Opinion ID: 787593
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: 1784 to 1815: United States Control over the Niagara Region

Text: 36 The Treaty of Paris did not address continuing hostilities with Indian nations, which proved a source of ongoing friction. See generally Seneca II, 206 F.Supp.2d at 474-76. Accordingly, Congress decided to acquire from the Iroquois land in the Northwest Territory (present-day Ohio), not only as a buffer but also to be able to sell to pay war debts. Joint Stip. ¶ 71. Congress empowered treaty commissioners to confer, treat, agree and conclude with the Indians, of and concerning the establishment of peace ..., extinguishing their claims and settling boundaries between them and the citizens of the United States. Seneca II, 206 F.Supp.2d at 476 (internal quotation marks omitted). Among the lands the government sought to acquire, no mention was made of the Niagara region or the Islands. 37 Around the same time, but prior to the 1784 Treaty of Fort Stanwix, New York, believing that it was authorized to do so by the Legislative Rights Proviso, sought to conclude a peace treaty with the Iroquois. 10 Specifically, New York asked the Iroquois to cede the lands in the vicinity of Niagara and Oswego, but the Iroquois Nations' negotiator responded that [t]his already belongs to [y]ou by the Treaty with Great Britain. Speech of Joseph Brant to the Mohawks, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas (1787) [hereinafter Brant Speech], reprinted in Proceedings of the Commissioners of Indian Affairs 61 (Franklin B. Hough ed. 1861). Ultimately, no agreement was reached. 38 The 1784 Treaty of Fort Stanwix established a western boundary for Iroquois Nations land claims, reserving for the United States all lands located to the west of the boundary. See 1784 Treaty of Fort Stanwix, art. III, 7 Stat. 15, 15-16 ([T]he Six Nations shall and do yield to the United States, all claims to the country west of the said boundary....). In addition to securing for the United States the Northwest Territory, the Treaty also secured the Niagara region and a competent district around Fort Oswego to the United States, despite the fact that the commissioners had not been instructed by Congress to acquire it. Seneca II, 206 F.Supp.2d at 479. 39 The area around the Niagara region purportedly secured by the Treaty was roughly coterminous with that acquired by the British in the August 1764 Treaty. See id. at 553 (Map Appendix J). Congress received and recommended approval of the Treaty, and ordered it published. It did so, however, along with language proposed by a New York delegate to the Congress, Melancton Smith, declaring that no purchases, which have been or hereafter may be made from the Indians, at any treaties held or to be held with them, of their right to soil within the limits of any state, can, ought, or shall be considered as interfering with the right of any such state to the jurisdiction or soil. 29 Jour. Continental Cong. 806 (Oct. 4, 1785). Indeed, when the Senecas expressed concern to the New York State Commissioners of Indian Affairs in 1787 that the United States might travel through their Country and disturb our Wives and Children in traveling to the Niagara region, the New York State Senate resolved, in part, that the Governor be requested to ... inform [the Senecas] that the land ceded at the treaty of Fort [Stanwix] in 1784, to the United States, ( except those they mention in the vicinity of Oswego and Niagara ) are not deemed to be comprehended within the jurisdiction of this State. J. of the Sen. of the State of N.Y. 75, 80 (1787) (emphasis added).
40 Although the Continental Congress accepted New York's cession of western land claims in 1782 and acknowledged its western border, a dispute remained between Massachusetts and New York as to their competing claims (and rights of preemption over Indian lands) within that border. 11 See Joint Stip. ¶¶ 79-82. The 1786 Hartford Compact settled this dispute, granting Massachusetts the right of preemption, in relevant part, over Indian lands located more than one mile to the east of the Niagara River, while New York retained both sovereignty and the right of preemption over the lands to the west of that boundary, including the River and the Islands. 12 Id. ¶¶ 81-82; see Seneca II, 206 F.Supp.2d at 554 (Map Appendix K).
41 The new Constitution did away with the Legislative Rights Proviso in the Articles of Confederation, at least with respect to Indian relations, and, through the Indian Commerce Clause, gave the federal government sole power over Indian affairs. See U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 3. Congress soon passed the Non-Intercourse Act, which, in its 1802 iteration, barred conveyances of Indian land without Congressional approval. See supra note 3.
42 The Senecas were dissatisfied with the boundary drawn in 1784 at Fort Stanwix. 13 Also, hostilities between the United States and the western (non-Iroquois) Indians continued intermittently after the Revolutionary War, complicating the United States' expansion westward into the territories acquired in the 1784 Treaty. By 1793, Secretary of War Henry Knox proposed, as a means of securing peace, to permit treaty commissioners to cede land acquired in 1784—a proposal which President Washington's cabinet concluded to be permissible provided that no grants to individuals nor reservations to states be thereby infringed. 25 Papers of Thomas Jefferson 258-59 (John Catanzariti ed.1992). No agreement was reached, and the military struggle with the western Indians continued. 43 In 1794, as a consequence of concerns that the Senecas might join ranks with the hostile western Indians, the United States once again sought a permanent peace with the Iroquois Nations. See Seneca II, 206 F.Supp.2d at 486. Initially, the Senecas pressed the United States to relinquish its land along the Niagara River. Id. at 488. The United States' negotiator, Timothy Pickering, replied that he would freely give [the land] up if the United States were permitted to cut[] a road ... [with] taverns to accommodate travellers, but the Senecas rejected this compromise, as well as one that would have permitted the United States to retain three or four mile-square tracts on the river bank to be used as `convenient stages' in return for $500 annually. Id. 44 Ultimately, the land that the United States acknowledge[d] ... to be the property of the Seneka nation under the Treaty of Canandaigua encompassed a substantial part of what is now western New York, including the southern Niagara strip. Treaty of Canandaigua, Nov. 11, 1794, art. III, 7 Stat. 44; Joint Stip. ¶ 91. Specifically, the Senecas' western boundary under the Treaty ran along the river Niagara to Lake Erie, but the Treaty did not mention the River's islands. Treaty of Canandaigua, art. III, 7 Stat. at 44; see Seneca II, 206 F.Supp.2d at 555-56 (Map Appendices L and M). Whether the phrase along the river includes the Islands is the critical issue in this litigation. See infra Part VI.B.1.
45 As relations between the United States and Great Britain deteriorated in the early years of the Nineteenth Century, ownership of the Islands took on renewed strategic importance. See Seneca II, 206 F.Supp.2d at 495-96. In 1811, the New York legislature authorized Governor Daniel Tompkins to purchase the Islands from the Senecas. Joint Stip. ¶ 105. Governor Tompkins, however, was not sure that such a purchase was legally necessary. In an 1812 letter to Thomas Gosvenor, Chairman of New York's Committee on Indian Affairs, he recounted a conversation with certain Seneca Chiefs, who were then reluctant to sell the Islands to New York. He emphasized to them the questionable nature and the slenderness of their title under the 1794 Treaty of Canandaigua, by which the lands which they [were] reserved were specifically described by metes and bounds, which metes and bounds excluded the ... Islands. Id. ¶ 106. Tompkins was clearly referring to the reservation of land along the southern strip of the Niagara River as expressly excluding any islands located within the river. See 1794 Treaty of Canandaigua, art. 3, 7 Stat. at 43. He further explained that the Islands belonged to New York because they were given by the Iroquois Nations to Sir William Johnson in the August 1764 Cession, and that if he ever had a valid title for those Islands they would have passed to his son, Sir John Johnson, upon his death, and finally to the people of this State upon John Johnson's attainder. Id. Any negotiated purchase, he had advised the Senecas, would be a manifestation of the State's friendship and liberality towards the Senecas, but was not required by law. Id. Tompkins believed that the Senecas' reluctance to sell the Islands was on account of the precarious State of our relations with [British] Canada, and that they sought to defer any negotiation relative to the sale of the Islands... to some period at which a treaty might be held by them on that subject without exciting the jealously [sic] and suspicion of the Canadian government. Id. 46 The Senecas remained neutral at the outset of the War of 1812, but when rumors of a British invasion of Grand Island—which the Senecas believed to be theirs—circulated, they allied themselves with the United States. Red Jacket, a Seneca Chief, explained their decision to Erastus Granger, the United States Indian agent for the Iroquois Nations, accordingly: Our property is taken possession of by the British and their Indian friends. It is necessary for us now to take up the business, defend our property and drive the enemy from it. If we sit still upon our seats ..., the British (according to the customs of you, white people) would hold it by conquest—and should you conquer the Canadas, you will claim it upon the same principles, as conquered from the British. 47 Buffalo Gazette, Aug. 4, 1812, quoted in Seneca II, 206 F.Supp.2d at 497. 48 The 1814 Treaty of Ghent, which concluded the War of 1812, established a Commission to determine the international boundary in the Niagara River basin as previously set forth in the 1783 Treaty of Paris. 14 Shortly thereafter, New York resumed its attempts to purchase the Islands from the Senecas, with Governor Tompkins still contending that [a]lthough it is questionable whether these Indians have any title to the lands, ... I am willing (with a view to avoid any collisions, and to perpetuate the good understanding which at present exists between them & the government) to pay ... for the relinquishment of their right to all the Islands. Seneca II, 206 F.Supp.2d at 497-98. On September 12, 1815, the purchase was consummated. The Senecas agreed to sell, grant, convey, and confirm to the people of New York, all the islands in the Niagara River between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario within the jurisdiction of the United States in exchange for $1,000 and a perpetual annuity of $500. Joint Stip. ¶ 108. It is undisputed that there was no federal commissioner present, and that if the Islands were the Senecas' to convey, the conveyance would have violated the Non-Intercourse Act. Id. ¶ 109. After the international boundary was settled in 1822, and the Islands confirmed to lie within the United States, New York authorized the partition of Grand Island into lots, which were sold at auction in 1825.