Seneca Indian Country

Seneca Indian Country. Historic New York. , The Seneca Indians, “Keepers of the Western Door” occupied this area since the formation of the Iroquois confederacy about 1550. Most numerous and most warlike of the Six Nations, they for a time dominated the tribes northward into Canada and southward into Pennsylvania. Although the Confederacy was allied with the English, the Senecas turned against them in Pontiac’s uprising in 1763. During the Revolution they sided with the British and joined in Tory raids on the New York frontier. For this they were punished and driven back by the Sullivan-Clinton Expedition of 1779. Many settled in Canada after the Revolution, but Chief Cornplanter (1732 – 1836), born near here, signed the Treaty of Fort Stanwix, 1784, making peace with the United States and accepting a reservation of land. The half-brother of Cornplanter, Handsome Lake (1735 – 1815), became the “prophet” of a regenerated Indian “religion” which still has many followers., The Holland Land Company in 1793 purchased all of western New York from a line eight miles west of here. The region was often stirred by religious and social ferments, like the Anti-Masonic furor following the disappearance of William Morgan in 1826. Small industries and diversified agriculture are basic to the economy of the area.