Treaty of Fort Stanwix
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- For the 1784 treaty, see Treaty of Fort Stanwix (1784)
The Treaty of Fort Stanwix was an important treaty between North American Indians and the British Empire. It was signed at in 1768 at Fort Stanwix, located in present-day Rome, New York. It was negotiated between Oliver Wolcott and representatives of the Six Nations (the Iroquois).
The purpose of the conference was to adjust the boundary line between Indian lands and British colonial settlements set forth in the Royal 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 British 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 the Kentucky portion of the Colony of Virginia to the British. 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 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.
The reason for the Treaty of Fort Stanwix was that the press of population growth and economic development turned the attention of investors and land speculators to the area west of the Appalachians. In response to demands by settlers and speculators, British authorities were soon pressing the Iroquois and Cherokees for cessions of land in Indian country. No longer able to play off rival colonial powers, Indians were reduced to a choice between compliance and resistance. Weakened by the recent war, they chose to sign away lands. So in 1768, the Iroquois gave up their claim to the Ohio Valley, hoping thereby to deflect English settlement away from their own homeland.
[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)
- The Old New York Frontier, by Francis Whiting Halsey; New York; Charles Scribner's Sons, 1901 (Part 3, Chapter 2 The Fort Stanwix Deed, and Patents that Followed It (1768 – 1770), pp. 99-105)
