"Where population is sparse, there is space. There is also less polit- 

 ical muscle to offer opposition, and there are also fewer people to be 

 adversely affected by such things as MX missile installations and 

 atomic and toxic materials dumps." 



The terrain and landscape showed a century of use, a city, many 

 smaller towns, plants and factories, including the home of the Zippo 

 lighter, numerous farms and farm homes, roadside garages, restaurants, 

 antique shops, trailer courts, supermarkets and so-forth. As I neared the 

 reservation, I began to wonder what the Indians would be like, for it sud- 

 denly occurred to me that the Senecas, unlike most other tribes, 

 particularly in the West, had literally been engulfed by non-Indians soon 

 after the American Revolution and had been living smack-dab in the middle 

 of our own culture for more than 150 years. 



Would their reservation look any different from the rest of the 

 countryside? Well I got my answer in a few moments. So abruptly that 

 I'll never forget it, everything changed. As if a line had been drawn, I 

 suddenly entered what seemed to be an almost untouched eastern 

 wilderness. All the usual signs of the full use of the earth's surface 

 vanished. The cleared lands and trim farms with just a few trees standing 

 here and there, the homes with manicured lawns, the billboards and road 

 signs, the symbols of busy Amercian commerce and industry, all were 

 suddenly gone. I drove through dense stands of hardwoods, broken just 

 here and there by natural openings, and yet it was inhabited land. Every 

 so often I caught glimpses of small dirt roads, leading to solitary homes, 

 many of them standing close to the Allegheny River, or to a stream that 

 emptied into the bigger river. These were the homes of the Senecas. 

 Well, to make my story short, the engineers were able to break the treaty 

 and fill the dam. Against their will, and not without tears and a little 

 passive resistance, the Senecas were forced out of their homes in the 

 woods and into two, planned cult clusters of development like ranch 

 houses, each with large picture windows that looked out on each other. 



For generations they had had individual privacy and freedom. They 

 had been able to hunt and fish within sight and sound of their homes 

 because they had lived as one with nature and had not disturbed it. 

 They had had no fuel bills because they had all the firewood they had 

 needed. Now they were living on top of each other, in very poorly 



