About Manuscripts Profiles Maps Map Gallery Credits

Sketch of the Customs, Religion and Government of the Seneca Indians, in 1800

SW_HJ1830_006

strength had destroyed our rights. Our chiefs had felt your power, and were unable to contend against you, and they, therefore, gave up that country. What they agreed to, has bound our nation; but by this time your anger against u must be cooled, and although our strength has not increased, nor your power become less, we ask you to consider calmly - were the terms dictated to us by your commissioners reasona-ble and just?[After setting forth, in a plaintive strain, the many wrongs they had suffered, and the difficulties they had been led into by subsequent treaties with individuals, they go on, and say,] Father, We could bear this confusion no longer, and determined to lift up our voice, so that you might hear us, and to claim that security in possession of our lands, which your commissioners so solemnly promised us, and we now entreat you to inquire into our complaints, and redress our wrongs. We have already said how we came to join against you: - we saw that we were wrong - we wished for peace - you demanded a great country to be given up to you as the price of peace; and we ought to have peace, and possession of the little land you then left us. Father, We will not conceal from you that the great God, and not man, has preserved the Cornplanter from the hands of his own nation, for they ask continually, 'where is the land on which our children, and their children after them, are to lay down upon?' 'You told us,' say they, 'that the line drawn from Pennsylvania to Lake Ontario, would mark it forever on the east, and the line running from Beaver Creek to Pennsylvania would mark it on the west; and we see that it has not been so - for first one, and then another, comes and takes it away, by order of that people who you tell us promised it to us.' He is silent, for he has nothing to say. When the sun goes down, he opens his heart before God, and earlier than the sun appears again upon the hill , he gives thanks for his protection during the night season - for he feels that when men become desperate by their danger, it is God only that can preserve him. He loves peace, and all that he had in store he has given to those who have been robbed by your people, lest they should plunder the innocent to repay themselves. The whole season which others have employed in providing for their families, he has spent in en-deavouring to preserve peace, and at this moment his wife and children are lying on the ground in want of food - his heart is in pain for them - but he perceives that the Great Spirit will try his firmness in doing what is right. Father, All the land we have been speaking of, belonged to the Six Nations. No part of it ever belonged to the King of England, and he could not give it to you. The land we live on, our fathers received