War of 1812 Era · 1802

Indenture with the Senecas, 1802

ID T-0024

Date 1802-06-30

Articles 1

Instrument Note

Parties

Seneca Nation and Oliver Phelps, Isaac Bronson, and Horatio Jones

Context

Executed June 30, 1802. Another indenture — private land transaction through federal mechanism — for the same Big Tree Reservation parcel as T-0019 and T-0025. Multiple instruments covering the same or related parcels appear in this period because the legal title chain was contested and required multiple instruments to resolve.

Significance

This indenture conveys a two-square-mile parcel of Seneca territory in Genesee County. The consideration, legal description, and parties partially overlap with T-0019 and T-0025. These instruments, taken together, document the legal machinery of converting communal Indian land title into individual fee ownership transferable to non-Indian purchasers in western New York.

Legal Observation

The existence of multiple overlapping instruments for the same parcel — T-0019, T-0024, T-0025 — is itself a legal signal. Clean title from Indian land required federal sanction under the Non-Intercourse Act; where transactions generated title disputes, additional instruments were executed to clear the chain. The Seneca had conveyed this land. The buyers needed the paperwork to prove it.

TREATY WITH THE CREEKS. 1802. of the United States of America, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate thereof.

In TESTIMONY WHEREOF

, the Commissioners Plenipotentiary of the United States, and the Mingos, principal men and warriors of the Chactaw nation, have hereto subscribed their names and affixed their seals, at Fort Adams, on the Mississippi, this seventeenth day of December, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and one, and of the independence of the United States the twenty- ixth. Six JA. WILKINSON, BENJAMIN HAWKINS, ANDW. PICKENS. Tuskona Hopoia, Illa talla, Homo, Toota Homo, Hoché Homo, Mingo Homo Massatubby, Tuspéna Chaabe, Oak Chumme, Muclusha Hopoia, Mingo Poos,coos, Capputanne Thiucco, Buckshun Nubby, Robert M:Clure, Shappa Homo, Poosha Homo, Hi,upa Homo, Ba ka Lub,be. WITNESSES PRxsENT:——Alexander Macomb, jun. secretary to the commission; John M:Kee, deputy superintendant and agent to the Chactaws; Henry Gaither, lieu- tenant colonel commandant; John H. Brull, major second regiment infantry; Bn. Shaumburgh, captain second regiment infantry; Fran. Jones, assistant quarter mas- ter general; Benjamin Wilkinson, lieutenant and paymaster third United States regi- ment; J. B. Walbach, aid de camp to the commanding general; J. Wilson, lieutenant third regiment infantry; Samuel Jeton, lieutenant second regiment of artillery and engineers; John F. Carmichael, surgeon third regiment United States army. To the Indian names are subjoined a mark and seal. Between the United States of America and the Creek Nation of Indians. Tomas Jerrerson, President of the United States of America, by James Wilkinson, of the state of Maryland, Brigadier General in the army of the United States, Benjamin Hawkins, of North-Carolina, and Andrew Pickens of South-Carolina, Commissioners Plenipotentiary of the United States, on the one part, and the Kings, Chiefs, Head Men and Warriors of the Creek Nation, in council assembled, on the other part, have entered into the following articles and conditions, viz. AnTicLE I. The Kings, Chiefs, Head men and Warriors of the Creek nation, in behalf of the said nation, do by these presents cede to the United States of America, all that tract and tracts of land, situate, lying and being within and between the following bounds, and the lines and limits of the extinguished claims of the said nation, heretofore ascer- tained and established by treaty. "That is to say—beginning at the upper extremity of the high shoals of the Appalachee river, the same being a branch of the Oconee river, and on the southern bank of the same—running thence a direct course to a noted ford of the south branch of Little river, called by the Indians Chat-to-chuc-co hat-chee— thence a direct line to the main branch of Commissioners! creek, where the same is intersected by the path leading from the rock-landing to the

Source: U.S. Statutes at Large, Vol. VII. Edited by Richard Peters, Esq. Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1846. Reprinted by Dennis & Co., Inc., Buffalo, N.Y., 1962. Source lines 7061–7133.