Sovereign People

Cornplanter's Grant

Cornplanter's Grant was not a reservation, since the land was a gift to Cornplanter himself. Yet the land offered the Iroquois people a measure of asylum from the pressures of a new expanding nation. Nestled between the river and the mountains, the land offered the Seneca people an opportunity continue to plant, hunt, and live in their traditional ways.

He believed it would be advantageous for the Senecas to receive education in English and other Euro-American skills, so he invited the Quakers to come and teach at Cornplanter's Grant.

In 1798, 400 Seneca (one-fourth of the total Seneca population) lived on Cornplanter's Grant at the town of Burnt House, or Jenuchshadego. Many were major figures in the Iroquois Confederacy. Noted residents included Cornplanter's half brother, the prophet Handsome Lake; his uncle Guyasuta; his nephew "Governor" Blacksnake; and Blacksnake's sister, the leading woman of the community and clan mother of the Wolf clan.

Though given to Cornplanter in perpetuity, Cornplanter's Grant was confiscated by the U.S. government in 1964 in order to to construct the Kinzua Dam.



Sovereign People