Note 80 — Evans’s Pedestrious Tour of Four Thousand Miles—1818 (continued 2)

The Seneca Indians were the most western of the Iroquois, and during the Revolutionary War had their principal villages on the Genesee River, one of them containing one hundred and twenty-eight houses. These were completely destroyed by Sullivan’s expedition (1779); but although the English invited them to cross into Canada with the Mohawk, they refused to go, and a considerable number settled near the mouth of Buffalo and Cattaraugus creeks. When in 1797 the Holland Company purchased the Indian title to their lands, the Seneca retained reservations at these points, also the Allegheny and Tonawanda reservations already mentioned (ante, p. 153), and five smaller ones in the Genesee valley. In 1838 pressure was brought to bear by the Ogden Land Company, and certain chiefs signed a treaty ceding their lands in New-York, Congress at the same time granting them lands in Indian Territory. The body of the people, however, refused to move; the New-York and Pennsylvania Friends interested themselves in their behalf, and they were allowed to remain.—Ed.