The Seneca ( ;Laurie Bauer, 2007, The Linguistics Student's Handbook, Edinburgh , ) are a group of Indigenous Iroquoian-speaking people who historically lived south of Lake Ontario, one of the five Great Lakes in North America. Their nation was the farthest to the west within the Six Nations or Haudenosaunee (Iroquois League) in New York before the American Revolution. For this reason, they are called "The Keepers of the Western Door".
In the 21st century, more than 10,000 Seneca live in the United States, which has three federally recognized Seneca tribes. Two of them are centered in New York: the Seneca Nation of Indians, with five territories in western New York near Buffalo; and the Tonawanda Seneca Nation. The Seneca-Cayuga Nation is in Oklahoma, where their ancestors were relocated from Ohio during the Indian Removal. Approximately 1,000 Seneca live in Canada, where they are enrolled in the Konadaha Seneca First Nation and Niharondasa Seneca First Nation at the Six Nations of the Grand River near Brantford, Ontario. They are descendants of Seneca who resettled there after the American Revolution, as they had been allies of the British and forced to cede much of their lands.
Name The Seneca's own name for themselves is Onödowaʼga꞉ʼ or O-non-dowa-gah, meaning "Great Hill People". The exonym Seneca is based on an ethnonym from an Iroquoian language that originally referred to the Oneida, which was adapted to the phonology of Mohegan, Dutch, and then English. The Dutch applied the name Sennecaas promiscuously to the four western Haudenosaunee nations, the Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca, but with increasing contact the name came to be applied only to the latter. The French called them Sonontouans. The Dutch name is also often spelled Sinnikins or Sinnekars, which was later corrupted to Senecas.
History Seneca oral history states that the nation originated in a village called Nundawao, near the south end of Canandaigua Lake, at South Hill. Close to South Hill stands the Bare Hill, known to the Seneca as . Bare Hill is part of the Bare Hill Unique Area, which began to be acquired by the state of New York in 1989. Bare Hill had been the site of a Seneca (or Seneca-ancestral people) fort.
The first written reference to this fort was made in 1825 by the Tuscarora historian David Cusick in his history of the Seneca Indians.
In the early 1920s, the material that made up the Bare Hill fort was used by the Town of Middlesex highway department for road fill.
The Seneca historically lived in what is now New York state between the Genesee River and Canandaigua Lake. The dating of an oral tradition mentioning a solar eclipse yields 1142 AD as the year for the Seneca joining the Haudenosaunee. Some recent archaeological evidence indicates their territory eventually extended to the Allegheny River in present-day northwestern Pennsylvania, particularly after the Haudenosaunee destroyed both the Wenrohronon and Erie nations in the 17th century, who were native to the area. The Seneca were by far the most populous of the Haudenosaunee nations, numbering about four thousand by the seventeenth century.Anthony F.C. Wallace, The Death and Rebirth of the Seneca (New York: Vintage Books, 1969).
Seneca villages were located as far east as current-day Schuyler County (e.g. Catherine's Town and Kanadaseaga/), south into current Tioga and Chemung counties, north and east into Tompkins and Cayuga counties, and west into the Genesee River valley. The villages were the homes and headquarters of the Seneca. While the Seneca maintained substantial permanent settlements and raised agricultural crops in the vicinity of their villages, they also hunted widely through extensive areas. They also executed far-reaching military campaigns. The villages, where hunting and military campaigns were planned and executed, indicate the Seneca had hegemony in these areas.(Houghton, Frederick. "The Migration of the Seneca Nation", American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 29, No 2 (April, 1927) pp. 241–250)
Major Seneca villages were protected with wooden palisades. Ganondagan (), with 150 longhouses, was the largest Seneca village of the 17th century, while Chenussio (), with 130 longhouses, was a major village of the 18th century.
The Seneca nation has two branches: the western and the eastern. Each branch was individually incorporated and recognized by the Haudenosaunee Confederacy Council. The western Seneca lived predominantly in and around the Genesee River, gradually moving west and southwest along Lake Erie and the Niagara River, then south along the Allegheny River into Pennsylvania. The eastern Seneca lived predominantly south of Seneca Lake. They moved south and east into Pennsylvania and the western Catskill area.Parker, Arthur. The History of the Seneca Indians. Ira J. Freidman (1967); Empire State Historical Publications Series, XLIII, p. 13–20.
The west and north were under constant attack from their powerful Iroquoian brethren, the Wendat/Wyandot (Huron) To the South, the Iroquoian-speaking Susquehannock (Conestoga) also threatened constant warfare. The Algonquian Mohicans blocked access to the Hudson River in the east and northeast, while to the southeast, the related Lenape people threatened war from eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey and the Lower Hudson.Map 2: Seneca Nation of Indians v. State of New York, 206 F, Supp. 448 (2002) Appendix DParker, pp. 25–28)
The Seneca used the Genesee and Allegheny rivers, as well as the Great Indian War and Trading Path (the Seneca Trail), to travel from southern Lake Ontario into Pennsylvania and Ohio (Merrill, Arch. Land of the Senecas; Empire State Books, 1949, pp. 18–25). The eastern Seneca had territory just north of the intersection of the Chemung, Susquehanna, Tioga and Delaware rivers, which converged in Tioga. The rivers provided passage deep into all parts of eastern and western Pennsylvania, as well as east and northeast into the Delaware Water Gap and the western Catskills. The men of both branches of the Seneca wore the same headgear. Like the other Haudenosaunee, they wore hats with dried cornhusks on top. The Seneca wore theirs with one feather sticking up straight.
Contact with Europeans During the colonial period, the Seneca became involved in the fur trade, first with the Dutch and then with the British. This served to increase hostility with competing native groups, especially their traditional enemy, the Wendat, an Iroquoian-speaking people located near Lac Toronto in New France.
Around the turn of the 17th Century the Seneca traded beads with the Dutch produced at places like Factory Hollow.
In 1609, the French allied with the Wendat (Huron) and set out to destroy the Haudenosaunee. The Iroquois-Huron war raged until approximately 1650. Led by the Seneca, the Confederacy began a near 35-year period of conquest over the surrounding peoples following the defeat of its most powerful enemy, the Wendat. The Confederacy conducted Mourning Wars to take captives to replace people lost in a severe smallpox epidemic in 1635. Through raids, they stabilized their population after adopting young women and children as captives and incorporating them into the Five Nations. By the winter of 1648, the Confederacy, led by the Seneca, fought deep into Canada and surrounded the capital of Huronia. Weakened by population losses due to their own smallpox epidemics as well as warfare, the Wendat unconditionally surrendered. They pledged allegiance to the Seneca as their protector. The Seneca subjugated the Wendat survivors and sent them to assimilate in the Seneca homelands.Parker, pp. 36–52; Merrill, pp. 78–83.
In 1650, the Seneca attacked and defeated the Neutrals to their west, then attacked and defeated the Erie to their southwest in 1653. Survivors of both the Wendat and Erie were subjugated by the Seneca and relocated to the Seneca homeland. The Seneca took over the vanquished people's traditional territories in western New York.Parker at pp. 36–52; Merrill at pp. 78–83.
In 1675, the Seneca defeated the Andaste (Susquehannock) to the south and southeast. The Confederacy's hegemony extended along the frontier from Canada to Ohio, deep into Pennsylvania, along the Mohawk Valley and into the lower Hudson in the east. They sought peace with the Algonquian-speaking Mohican, who lived along the Hudson River. Within the Confederacy, Seneca power and presence extended from Canada to what would become Pittsburgh, east to the future Lackawanna and into the land of the Minnisink on the New York /New Jersey border.Parker at pp. 36–52; Merrill pp. 78–83.
The Seneca tried to curtail the encroachment of European settlers. This increased tensions and conflict with the French to the north and west, and the English and Dutch to the south and east. As buffers, the Confederacy resettled conquered peoples between them and the European settlers, with the greatest concentration of resettlements on the lower Susquehanna.Folts pp. 33–38
In 1685, King Louis XIV of France sent Marquis de Denonville to govern New France in Quebec. Denonville set out to destroy the Seneca Nation and in 1687 landed a French armada with "the largest army North America had ever seen" at Irondequoit Bay. Denonville struck straight into the seat of Seneca power and destroyed many of its villages, including the Seneca's eastern capital of Ganondagan. Fleeing before the attack, the Seneca moved further west, east and south down the Susquehanna River. Although great damage was done to the Seneca homeland, the Seneca's military might was not appreciably weakened. The Confederacy and the Seneca moved into an alliance with the British in the east.Houghton at p. 244
Senecas' expanding influence and diplomacy
In and around 1600, the area currently comprising Sullivan, Ulster and Orange counties of New York was home to the Lenape, an Algonquian-speaking people whose territory extended deep along the coastal areas of the mid-Atlantic coast, up into present-day Connecticut as well as the western part of Long Island. The Lenape nation was Algonkian-speaking and made up of the Unami, Minnisink and Esopus bands, differentiated according to their territories. These bands later became known as the Munsee, based on their shared dialect. (Folts at pp 32) The Munsee inhabited large tracts of land from the middle Hudson into the Delaware Water Gap, and into northeast Pennsylvania and northwest New Jersey. The Esopus inhabited the Mid-Hudson valley (Sullivan and Ulster counties). The Minnisink inhabited northwest New Jersey. The Unami inhabited the southern Susquehanna and Delaware water gaps. The Minnisink-Esopus trail, today's Route 209, helped tie this world together.
To the west of the Lenape were the Iroquoian-speaking Andaste/Susquehannock. To the east of the Lenape lay the encroaching peoples of Dutch New Netherland. From Manhattan, up through the Hudson, the settlers were interested in trading furs with the Susquehannock occupying territory in and around current Lancaster, Pennsylvania. As early as 1626, the Susquehannock were struggling to get past the Lenape to trade with the Dutch in New Amsterdam (Manhattan). In 1634, war broke out between the Unami and the Susquehannock, and by 1638, the defeated Unami became tributaries to the Susquehannock.
The Haudenosaunee Confederacy to the north was growing in strength and numbers, and the Seneca, as the most numerous and adventurous, began to travel extensively. Eastern Seneca traveled down the Chemung River to the Susquehanna River. At Tioga the Seneca had access to every corner of Munsee country. Seneca warriors traveled the Forbidden Path south to Tioga to the Great Warrior Path to Scranton and then east over the Minnisink Path through the Lorde's valley to Minisink. The Delaware River path went straight south through the ancient Indian towns of Cookhouse, Cochecton and Minnisink, where it became the Minsi Path.