William J. Campbell. Speculators in Empire: Iroquoia and the 1768 Treaty of Fort Stanwix.
2014; Oxford University Press; Volume: 119; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1093/ahr/119.2.516
ISSN1937-5239
Autores Tópico(s)Canadian Identity and History
ResumoFort Stanwix today is a fascinating National Parks Service reconstruction of an eighteenth-century stronghold in upstate New York, with interpretation focused mainly on the American War of Independence. The original post guarded the strategic portage between the Oswego drainage and the Hudson/Mohawk watersheds, which gave Anglo-America access to Lake Ontario before Britain gained control of the St. Lawrence with the fall of New France in 1763. Located in Oneida country, Fort Stanwix was the site of two important Native-newcomer treaties, one in 1768, before the revolution, and one after, in 1784. During negotiations for the first, following Pontiac's War and the Royal Proclamation of 1763, the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, Senecas, and Tuscaroras—the Six Nations Iroquois—claimed an old but no-longer-justifiable dominion over land occupied by Shawnees and other aboriginal peoples to the south and west of them (mainly in today's Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Kentucky). The Six Nations sold those vast territories to the British—who knew that the Iroquois' claims were feeble—and acquired nearly all of the income from the transaction, while the First Nations people who lost their lands received almost nothing. One of the Iroquois' objectives was to reduce the pressure on them to give up their own territories by opening other regions to the relentless growth of Euro-American settlement; however, the treaty did little to protect them in the end.
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