Much opposition has
been made to the treaty, as you will perceive from the speech of Senator
Linn, which I send you."
It has been alleged against this treaty that it was carried through by
the zealous efforts of the persons holding (by an old compact) the
reversionary right to the soil after the Senecas should decide to leave
it, and that the obvious interests of these persons produced an undue
influence on this feature in the result. It is averred that the
Tonewonda band of the Senecas, who hold a separate and valuable
reservation on the banks of the Tonewonda River, opposed the proposition
altogether, and refused to place their signatures to the instrument.
It was supposed that small Indian communities, living on limited
reservations, surrounded entirely on all sides by white settlements,
could not sustain themselves, but must be inevitably swept away. But the
result, in the case of the Senecas and other remnants of the ancient
Iroquois, does not sustain this theory. It is true that numbers have
yielded to dissipation, idleness, and vice, and thus perished; but the
very pressure upon the mass of the tribes, and the danger of their
speedy destruction without resorting to agriculture, appear to have
brought out latent powers in the race which were not believed to exist.
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