Seneca Nation

Origins

The Seneca lived in western New York between Seneca Lake and the Genesee River, the westernmost of the five founding Haudenosaunee nations. Joining the Iroquois Confederacy around the mid-15th century, according to tradition, they guarded its western flank, and towns such as Ganondagan grew into some of the largest settlements in the region.

Rule and society

The Seneca sent eight chiefs to the Grand Council and, as the most numerous nation, supplied many warriors in the Beaver Wars against the Huron Confederacy, Neutral Confederacy and Erie Nation. In 1687 the French governor Denonville burned Ganondagan. In the late 18th century the war chief Cornplanter and the orator Red Jacket led the nation, and in 1799 Handsome Lake began the teaching that became the Longhouse religion.

To the present

After siding with Britain, the Seneca sold most of their lands in the Treaty of Big Tree in 1797. In 1848 the Allegany and Cattaraugus communities formed the Seneca Nation of Indians, an elected republic, while Tonawanda kept traditional chiefs. Kinzua Dam flooded Allegany land in the 1960s.