Questionable land deals, faulty surveys, bribes – and what really got her interested was the Grand Island land claim. Wyoming County Historian Cindy Amrhein was set on a path to discover New York’s Native Americans may have been swindled out of some of their land – by the state itself.
“The Seneca Nation wanted to go after Grand Island because they said it (the island) was never included in any treaty – at all,” Amrhein said. “It had a separate deal in 1815, but the land never officially got transferred by deed from the Seneca to the State of New York.”
Amrhein’s book “Native America Land Rights in Upstate New York” – released mid-March – delves into the treaties and transactions of the land that has become New York State.
She began research for the book, although she hadn’t thought of actually writing one at that time, when she became the historian for the Town of Alabama in Genesee County in 1997. At that same time, she became an abstractor. Part of her job was to make sure a piece of land had a clear title before it was sold. Since Alabama was close to the Tonawanda Indian Reservation, she started accumulating information about the area's history.
“I started walking around the cemeteries on the reservation and started transcribing what was on the tombstones. I then sat down with Terry Abrams – who was at that time the president of the Tonawanda Reservation Historical Society – we sat down and started comparing notes. I had some he didn't have and vice-versa. I started getting more interested in it (the land deals) that way so I started researching more.”
In doing all the research and the fact that she was an abstractor, she wondered how many other reservations in the state had deeds.
“There are quite a lot of them that do. It usually depended on if it was a legal transaction. If it was a legit sale, there would be a deed to go along with the treaty. But often, there was no deed to match.”
According to Amrhein, New York knew how to write the treaties to include deeds, but that didn’t mean the state didn’t sidestep the process, which is what quite often happened.
“So that's why you end up with land claims. The Oil Springs Land Claim was a legit land claim because it was never included in some of the treaties as being transferred out. The Seneca People still owned Oil Springs, that's why the state was taken to court. Somewhere along the way, property was sold and people were allowed to build on the land, but New York had no right to do that because New York didn't own the property.”
Grand Island was considered Seneca territory prior to 1812. It was never included in any of the land transactions with the Seneca Indians. It was never included in any of the transactions of territory from Sodus Bay to Western New York (WNY). Additionally, in a 1747 map of territory in the WNY area, there was no island drawn in the river on the map. New York didn’t own it. Canada didn’t own it. It would have been the Senecas' native land.
“It's a difficult situation because of the water rights,” she said. “Part of the War of 1812 had to do with rights to the waterways, for fishing, trade and such. They didn't even survey the border between the State of New York and Canada until 1817. How can you say you own this by a treaty from 1815, when it hadn’t been decided who owned all the little rivers and little islands in the river until 1817?”
The Treaty of Ghent, signed Dec. 24, 1814, was the peace treaty that ended the War of 1812. Within the treaty, it says any territory belonging to any of the Indian Nations before that date was theirs. That included Grand Island.
“So it doesn't matter what you did in New York -- New York had no authority to make treaties with the Indians – period. Even George Washington said he did not want the states involved in negotiating with the Indians. He wanted to work with them on a government to government basis, nation to nation. So when the states started getting involved, that's when everything started to get messed up. Everything about Grand Island was a totally illegal transaction all together – but, that's what got me interested in this.”
Around 2004, Amrhein began writing for the Akwesasne phoenix newspaper, which covered Hogansburg and Franklin, in the Akwesasne Mohawk Territory. To avoid any appearance of a conflict in interest, she started writing under the pen name History Sleuth.
“So, nobody knew who I was and I started writing every week. My first article was picking on (then Gov. George) Pataki for the land claims deals he had been negotiating at the time. Then every time I'd find something about a land claim, I'd write an article for the newspaper.”
The Akwesasne phoenix went out of print in 2006. Shortly thereafter, Amrhein started getting phone calls and e-mails requesting information about the Indian reservations. That’s when she started thinking about putting it all in a book. This would allow her to expand on the information and add footnotes; giving readers an opportunity to pull the deeds and look up the treaties themselves.
Her pride and joy research, however, doesn’t begin until page 62 of the book.
There is the case of a man named Michael Hogan. He had leased land from the St. Regis Indians to run a ferry. She had pulled the deed from the St. Regis Indians to the State of New York. Hogan had signed his rights to the state. The St. Regis had signed their rights to the state. There was a treaty, a deed, and documents to match. There was one slight problem. (As the Wyoming County Free Press does not want to give any more of the story away...).
“I deduced, especially when I was looking at the St. Regis territory, New York State knew how to do a proper land transaction. In many cases, they (NYS) chose not to follow the right way to convey land – through a deed. They are responsible for the land claim cases that go on now. The settlers thought they were buying land that had a clear title.”
Amrhein is a longtime Perry resident.
“A History of Native American Land Rights in Upstate New York” can be found at Burlingham Books, Main Street, Perry; and on Amazon.com.
