Even if the court does accept the Magistrate's ruling he remains confident that the Senecas will not be successful. I look forward to working with all of the named defendants that are fighting the Senecas' lawsuit to ensure that the residents and taxpayers of the Town of Grand Island have their land rights protected. This is a land claim filed by the Seneca Nation in August of 1993. The claim is for approximately 18,600 acres involving islands in the Niagara River. The largest of these islands is Grand Island which is over 17,000 acres.
Grand Island is the heart of the claim.
The Seneca argument is essentially that the land belonged to the Seneca Nation, which was part of the Iroquois Confederacy and they never sold it or gave it away to either the French or the British. The State of New York acquired the land in 1815 from the Seneca Nation in an agreement which was made in violation of federal law. The federal law in 1815 required that all transactions involving land between Indians and anyone else, including state governments, must be approved and authorized by Congress. No one in this case contests the Seneca argument that the transactions were not approved. There is no evidence that Congress approved this transaction.