What is a "Treaty"?

Continued from last week…

The 1701 Treaty Conference

Lieutenant Governor John Nanfan had succeeded the Earl of Bellomont as the Governor of New York. In early July 1701, “all the Sachims of the Five Nations” arrived at Albany and met with Nanfan “and told him that they were heartily glad to see him in station”. Nanfan replied to their hope that he would continue “the love and affection that former Governors sent by the King of England have had to us the Five Nations”:

…You may be assured not only of the favor and protection of the great King of England my Master the demonstrations whereof you will find before you go hence, but of my rediness to serve you on all occasions.

Nanfan invited the Chiefs to meet with him the following morning at the courthouse. The record of the “first days conference” is dated July 12, 1702. The mayor and alderman of Albany, Nanfan, and Colonel Peter Schuyler “of His Majesties Council” (Schuyler had gone to London with the “Four Indian Kings” nine years later) were present. Robert Livingston, the Secretary of Indian Affairs, kept the records.

Nanfan raised several issues in the first day, noting that he would “discourse further upon another subject” once he had received their answer.

He wanted to know about the “business and negotiation” transacted by two French agents at Onondaga.

He wanted to know about the progress the Haudenosaunee had made in making peace with the “Fair Nations of Indians whom the French have so long imployed to kill your people”.

He said he was glad the Haudenosaunee had refused to accept a Catholic priest, and promised Protestant ministers for them soon.

Was the 1701 “Trust Deed” a surrender?

The Confederacy placed the “Beaver Hunting Ground” under British protection in 1701. Later commentators have entered into a discussion of what was intended by this. An Ontario court, in R. v. Ireland and Jamieson, has suggested that what was involved was a surrender of the territory—though the effect of the transaction on the land was never an issue in the case, which dealt only with hunting rights.

Other, later communications were not so sure. Richard Haan suggests that:

In 1701, during the councils that produced what scholars called the “Grand Settlement”, arrangements with New York were further adapted to meet new conditions. New York, eager to confirm its alleged sovereignty over the Iroquois against similar French claims, promised England’s protection of Iroquois hunting grounds in the west. The formal records list a “Trust Deed” that implies English sovereignty, but the Iroquois probably read the agreement as brotherly assistance to defend their lands, not as a new relationship cementing English hegemony over the Five Nations. The misunderstanding persisted, however, as New York officials by the 1720’s understood the deed of 1701 to convey ownership of the territory to the Crown. Meanwhile the Iroquois complained that New York failed to live up to its promises to defend them in the west, especially as the French establishment at Niagara grew from a small trading post into a substantial stone fort.

(Covenant and Consensus, Iroquois and English, 1676-1760, Richard L. Haan, in Beyond the Covenant Chain, Richter and Haan, eds. Syracuse University Press, 1987, pp. 52-53).

New York had an interest in claiming ownership of the territory, including being able to maintain a claim against other English colonies, especially Massachusetts. In the 1780’s, for example, New York was using the 1701 Treaty to claim the Ohio Valley, as well as authority to enter into treaties in its own right.

Governor William Shirley of Massachusetts gave Sir William Johnson instructions on April 16, 1755 which were calculated to reassure the Haudenosaunee of the intentions of the British concerning these lands:

You are to acquaint the Indians of the Six Nations, if you shall judge it from the Temper you find them in, proper to do so, with his Majesty’s design to recover their lands at Niagara and upon the River Ohio out of the Hands of the French, and to protect them against future encroachment for the benefit of their Tribes.

(Sir William Johnson Papers, 1:474)

Continued next week