Opinion ID: 787593
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The 1794 Treaty of Canandaigua

Text: 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.