AN ACCOUNT OF THE MANUSCRIPTS OF GEN. DEAEBORN 

 AS MASSACHUSETTS COMMISSIONER IN 1838 AND 1839, 

 FOR THE SALE OF THE SENECA INDIAN LANDS. 



By Henry A. Homes, LL.D. 



[Read' before the Albany Institute, October 12, 1880.] 



At a sale at auction, in Boston, in October, 1878, of books and 

 manuscripts from the library of J. W. Thornton, one of the titles in 

 the catalogue, describing the articles offered for sale, read as follows : 

 Journal of a Mission as Commissioner from the State of Massachu- 

 setts to the Seneca and Tuscarora Indians; and an account of the 

 treaties held with those tribes, in the years 1838 and 1839, for the sale 

 of their lands, and for their emigration west of the Mississippi. By 

 H. A. S. Dearborn, Superintendent of Massachusetts. In 3 vols. 4to." 



It was thought that these volumes might be worth securing for our 

 State Library. I wrote to Hon. Lewis H. Morgan of Rochester, to 

 obtain his opinion as to their probable value. You are all well aware 

 of Mr. Morgan's extensive acquaintance with New York Indian His- 

 tory. His well-known volume, ^* The League of the Iroquois," gives 

 their history, religion and customs with a touching eloquence. In 

 answer, he referred me for explanation to a passage in this volume. 

 From this extract, and from the manuscripts themselves, I learned 

 that they referred to a treaty of the United States with the Seneca 

 and Tuscarora Indians in the extreme western part of this State, 

 whereby 119,000 acres of their lands were to be sold, and they were ta 

 emigrate to Green Bay, Michigan. But the measures by which the 

 treaty with the Indians had been secured were represented to have 

 been tainted with so much corruptioa and fraud, there was so much 

 opposition on the part of the Indians themselves to emigrating, they 

 were supported in their opposition by so many friends, especially by 

 the Society of Friends, that the purchasers, the Ogden Land Company, 

 finally made a compromise, and yielded up to them more than half of 

 the land which they had purchased. 



This transaction was painted by Mr. Morgan, in the passage to 

 which he referred me, in very sombre colors. I quote a portion of it 

 as illustrative of the nature and importance of the subject: 



" The darkest frauds, the basest bribery, and the most execrable 

 intrigues which soulless avarice could suggest have been practiced in 



