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157 The 1835 Treaty of New Echota between the Cherokees and the United States ranks among the most infamous treaties in the history of the United States’ relationship with Native peoples. That treaty, which paved the way for the Cherokee Trail of Tears, exchanged the Cherokees’ southeastern homeland for lands in Oklahoma. It was signed at a council by only a minority of Cherokees. The majority boycotted the proceedings in protest, but the treaty commissioner, John Schermerhorn, did them one better by writing in the treaty’s preamble that absence implied consent. The New Echota treaty was a fine example of how Schermerhorn operated. The treaty earned the Dutch Reformed minister from Utica the opprobrium of the Cherokees (who punningly nicknamed him “the Devil’s horn”), as well as many Euro-Americans who had come to sympathize with the Cherokees’ plight. The New Echota treaty precipitated a national political drama that Schermerhorn ducked by busying himself with a new project: getting Indians from New York to join the Cherokees in Indian Territory. The fruit of his labor was a treaty with the Six Nations signed in January 1838 at Buffalo Creek. This was the first federal treaty involving the Six Nations as a whole since 1794. But Schermerhorn was no Pickering, and the Treaty of Buffalo Creek was no Canandaigua. For the Senecas, the Buffalo Creek negotiations resulted in significant land loss. For them, the Tuscaroras, and some Cayugas and Oneidas as well, it also resulted in a deadly removal, this one to Kansas Territory. The historian Grant Foreman describes the story of this botched migration as “incredible” were it “not borne out by the frightful mortality . . . and the sickly and emaciated countenances of the survivors.” 7 Diaspora and Survival,1836–1850 158 Chapter 7 The Buffalo Creek treaty’s effect on the Oneida nation as a whole was more ambiguous. The treaty dimmed their view of the federal government and their future, prompting some to leave the United States for Canada. But it had no provisions binding on the New York Oneidas and did not mandate their removal. And, indeed, while New York treaties and laws of the 1840s increased pressure on the Oneidas still further—even imposing severalty on them—some Oneidas remained firmly seated on their homeland. The Buffalo Creek treaty was another attempt by the Ogden Land Company to remove the Senecas and Tuscaroras from the area for which they had purchased the preemption right. Hundreds of Oneidas had gone to Wisconsin but, from the company’s perspective, the new effort had been in vain because the Senecas, Tuscaroras, and Cayugas had not followed them. Schermerhorn , who was related to the Ogden shareholder Peter Schermerhorn, had begun laying the groundwork for a new effort to lever them from New York in 1836. He felt that Kansas (part of Indian Territory at the time) was a viable destination. Schermerhorn visited New York governor William Marcy to ask his support, which, he said, was “most cheerfully tendered.” Then he wrote a letter to President Jackson in which he said, “I am . . . endeavouring to bring about a treaty with the New York Indians; I think it very doubtfull, whether we shall be able to succeed to the full extent of your wishes to get rid of this portion of our population.” But he was determined to try. Schermerhorn was convinced that eliminating the Green Bay option was a prerequisite to getting the Senecas to emigrate to Kansas. The Oneidas were therefore implicated once again in the Ogden Company’s efforts to push the Senecas from their lands. Schermerhorn departed for Green Bay even before receiving permission from the War Department. Although the Oneidas there “utterly refused” to sell all their Wisconsin lands, in the socalled Duck Creek treaty of 1836, they agreed to consider removal to Kansas and accept a smaller reservation at Green Bay if its boundaries were sufficiently generous and clearly defined. Limiting the size of the Green Bay reservation would effectively arrest further emigration to Wisconsin. In the face of these questions, Daniel Bread complained that the Oneidas “had hoped . . . the U. States would have been satisfied after taking away so much land from them, and let them keep in peace the little that they had left. They did not wish to sell it, but they saw how it was, all the Indians must go West, West, Mississippi, Mississippi. He hated the...

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