnson — continued to remind the people of the scandals of 1838. In May 1846, these deposed chiefs, along with 56 Senecas and 157 other members of the Six Nations, left for Indian Territory. Both White Seneca and Little Johnson perished in the miserable trek, while Jemison, a direct descendant of the white captive and adoptee Mary Jemison, was to slowly redeem himself with some within the Seneca polity and take part in the revolution of 1848.
In January 1845, fifty Seneca chiefs met in council at Cattaraugus and began debating a series of reforms. Most in attendance apparently did not realize that what they would decide on would have far-ranging consequences and would lead to the undoing of their leadership three years later. Chief John Seneca, who had signed both the 1838 and 1842 treaties, presided and called the council to order. His family was one of the most prominent in Seneca history. The chief had been one of the ten original members of the Seneca Mission Church at Buffalo Creek in the early 1820s. At that time, the chief and his entire family first came under the influence of missionary Thompson Harris (not the chief of the same name). John Seneca's father was White Chief, who along with his wife had converted to Christianity. John's two brothers were White Seneca and Seneca White, both chiefs and early Christian converts at Buffalo Creek. The family had become divided in the 1830s. Chief White Seneca became a leader of the Emigration Party while Chief Seneca White was a major opponent of removal to the West.
Unlike the combative Israel Jemison, who was the most visible and activist chief in resisting the change of government in 1848 and after, Chief John Seneca was more of a behind-the-scenes mediator. He apparently had the respect of most of the chiefs and at least some of the later revolutionaries of 1848. In the last decade of his life, the chief clearly worked to bring back some level of harmony to his Seneca people. Although he never served as a delegate or signed the constitution of 1848 that overthrew the chiefs, Seneca was to be voted in as peacemaker and assessor in the first popular election for president under the new government. Importantly, just before he died in 1857, the now former chief was to be elected president of the Seneca Nation.
At the January 1845 meeting, Chief John Seneca described the urgency that brought the chiefs together in council. Remarkably honest in his admission of the past failures of the chiefs, Seneca insisted that a new generation of more educated tribal members had come to realize "that the ancient form of government was not adapted to the necessities of the nation in its present improved form." To save the nation from spies within and "unslumbering" and "rapacious enemies" without (presumably the Ogden Land Company), the chief urged reforming the Senecas' political institutions and divesting the chiefs "of the arbitrary and irresponsible power they had assumed."
At this council, the proceedings were no longer based upon consensus, which was traditionally a part of the protocol before 1797. Only one major resolution was passed, although five chiefs in attendance refused to agree to it. The resolution stated:
Resolved: determine, ordain, publish, and declare that our political usages, customs, organizations and constitution be, and the same are hereby altered and amended, so that no sale or disposition of the whole or any part of our Lands hereafter to be made, shall be valid, or of any effect, unless the same be made in full and open Council of Chiefs and Warriors of the Nation, and by the express assent of two-thirds of all the Chiefs, and two-thirds of the whole residue of the male population of the Nation of the age of twenty-one years, and upwards, whether attending such Council or not; such assent to be given in writing, under the hands and seals of the parties, in full and open Council of the Chiefs and Warriors of the Nation, assembled together in one Council.
The wording of the resolution left out references to the roles of clan mothers, the "keepers of the kettle," who traditionally were viewed as protectors of the land. The constitution of 1848 later made up for this omission by adding the requirement that three-fourths of the "mothers of the nation" had to approve future land sales before the Seneca Nation could legally alienate its lands. Perhaps motivated by being bypassed, some women, later in 1848 and in 1849, sent petitions advocating a change away from chiefly rule to an elected system of government. They favored a change in the distribution of annuities from the chiefs directly to Senecas, including to the women, and urged that these annuities be parceled out in one payment to the head of a household in the spring rather than at two separate times of the year. They pointed out that these changes would help Seneca families finance the expense of planting crops. In a disclaimer undoubtedly inserted to win some tribal council support, the resolution stated that "nothing herein contained shall, in any manner, alter, change, or effect lessen or diminish the rights, powers, duties, privileges or authority of the Chiefs in any matter or respect whatever." It further added that the resolution would be forwarded to the president of the United States, Congress, and the governors and legislatures of New York and Massachusetts.
On May 8, 1845, prompted by Hicksite Quakers and Whigs, the New York State Legislature passed "An Act for the Protection and Improvement of the Seneca Indians Residing in the Cattaraugus Reservations in this State." Once again, as in the past, the state gave promises of protection against trespassers and whiskey sellers, but the act, nevertheless, clearly intruded on Seneca sovereignty and on the powers of the existing chiefs' council. Albany recognized the existence of the "Seneca Nation of Indians" as the government on the Allegany, Cattaraugus, and Oil Spring Reservations and "awarded" it the right to "prosecute and maintain in all courts of law and equity in this state, any action, suit or proceeding which may be necessary or proper to protect the rights and interests of said Indians and of the said nation, in and to the said reservations." The act also "allowed" actions for damages suffered by the Indians "in common, or as a nation" in state courts. It also "awarded" the chiefs the following rights:
laying out of lands for separate cultivation, improvement or occupancy, by and Indian and his family, and the quantity of each; and make by-laws for laying roads and highways, and among the same; for regulating fences and protecting and improving their common lands, for regulating fences and preventing trespassers by cattle or otherwise; and to provide a penalty, not exceeding five dollars, for violating or disobeying any such regulation or by-laws. ... The said chiefs at any such meeting may admit any Indian or tribe to become an inhabitant of their reservation and to enjoy the same privileges with them.
Importantly, the act of 1845 established annual Seneca elections each May for the positions of tribal clerk, treasurer, two marshals, and peacemaker judges/mediators. One provision even allowed New York's governor to nominate, with consent of the state senate, a person "who shall have been a counselor in the supreme court of this state for three years or more, to be an attorney of the Seneca Nation of Indians." This person "shall from time to time advise the said Indians respecting controversies between themselves, and between them or any of them, and any other person." Other sections of the legislation "granted" the Seneca peacemaker justices or a majority of them the right to call meetings of the chiefs. To satisfy the Quakers, Longhouse followers of Handsome Lake (Sga:nyodai:yoh), and other prohibitionists, the act made it a crime punishable by law to sell or give any Seneca "spirituous liquor or any intoxicating drink." The new state legislation also outlined Seneca voting qualifications and terms of office; described the specific duties and legal responsibilities of the peacemaker courts, treasurer, and clerk of the Seneca Nation; allowed for legal appeal to a jury of six chiefs; made it a state crime to offer false testimony in a tribal court; gave the chiefs the final say in assigning lands for cultivation; and provided individual Indians the right to sell timber on lands assigned to them but limited their rights elsewhere and set penalties. Other legislation in this period dealt with the establishment of state schools for the Seneca, providing for the education of Indian youths at state normal schools, and recognized Indian common law marriages and the right of Seneca peacemaker courts to marry Indians "with the like force and effect as if by a justice of the peace."
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Excerpted from "Coming Full Circle"
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