Treaty of Fort Stanwix

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The Treaty of Fort Stanwix is actually two treaties between Native Americans and European-Americans which were signed at Fort Stanwix, located in present-day Rome, New York.

[edit] The Fort Stanwix Treaty of 1768

In 1768, Sir William Johnson and representatives of the Six Nations negotiated an important treaty at Fort Stanwix between the British government and the Iroquois. The purpose of the conference was to adjust the boundary line between Indian lands and white settlements set forth in the Proclamation of 1763. The British government hoped a new boundary line might bring an end to the rampant frontier violence, which had become costly and troublesome. Indians hoped a new, permanent line might hold back white colonial expansion.

The final treaty was signed on November 5 with one signatory for each of the Six Nations and in the presence of representatives from New Jersey, Virginia and Pennsylvania as well as Johnson. The Indians received £10,460 7s. 3d. sterling. The treaty established a Line of Property which extended the earlier proclamation line much further west. The Iroquois had effectively ceded Kentucky to the whites. However, the Indians who actually used the Kentucky lands, primarily the Shawnee, Delaware, and Cherokee, had no role in the negotiations. Rather than secure peace, the Fort Stanwix treaty of 1768 helped set the stage for the next round of hostilities along the Ohio River, which would culminate in Dunmore's War.

The treaty also settled land claims between the Six Nations and the Penn family, the proprietors of Pennsylvania. Due to disputes about the physical boundaries of the settlement, however, the final treaty line would not be fully agreed upon for another five years.

The final portion of the Line of Property in Pennsylvania, called the Purchase line in that State, was fixed in 1773 by a representatives from the Six Nations and Pennsylvania who met at a spot called Canoe Place at the confluence of West Branch of the Susquehanna River and Cush Cushion Creek in what is now Cherry Tree, Pennsylvania.

[edit] The Fort Stanwix Treaty of 1784

Another treaty was conducted at the fort between the United States and Native Americans in 1784, one of several treaties signed after the American victory in the Revolutionary War. Signed by Seneca Chief Cornplanter, the Iroquois Confederacy ceded all lands west of the Niagara River to the United States.

[edit] References

• "The Documentary History of the State of New York", by E.B. O'Callaghan, M.D.; Albany: Weed, Parsons & Co., 1850 (Vol. 1 pp. 379-381 text of treaty of 1768; also extensive correspondence of Sir William Johnson)