286 THE INDIAN OCCUPANCY 



Farm in West Seneca. It is quite within the bounds of possibility 

 that these sites, once the dwelling places of the Weuroes, had 

 never been entirely forgotten or even deserted; and while there 

 was never any permanent occupation of the sites, they may still 

 have been for a century and a half the homes of wandering Seneca 

 parties. 



Long and close contact with Europeans had given these 

 exiles many of the comforts and conveniences and also the vices 

 of the white men. They no longer lived in long communal 

 houses. Their cabins were made of logs and in some, the logs 

 were squared. Each cabin was the home of but one family. The 

 long house type persisted, however, in their council houses. They 

 still lived under the old laws of the Iroquois League and were 

 governed bytheir chiefs. In 1792, 1793 and 1794 Councils of the. 

 entire league were held in the Buffalo Creek council house of the 

 Onoudagas for the settlement of land disputes. For dress the 

 Senecas of this period wore a modified frontier costume. Leggings 

 and moccasins were still in common use, and a fine blanket took 

 the place of the white man's coat. The costumes of the men 

 and women differed little. Their silversmiths wrought silver into 

 artistic brooches, and their women adorned their garments with 

 intricate and artistic designs in bead work. Their staple food was 

 still corn and beans, varied by such game as their hunters could 

 find. Some few were Christians but the most still clung to their 

 pagan beliefs. The Buffalo Creek settlement in time had a church 

 and a missionary, and it took from the church its missionary 

 name, "Te-kise-da-ne-yout", "the place of the bell", (1). 



The Buffalo Creek group of Senecas persisted for sixty years, 

 until the growing city of Buffalo, on whose borders the villages 

 were, made the land they occupied so valuable that they were 

 forced finally to remove from them. The history of the cession 

 and conveyance of these lands is involved and complicated. Even 

 yet disputes arise between white man and Indian and within five 

 years the Supreme Court of the United States has had before it a 

 case based on such disputes. 



Before the Revolution the Six Nations of New York — the 

 League of the Iroquois —claimed a vast and indefinite tract of land 

 lying west of their actual frontiers on the Genesee River. This 

 claim was based upon their conquest of the tract and was never 

 disputed by the English. After the Revolution the colonists con- 



i. L. H. Morgan, "League of Iroquois". 



