Early history Before the arrival of Europeans, the area was long inhabited by
Iroquoian-speaking people, mainly west of the
Hudson River and around the
Great Lakes and
Algonquian-speaking people, mainly east of the Hudson River. The conflict between the two peoples continued through the period of early European colonization, and the French, Dutch and English tended to ally with their trading partners among the indigenous peoples. The Haudenosaunee or
Iroquois confederacy of the Five (later Six) Nations was a powerful force in its home territory. The
Mohawk referred to the present-day area as Kanienkeh ("the Land of the Flint"), the
Mohawk name for their homeland. The Five Nations' territory extended from the Mohawk River Valley through the western part of the state and into current Pennsylvania. From this home base, they also controlled at various times large swaths of additional territory throughout what is now the northeastern United States. The
Guswhenta (Two Row Wampum Treaty), made with the Dutch government in 1613, codified relations between the Haudenosaunee and European colonizers, and formed the basis of subsequent treaties. In the mid-17th century, during the
Beaver Wars, the Iroquois were victorious and dominated the tribes of
Neutral Indians,
Wenrohronon and the
Erie Indians in western New York. Survivors were mostly assimilated into the
Seneca people of the Iroquois; some are believed to have escaped to
South Carolina, where they merged with other Indian tribes. The region was important from the first days of both
French and
Dutch colonization in the seventeenth century. The
New Netherland colony encompassed the Hudson Valley from Manhattan Island north to the confluence of the Hudson and Mohawk rivers, where
Fort Orange (later Albany) was established in 1624. The fort at
Schenectady was built in 1661. The upper Hudson Valley was the center of much of the colony's
fur trade, which was highly lucrative, serving a demand for furs in Europe. North and west of New Netherland, the French established trading posts along the St. Lawrence River and as far south as the shores of
Onondaga Lake. They found both trading and proselytizing difficult among the Haudenosaunee, as
Samuel de Champlain had alienated the Haudenosaunee during military forays from
New France. In the 1640s, three
French Jesuit missionaries to New France—St.
René Goupil, St.
Isaac Jogues, and St.
Jean de Lalande—were killed near the Mohawk village of Ossernenon, which was located at the confluence of the
Schoharie and Mohawk rivers, where the modern hamlet of
Auriesville was later developed. They are considered to be the first three
U.S. saints. England seized New Netherland by force in 1664, renaming it New York. The Dutch recaptured the colony nine years later but ceded it to England under the
Treaty of Westminster of 1674. In the eighteenth century, the British consolidated their hold on the region.
William Johnson, an Irish British Army officer and colonial administrator, established an estate in the Mohawk Valley, living among the Mohawk, learning their language, and forging an alliance with them. He was appointed as the British Indian agent to the Iroquois. The British also encouraged settlement in the Mohawk Valley by other Europeans, including
German Palatines beginning in the 1720s. In what became known as the
Albany Congress in 1754, delegates from seven of the thirteen British North American colonies met at Albany to pursue a treaty with the powerful Mohawk.
Benjamin Franklin, a Pennsylvania delegate, proposed a plan for uniting the seven colonies that greatly exceeded the scope of the congress. The delegates spent most of their time debating this
Albany Plan of union, one of the first attempts to form a union of the
colonies "under one government as far as might be necessary for defense and other general important purposes". The delegates approved an amended version, but the colonies rejected it. To counter the French militarily, the British established forts along Lake Ontario and at portages between the Mohawk Valley and the adjacent Lake Champlain and Lake Ontario watersheds. The region became the area for many conflicts of the
French and Indian War, such as the
Battle of Fort Oswego (1756) and the
Siege of Fort William Henry (which was later depicted in the work of
James Fenimore Cooper), during the
Seven Years' War. The British conquered New France by 1760 with the
fall of Quebec. France formally ceded New France to the British in the
Treaty of Paris of 1763. The same year,
King George III issued the
Royal Proclamation of 1763, which established the western and northern boundary of the Province of New York at the limits of the Hudson, Mohawk and Delaware River watersheds. The area between that boundary and the Great Lakes and Saint Lawrence River, including west of the Appalachian Mountains, was to be the "
Indian Reserve."
American Revolution Between 1774 and 1783, deeply divided colonists waged civil war on each other directly and by proxy, through attacks such as the Seneca-led
Cherry Valley and the Mohawk-led
Cobleskill massacre. In 1779, the
Sullivan Expedition, a campaign by the Continental Army ordered by General
George Washington, drove thousands of the Haudenosaunee from their villages, farms and lands in the region in an effort to both avenge and prevent such attacks. The region was strategically important to the war plans of both the British and the Continental forces. British efforts to divide the New England colonies from the rest led to battles including the
Battle of Valcour Island and the
Battle of Saratoga, a significant turning point in the war. While New York City remained in the hands of the British during most of the war, the upstate region was eventually dominated by the Colonial forces. At the end of the war, the Continental Army was headquartered in
Newburgh. Uncertain that the Continental Congress would pay back wages, some Continental officers threatened an uprising in what became known as the
Newburgh Conspiracy.
Post-revolutionary period After the American Revolution, the
Treaty of Paris established the border between New York and
British North America. The 45th Parallel became the border with Quebec or
Lower Canada. The St. Lawrence River, Lake Ontario, the Niagara River and Lake Erie became the border with
Upper Canada. Great Britain continued to occupy military installations along the American shores of the Great Lakes until 1794, including Fort Niagara at the mouth of the Niagara River and Fort Ontario at the mouth of the
Oswego River. The government of the new State of New York seized the property of New Yorkers who had
remained loyal to the British crown. Thousands emigrated to colonies that remained under British rule, such as
Nova Scotia and the newly established Upper Canada (now
Ontario). Haudenosaunee who had fought with the British also fled. The British Crown granted a large tract of land in Upper Canada to their Haudenosaunee allies, who established the
Grand River settlement. In the federal
Treaty of Canandaigua, the new United States recognized the title of the remaining Haudenosaunee to the land north and west of the Proclamation Line of 1763. Nevertheless, New York state officials and private land agents sought through the early 19th century to extinguish Indian title to these lands via non-Federally-sanctioned treaties, such as the
Treaty of Big Tree. The
Treaties of Buffalo Creek were designed to finally remove the last of the native claims in Western New York as part of the federal
Indian Removal program, but the purchaser failed to buy most of the land in time, and some of the tribes objected to their exclusion. Three of the four reservations remain in the region to this day; one of the reservations leased out their land to form the city of
Salamanca, and the coexistence of the predominantly white city and the reservation has been a source of contention since the 1990s. Both before and after the Revolution, boundary disputes with other colonies and their successor states also complicated American settlement. In conflict with the
New York Colony's claims west of the Hudson Valley, which placed the entire region in the sprawling
Albany County, the
Province of Pennsylvania claimed much of the
Southern Tier until 1774, while the
Massachusetts Bay Colony claimed all of the region west of Massachusetts to the
Great Lakes. The Province of New York also claimed jurisdiction east to the
Connecticut River. To pursue this claim north of Connecticut and Massachusetts, New York granted lands to settlers in what is now Vermont at the same time that
New Hampshire made grants of the same lands. When Vermont declared independence in 1777, the new
Republic of Vermont recognized the New Hampshire grants over those of New York. New Yorkers who lost land in Vermont came to be known as the "Vermont Sufferers" and were granted new lands in 1788 in the town of
Bainbridge, New York. The dispute with
Massachusetts over lands to the west of Massachusetts was settled in the 1786
Treaty of Hartford by dividing the rights to the land. The treaty granted sovereignty to the State of New York, but granted to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts the "pre-emptive" right to seek title to the land from the Haudenosaunee. The eastern boundary of the Massachusetts lands was thus known as the
Preemption Line. This line runs from the Pennsylvania line due north to Lake Ontario, passing through
Seneca Lake. The line was surveyed a second time due to initial errors. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts sold this land in large tracts, including the
Phelps and Gorham Purchase and the
Holland Purchase. Many of the settlers of what then became Central and Western New York came from the New England states. The
Central New York Military Tract, where many of the townships were given the names of classical military and literary figures by
Robert Harpur, was established to grant land to Revolutionary War veterans. Some of Northern New York was founded by the hundreds of Canadian exiles who had fought in the
First and
Second Canadian Regiments of the
Continental Army, who were banished from Canada due to their rebellion against the Crown.
19th century in the
War of 1812 depicted in an 1816 engraving at
Lockport, New York, in 1839 Battles of the
War of 1812 (1812–1815) were fought on the
Niagara Frontier; in the
Champlain Valley, including the
Battle of Plattsburgh; in the
St. Lawrence Valley; and on
Lake Ontario, including the
Battle of Sackett's Harbor. British forces also burnt Buffalo in retaliation for the American destruction of
Newark in Canada. After the war, the US government began to construct
Fort Montgomery just south of the border at
Rouses Point on Lake Champlain. Subsequently, it was discovered that at that point, the actual 45th parallel was three-quarters of a mile south of the surveyed line, putting the fort, which became known as "Fort Blunder", in Canada. This was not resolved until 1842 with the
Webster–Ashburton Treaty, in which Great Britain and the United States decided to leave the border on the meandering line as surveyed.
Slavery existed in
New Netherland and the
Province of New York. New York was in the 1690s the largest importer of slaves among the American colonies. Slavery did not end with the
American Revolution, although
John Jay introduced an emancipation bill into the State Assembly as early as 1777.
Sojourner Truth was held as a slave in the
Hudson Valley from the time she was born in 1797 until she escaped in 1826. Through efforts of the
New York Manumission Society and others, New York began to adopt a policy of gradual emancipation in 1799. The law passed in 1817 that would finally emancipate slaves did not take effect for ten years, giving slaveowners an entire decade to sell their slaves away to other states. When the law finally took effect, the last 2,800 slaves in New York State were emancipated on July 4, 1827. Although routes for travel on foot and by canoe had existed across the region for hundreds of years, transportation of agricultural goods to market was expensive and slow. Influenced by the canals being built in Britain, leading citizens of New York began to press for the construction of a canal across the state. Governor
DeWitt Clinton prevailed upon the legislature to charter and fund construction of a canal from Albany to Buffalo. Construction of the
Erie Canal began in 1817 and was completed in 1825. The canal allowed the area to become an important component of the 19th century industrial expansion in the United States. The canal also promoted trade with
British North America and settlement of newer states in western territories. Later in the century the
New York Central Railroad followed the "water-level route" from New York City to the Great Lakes, contributing to the industrialization of cities along its route. Several times in the nineteenth century, upstate New York served as a staging area and refuge for Canadian rebels against Great Britain, as well as Irish-American invaders of Canada, straining British–American relations. In 1837 and 1838, in the aftermath of the
Lower Canada Rebellion, some
Québécois rebels escaped south to the North Country, while on the
Niagara Frontier, events of the
Upper Canada Rebellion, also known as the
Patriot War, took place. In the late 1860s, some of the
Fenian raids were launched across the Niagara Frontier;
Fenians also assembled in
Malone. Although now largely discredited, the report of the 1905–1907
Mills Commission, charged with investigating the
origins of baseball, named
Cooperstown as the place where
baseball was invented in the 1830s or 1840s by
Abner Doubleday. Cooperstown is the home of the
National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. (Modern research suggests that the game was actually developed in its modern form in New York City.) In the pre–Civil War era, upstate New York became a major center of radical
abolitionist activity and was an important nexus of the
Underground Railroad. Resistance to the
Fugitive Slave Act was particularly heated in the region, as evidenced by such events as the
Jerry Rescue. The American
women's rights movement was also born in upstate New York at this time. The
Seneca Falls Convention, the first women's rights convention, was held at
Seneca Falls in 1848. The
Rochester Convention, the second such convention, was held two weeks later in
Rochester. Through the nineteenth century, upstate New York was a hotbed of religious revivalism. A number of sects, such as the
Shakers and the
Oneida Community, established themselves in upstate New York during that time. This led evangelist
Charles Grandison Finney to coin the term the "
Burned-Over District" for the region. Because of the comparative isolation of the region, many of the sects were
Nonconformist, and because of their non-traditional tenets they had numerous difficulties with government and other local people. The region is considered to be the cradle of
Mormonism. The
Mormons,
Seventh-day Adventists and
Spiritualists are the only 21st-century survivors of the hundreds of sects created during this time; some more mainstream churches, such as the
Wesleyan Church and
Free Methodist Church (both offshoots of Methodism that originated in political disputes with the mainline
Methodist church), also survive. In the 19th century, extractive industries changed the landscape.
Potash was manufactured as the land was cleared for farming.
Logging was rampant in the Adirondacks.
Iron was mined in the Adirondacks and the North Country. By the 1870s, business leaders, concerned about the effect of deforestation on the water supply necessary to the Erie Canal, advocated for the creation of forest preserves in the Adirondacks and the Catskills. The
Adirondack Park and
Catskill Park were created and strengthened by a series of legislation between 1885 and 1894, when the "
forever wild" provision of the
New York State Constitution was added.
20th century , one of the earliest
computers, made by
IBM in
Endicott, New York During the era immediately following World War II, upstate reached what was probably its peak influence in the national economy. Major local corporations such as
IBM,
General Electric,
Kodak,
Xerox and
Carrier had national success, producing cutting-edge products for business, government and consumers, and leadership in corporate culture. The opening of the
New York State Thruway in the mid-1950s gave the region superior access to other eastern markets. This regional advantage faded as many local firms relocated certain operations to other states, or downsized in the face of foreign competition, similar to events in other areas in the American
Rust Belt. There have, however, been recent efforts at economic revitalization. In April 2021,
GlobalFoundries, a company specializing in the
semiconductor industry, moved its headquarters from
Silicon Valley, California to its
semiconductor chip manufacturing facility in
Malta, New York. Since the late 20th century, with the decline of manufacturing and its jobs, the area has generally suffered a net population loss, most heavily in Western New York. As paraphrased by
Kent Ryden, the upstate area was depicted by writer
Russell Banks in his famous novel
The Sweet Hereafter (1991) as "cold, snowy, bleak, and in the middle of nowhere". The novel was set in an "ugly and economically moribund" town, inhabited by "uneducated" and "poor" people "living dead-end lives". The state government backed down in November 2018 only after the federal government threatened to withhold over $14 million in federal funding. By contrast, many
Amish and
Mennonite families are recent arrivals to the area and have helped revive agriculture as part of the economy. Beginning in 1974, many Mennonite families moved to the
Penn Yan area of
Yates County from
Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, seeking cheaper farmland. Amish communities have also been established in St. Lawrence,
Montgomery,
Chautauqua and
Cattaraugus counties, and are making farming profitable. Artisans are reviving traditional specialty cheeses and developing growing markets for their products, including shipping some items to the New York metropolitan market. A Greek-style yogurt,
Chobani, is being produced upstate by a recent immigrant, who has expanded his operation nationally. Additionally, upstate New York continues to boast low crime rates, high educational prospects, and readily affordable daily essentials, earning Syracuse, Rochester, Albany,
Schenectady, and Buffalo spots in the
Forbes magazine list of top ten places to raise a family in the United States. Five of the six Iroquois nations have filed land claims against New York State (or have sought settlement of pending claims), based on late 18th-century treaties following the
American Revolutionary War with the
State of New York (which did not have constitutional authority to treat with American Indian nations) and the United States. ==Geography==