Seneca Indian Tribe History

Seneca ('place of the stone,' the Anglicized form of the Dutch enunciation of the Mohegan rendering of the Iroquoian ethnic appellative Oneida, or, strictly, Oněñiute'ā'kā', and with a different ethnic suffix, (Oněñriute'roñ'noⁿ', meaning 'people of the standing or projecting rock or stone') 

A prominent and influential tribe of the Iroquois (q. v.). When first known they occupied that part of west New York between Seneca lake and Geneva river, having their council fire at Tsonontowan, near Naples, in Ontario county. After the political destruction of the Erie and Neuters, about the middle of the seventeenth century, the Seneca and other Iroquois people carried their settlements westward to Lake Erie and southward along the Alleghany into Pennsylvania. They also received into their tribe a portion of these conquered peoples, by which accessions they became the largest tribe of the confederation and one of the most important. They are now chiefly settled on the Allegany, Cattaraugus, and Tonawanda reservations, N.Y. A portion of them remained under British jurisdiction after the declaration of peace and live on Grand River reservation, Ontario. Various local bands have been known as Buffalo, Tonawanda, and Cornplanter Indians; and the Mingo, formerly in Ohio, have become officially known as Seneca from the large number of that tribe among them. No considerable number of the Seneca ever joined the Catholic Iroquois colonies.

In the third quarter of the 16th century the Seneca was the last but one of the Iroquois tribes to give its suffrage in favor of the abolition of murder and war, the suppression of cannibalism, and the establishment of the principles upon which the League of the Iroquois was founded. However, a large division of the tribe did not adopt at once the course of the main body, but, on obtaining coveted privileges and prerogatives, the recalcitrant body was admitted as a constituent member in the structure of the League. The two chiefships last added to the quota of the Seneca were admitted on condition of their exercising functions belonging to a sergeant-at-arms of a modern legislative body as well as those belonging to a modern secretary of state for foreign affairs, in addition to their duties as federal chieftains; indeed, they became the warders of the famous "Great Black Doorway" of the League of the Iroquois, called Ka'nho'hwǎdji)'gō'nǎ' by the Onondaga.

One of the earliest known references to the ethnic name Seneca is that on the Original Carte Figurative, annexed to the Memorial presented to the States-General of the Netherlands, Aug. 18, 1616, on which it appears with the Dutch plural as Sennecas. This map is remarkable also for the first known mention of the ancient
Erie, sometimes called Gahkwas or Kahkwah; on this map they appear under the name last cited, Gachoi (cli = kh), and were placed on the north side of the west branch of the Susquehanna. The name did not originally belong to the Seneca, but to the Oneida, as the following lines will show.

In the early part of Dec. 1634, Arent Van Curler (or Corlaer), the commissary or factor of the Manor of Rensselaerwyck (his uncle's estate), set out from Ft Orange, now Albany, N. Y., in the interest of the fur-trade, to visit the Mohawk and the Sinnekens. Strictly speaking, the latter name designated the Oneida, but at this time it was a general name, usually comprising the Onondaga, the Canuga, and the Seneca, in addition. At that period the Dutch and the French commonly divided the Five Iroquois tribes into two identical groups; to the first, the Dutch gave the name Maquas (Mohawk), and to the latter, Sinnekens (Seneca, the final-ens being the Dutch genitive plural), with the connotation of the four tribes mentioned above.

The French gave to the latter group the general name "les Iroquois Superieurs", "les Hiroquoisd'en haut", i. e. the Upper Iroquois, ''les Hiroquois des pays plus hauts, nommés Sontouaheronnons" (literally, 'the Iroquois of the upper country, called Sontouaheronnons' ), the latter being only another form of "les Tsonnontouans" (the Seneca); and to the first group the designations "les Iroquois inférieurs" (the Lower Iroquois), and "les Hiroquois d'en bas, nommes Agnechronnons" (the Mohawk; literally, 'the Iroquois from below, named Agnechronnons' ). This geographical rather than political division of the Iroquois tribes, first made by Champlain and the early Dutch at Ft Orange, prevailed until about the third quarter of the 17th century.