page_title: Indian reservation
section_title: Iroquois land claims in Upstate New York
hierarchical_section_title: Indian reservation / Disputes over land sovereignty / Iroquois land claims in Upstate New York
caption_attribution_description: English: Location Fort Stanwix National Monument Description Discover how people endured harsh conditions along the Oneida Carrying Place. Learn how&#160;the American victory&#160;at this frontier fort&#160;directly contributed to the British defeat at Saratoga in 1777; setting the stage for&#160;westward expansion through New York. Follow in the paths of the people who made history in the Mohawk Valley during the American Revolutionary War.
context_page_description: An Indian reservation is a legal designation for an area of land managed by a federally recognized Indian tribe under the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs rather than the state governments of the United States in which they are physically located. Each of the 326 Indian reservations in the United States is associated with a particular Native American nation. Not all of the country's 567 recognized tribes have a reservation—some tribes have more than one reservation, while some share reservations. In addition, because of past land allotments, leading to some sales to non–Native Americans, some reservations are severely fragmented, with each piece of tribal, individual, and privately held land being a separate enclave. This jumble of private and public real estate creates significant administrative, political, and legal difficulties.
  The collective geographical area of all reservations is 56,200,000 acres, approximately the size of Idaho. While most reservations are small compared to U.S. states, there are 12 Indian reservations larger than the state of Rhode Island. The largest reservation, the Navajo Nation Reservation, is similar in size to West Virginia.
context_section_description: While the 1783 Treaty of Paris, which ended the American Revolution, addressed land sovereignty disputes between the British Crown and the colonies, it neglected to settle hostilities between indigenous people—specifically those who fought on the side of the British, as four of the members of the Haudenosaunee did—and colonists. In October 1784 the newly formed United States government facilitated negotiations with representatives from the Six Nations in Fort Stanwix, New York. The treaty produced in 1784 resulted in Indians giving up their territory within the Ohio River Valley and the U.S. guaranteeing the Haudenosaunee six million acres— about half of what is present-day New York— as permanent homelands.
  Unenthusiastic about the treaty's conditions, the state of New York secured a series of twenty-six "leases", many of them lasting 999 years on all native territories within its boundaries. Led to believe that they had already lost their land to the New York Genesee Company, the Haudenosaunee agreed to land leasing which was presented by New York Governor George Clinton as a means by which the indigenous could maintain sovereignty over their land. On 28 August 1788, the Oneidas leased five million acres to the state in exchange for $2,000 in cash, $2,000 in clothing, $1,000 in provisions and $600 annual rent. The other two tribes followed with similar arrangements.
  The Holland Land Company gained control over all but ten acres of the native land leased to the state on 15 September 1797. These 397 square miles were subsequently parceled out and subleased to whites, allegedly ending the native title to land. Despite Iroquois protests, federal authorities did virtually nothing to correct the injustice. Certain of losing all of their lands, in 1831 most of the Oneidas asked that what was left of their holdings be exchanged for 500,000 acres purchased from the Menominees in Wisconsin. President Andrew Jackson, committed to Indian Removal west of the Mississippi, agreed.
  The Treaty of Buffalo Creek signed on 15 January 1838, directly ceded 102,069 acres of Seneca land to the Ogden company for $202,000, a sum that was divided evenly between the government— to hold in trust for Indians— and non-Indian individuals who wanted to buy and improve the plots. All that was left of the Cayuga, Oneida, Onondaga and Tuscarora holding was extinguished at a total cost of $400,000 to Ogden.
  After Indian complaints, a second Treaty of Buffalo was written in 1842 in attempts to mediate tension. Under this treaty the Haudenosaunee were given the right to reside in New York and small areas of reservations were restored by the U.S. government.
  These agreements were largely ineffective in protecting Native American land. By 1889 eighty percent of all Iroquois reservation land in New York was leased by non-Haudenosaunees.
caption: Fort Stanwix, NY
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