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Treaty of Canandaigua 1794: 200 Years of Treaty Relations between the Iroquois Confederacy and the United States Edited by G. Peter Jemison & Anna M. Schein   Read the New York Times Book Review by Fred Anderson, Jan. 7, 2001 "Sovereignty & Treaty Rights --- We Remember" by G. Peter Jemison (Essay from book)   "A demonstration that treaties are as vibrant and important today as when they were made. Not simply a legal analysis but a complete discussion of the traditions and context in which treaty-making made sense." --- Vine Deloria Jr. From the Back Cover The book tells the complex and intriguing story of the Haudenosaunee -- the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy -- and their relationship with the United States over the 200-year period following the signing of the Treaty of Canandaigua in 1794. This was a treaty of accommodation, born of military and political necessity on both sides. Because the Six Nations Confederacy at the time was too powerful a force to be subjugated by the fledgling U.S. government, President George Washington had the treaty drawn up in terms of equality -- without the restrictions imposed on Indian nations by later treaties. The Canandaigua Treaty remains in effect today, and it is still formally observed by the U.S. Government. In this book, the authors examine the history leading up to the signing of the treaty and look at how the Haudenosaunee have fared under its terms.     Read Introduction Like all treaties, the Treaty of Canandaigua is legally a part of the supreme law of the land as guaranteed by the Constitution. This treaty was negotiated by two independent sovereign governments, The Haudenosaunee Confederacy and the United States. Each side agreed to declared boundaries specifically set forth in the treaty. Each side agreed to guarantee the free use and enjoyment by each government of its own lands, without interference from the other. Each side agreed that the common goal would be peace and friendship between the two parties. Two hundred years after signing the treaty that was to protect their lands and sovereign rights, The Haudenosaunee have been stripped of all but a small fraction of their original territories. The treaty has been violated numerous times, even in Supreme Court decisions, and the fight to retain sovereignty and regain land taken illegally continues to this day. The authors have written this book knowing that the Canandaigua Treaty is their proof of sovereignty and means of recovering lands. The legal outcomes for the Iroquois Confederacy will affect Indian nations throughout the country. Offering a variety of perspectives -- cultural, legal, and political -- as well as valuable information drawn from historical archives, this book presents a comprehensive portrait of a great people and their struggle for survival. Among the contributors are Chief Irving Powless Jr., Chief Leon Shenandoah, Chief Oren Lyons, Chief Bernard Parker, and Chief Jake Swamp, as well as other well-known Iroquois leaders.   THE EDITORS: G. Peter Jemison, a member of the Seneca nation, is an artist, author, and curator of Native American art exhibitions. He serves as manager of the Ganondagan State Historic site, the site of an ancient Seneca Village in upstate New York. Anna M. Schein, is University Librarian, West Virginia University. Her documentary photographs have been exhibited in U.S. and Haudenosaunee libraries and archived in the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian. She lives in Morgantown, West Virginia. More information about this book is available at the Ganondagan Web Site.

New York Times Book Review January 7, 2001 First Chapter: 'Treaty of Canadaigua 1794' By FRED ANDERSON Indian land-claims cases in the federal courts typically generate substantial news coverage but little real understanding. Everybody knows that native peoples were dispossessed of lands by means that included coercion, violence, theft and fraud. And no one doubts that when courts order millions of dollars paid to Indian tribes, they compensate the descendants of Indians long dead for the misdeeds of equally long-dead whites. But many Americans find that curious. Slavery, after all, was also wrong, yet courts haven't ordered that African-Americans be compensated for their ancestors' sufferings. The legal reason is simple enough. Long ago, the United States government dealt with Indian nations not as wards but as equals, maintaining diplomatic relations with them by treaty agreements. Since treaties represent contracts between nations, modern tribes presumably retain the right to insist that the government perform its obligations, or pay damages if it does not. The larger context to this straightforward legal relationship is, however, much more complicated. Anyone interested in the legal and historical issues at stake in current Indian land-claims cases would do well to start with ''Treaty of Canandaigua 1794,'' edited by G. Peter Jemison and Anna M. Schein. (Jemison is a Heron clan member of the Seneca Nation and the manager of Ganondagan State Historic Site; Schein is the university librarian of the West Virginia University libraries.) Reading their book takes perseverance, though, for this is not a conventional history but an assemblage of ceremonial recitations, speeches, photographs, scholarly essays and 18th-century documents, all of which emerged from a bicentennial commemoration of the Treaty of Canandaigua, on Nov. 11-12, 1994. In place of a narrative, this volume offers a mosaic of tradition, religion, scholarship, polemic, law and history that tends to dissolve conventional distinctions between past and present and invites readers to contemplate what Indian treaties mean. The 1794 Treaty of Canandaigua was the first diplomatic agreement executed by the United States under its new Constitution. It was by no means the first treaty negotiated by the Haudenosaunee or Iroquois League, an ancient confederacy of six nations (the Senecas, Cayugas, Onondagas, Oneidas, Mohawks and Tuscaroras). Iroquois spokesmen at Canandaigua were more experienced negotiators than the United States' envoy, Secretary of War Timothy Pickering, and the heirs of a far richer diplomatic tradition. Two centuries earlier, their ancestors had negotiated a treaty with the Dutch, recording its provisions in the Guswenta, or Two Row Wampum Belt. The principles embodied in that sacred object created the basis of subsequent Iroquois relations with Dutch, French, British and American colonizers.

The documents included in the appendix testify to the Iroquois's bargaining acumen. Unrepresented at the peace negotiations that ended the Revolutionary War in 1783, they found themselves, over the following decade, neglected by the British, pursued by American land speculators, invaded by squatters and besieged by the governments of New York and Pennsylvania. Yet at Canandaigua, Iroquois diplomats induced the United States to recognize the League's sovereignty over tribal territories, define the bounds of its landholdings in New York expansively, provide a $10,000 payment, promise annual delivery of $4,500 in trade goods as tokens of a perpetual alliance and affirm that only the federal government could negotiate for future land sales. In return the Haudenosaunee promised peace with the United States, surrendered all claims to land outside New York and agreed that American citizens could pass freely through their territories. In short, the League walked away with a terrific deal. Why did Pickering offer such terms? In part it was because the government needed Iroquois cooperation. Since the 1780's Indians farther west had thwarted American expansion militarily. Three years earlier, warriors of the Miami tribe under Little Turtle had handed the Army the worst defeat it would ever suffer at Indian hands, killing far more soldiers than would die a century later at the Little Bighorn. Meanwhile, Britain maintained forts in the United States' Northwest Territory; an armed taxpayers' revolt, the Whiskey Rebellion, was in progress in western Pennsylvania; foreign trade was suffering severely at the hands of the British and the Spanish; and the treasury was sliding headlong into insolvency.

But weakness alone does not explain the treaty. Washington and his fellow Federalists, who essentially conceived of themselves as a ruling class, believed that the national government could -- and should -- protect minorities' rights. Most important, they were willing to stipulate the sovereignty of native peoples, and deal with them as honorably as they would any foreign power. In the two centuries following the Canandaigua treaty, the Indian policy of the federal government changed dramatically. The willingness to negotiate with native groups as diplomatic equals waned, and was finally ended by Congressional action in 1871. Although the United States still delivers cloth worth $4,500 annually to the Iroquois, courts and presidents have never paid significant attention to protecting Iroquois lands from encroachments. As a consequence, the Haudenosaunee have lost most of their lands to fraud and irregular sales. This book presents a brief for the Iroquois understanding of their confederacy as a sovereign nation, not a ward of the United States. The Haudenosaunee maintain this position by refusing American citizenship, insisting on self-government according to traditional forms and issuing their own passports. Above all, they cling to the Canandaigua treaty. The academic essays in this volume make plausible arguments for the continuing legal validity of the agreement. But in the end it is the faith -- invoked in the speeches of the confederacy's chiefs -- that the treaty represents a moral obligation as real today as it was two centuries ago that carries the greatest weight. Will the United States fulfill its promises and make reparations for its failure to abide by the terms of the treaty? Time, and the courts, will tell. Meanwhile, the Haudenosaunee wait. (Fred Anderson is the author of ''Crucible of War: The Seven Years' War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754-1766.'' )   Source: NY Times Book Review, January 7, 2001 http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/j/jemison-treaty.html

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