After various cultures of indigenous peoples succeeded each other in the Great Lakes area, in late prehistoric times, the five nations of the Iroquois coalesced. Before the mid-14th century, they had formed the Iroquois Confederacy. The Seneca were one of the Five Nations of the
Haudenosaunee. The current location of the Tonawanda Reservation is believed to be close to the likely poorly defined border between the historic Seneca homeland and its rivals, the
Neutral Nation that occupied the Niagara Region at the time of French missionary
Joseph de La Roche Daillon's arrival in the area in 1627. The Iroquois pledged allegiance to the
British Crown in the
Nanfan Treaty. During the French and Indian War, the Iroquois and British defeated
New France; the Iroquois and other native territory was placed in a massive
Indian Reserve. During the
American Revolutionary War, most of the Iroquois sided with the British Crown, as they hoped to end colonial encroachment; to this effect, the Iroquois led several massacres on colonial settlements, which provoked the Continental Army to respond with the scorched-earth
Sullivan Expedition, wiping out much of the Senecas' already destitute homelands. After the Crown's defeat, some of the Seneca, along with other Iroquois, migrated with
Joseph Brant to the
Grand River reservation in the still British-controlled territory of
upper Canada (now known as the province of
Ontario). Those majority of the Seneca People remained in what is now western New York, subsequently were forced to ceding lands through the
Canandaigua Treaty of 1794 and the
Treaty of Big Tree in 1797 which led to the reservations in western New York, which are only a fraction of their original reservation . Most Reservation land after the Treaty were often violated by the state and today the boundaries have been reduced after illegal sales to White settlers and also the construction of the
dam in Allegheny reservation which led to most arable land being swallowed by the Dam. Most of these were done without the permission of the Tribe. In 1848, the
Seneca Nation of Indians was formed to represent the Seneca as a
federally recognized tribe. Due to a dispute over one of the
Treaties of Buffalo Creek, where as the Senaca Indians wanted a republican form of government and the Tonawanda wanted a Traditional form of Government, the
Tonawanda Band of Seneca Indians was formed in 1857 to represent the Tonawanda territory. In contrast to the Seneca Nation of Indians, which uses an American-style
republican form of government, the Tonawanda Band of Seneca Indians preserves the traditional Seneca practices, including selection of life chiefs by heritage. The Seneca of this reservation worked with self-taught
anthropologist Lewis H. Morgan in mid century to teach him about the
Iroquois kinship and social structures. He published the results of his work in 1851 as
The League of the Ho-de-no-sau-nee or Iroquois. His insights about the significance and details of kinship structure in Native American societies influenced much following anthropological and ethnological research. Much of the information was provided by his colleague and friend
Ely S. Parker, a Seneca born on the reservation in 1828. Morgan dedicated his book to Parker and credited him with their joint research. Over the years, the size of the reservation had been reduced by forced sales of land by the state of New York to surrounding communities. The reservation is also noticeably more
racially integrated than most Seneca Nation of Indians territories (excluding
Salamanca, which operates on a lease system); whereas the Seneca Nation has actively resisted non-native settlement of its territories because of the past policy whereby white settlement meant that the tribe lost that parcel of land to Non Natives without their permission who often used it for farming. Tonawanda Band has been somewhat more tolerant of allowing non-natives to live on its territory. == Geography ==