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65 Four years after the end of the Revolution, the chief warrior and spokesman Good Peter contrasted the postwar expectations of many Oneidas with their reality. Within that brief period, white settlement surrounded the Oneidas, who lost nearly all their lands and suffered tremendous internal strife. Things were not supposed to have worked out that way. For the Oneidas, the gratitude of the United States and New York proved to be thin reeds on which to rely. In the Oneidas’ difficult circumstances New York found an irresistible opportunity to begin replenishing its wardepleted coffers and making good on claims to lands beyond the Hudson and Mohawk. Decimated and impoverished by war, the Oneidas could not physically resist the arrival of thousands of Euro-Americans who flocked to Iroquoia in the Revolution’s wake. The Oneidas did their best to parry this challenge. They engaged with the cultural and economic notions of the Euro-American settlers. Many Oneidas adopted elements of Christianity to augment their spiritual resources and help them cope with the wrenching changes to their lives. In this context, the advice and insights of their missionary, Samuel Kirkland, took on an enhanced importance. As before, however, they accepted his religious advice as they did his political advice, selectively. Real estate was a different matter. When pressed to cede land, the Oneidas sought an intermediary to manage transactions with whites. Since they were at a disadvantage in dealing with English-language legal documents, English measures, and the Arabic numeration system, the Oneidas required an agent in whom they could repose absolute trust—“one Great Man,” as 4 Misplaced Faith A Decade of Dispossession, 1785–1794 I expected when I returned to my Country to have sat down in Peace and enjoyed pleasant Days. I was even encouraged to hope this, Brother, from you, from your own Declarations. You welcomed me home on my Return. The United States there planted the Tree of Peace with four Roots, spreading Branches and beautiful Leaves, whose Top reached the Heavens. —Good Peter, 1788 66 Chapter 4 they put it. Kirkland, who had pledged never to acquire land west of the Hudson, seemed a suitable candidate. Surrendering their land outright was repugnant, but thwarting the aspirations of Euro-American farmers became impossible. Leasing part of their lands seemed like a workable compromise . The Oneidas came to grief, however, as their plans were refused or subverted. Kirkland was but one of numerous intermediaries who took advantage of the Oneidas by misrepresenting or otherwise failing to explicate fully the terms of proposed agreements. The Oneidas’ poor living conditions increased their vulnerability. The war had left them destitute. Their houses had been burned, their fields had become overgrown, and their caches of corn and grain had been emptied. Capt. John Otaawighton said of his village, “We found it consumed to ashes and all our improvements destroyed.” A survey undertaken by the federal government counted seventy-three houses destroyed in Kanonwalohale alone. On an abbreviated visit to the Oneidas in 1784, Kirkland said, he subsisted “intirely on strawberries, with now & then a little fish.” In 1785 he reported , “The most of my people are degenerated as much as our paper currency depreciated in time of war.” As the Oneidas returned, they rebuilt Kanonwalohale, but in an even less concentrated settlement pattern than before the war, and also established many smaller settlements. “The number of small Villages since the resettling [of ] the Country,” Kirkland complained in late 1785, “has increased my travelling to near thirty miles when I make a general visit.” This dispersed pattern helped the Oneidas make the most of available resources, but it also reflected family rivalries, the broad political competition between sachems and warriors, and disputes over religion, temperance, and wartime allegiance. Oriske was dominated by members of the sachem faction and Kanonwalohale by the warriors. François Barbé-Marbois, a French nobleman who was present at the peace treaty, witnessed a brawl between Oneida brothers that he explained thus: “One of the two brothers had followed the English army, and the other had joined the American.” Indeed, over 150 Oneidas took refuge along the Grand River in Canada, alongside nearly 2,000 pro-British Iroquois settled under Brant’s leadership. Some, but not all, would trickle back over the next ten years. Questions also lingered over John Skenandoah’s service to the British. Most excused him, recalling his time in Niagara’s “black hole” and accepting his explanation that whatever services...

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