130 



The Dearborn Manuscripts 



coDline him for three long years in a debtor's prison, uttering bittei 

 words against some of his creditors ; and the country was too poor to 

 relieve him. 



It was after the Big Tree Treaty at Genesee, in 1797, (of which 

 treaty there is an official copy in the State Library), a treaty in which 

 liobert Morris and Thomas Morris, his son, participated, that the 

 Indians ceded the title to a large portion of their lands. In view of 

 his embarrassments, Morris organized the Xorth American Land 

 Company, in which Xicholson and Greenleaf were partners. He 

 accused the latter of cheatius^ him, and of beinof the occasion of his 

 becoming the inmate of a prison,* 



The Indians after that treaty were gradually in the extreme western 

 part of the State disposing of their lands to eager purchasers. At last, 

 the invasion of a white population all around the four reservations of 

 Allegany, Buffalo, Cattaraugus and Tonawanda, which contained in all 

 only about ] 19,000, of an original 6,000,000 acres, excited the earnest 

 desire of those who had purchased the pre-emptive right from 

 Massachusetts, now called the Ogden Company, and who were the suc- 

 cessors of Robert Morris and his associates, to enter into possession of 

 these Indian lands by purchase. In their general aim, they were 

 sustained by the poli^ of the United States. President Van Buren, 

 in a message to Congress, in December 183T, urged the removal of these 

 Indians, declaring that it had been the •'•'fixed policy of the govern- 

 ment from the days of the administration of Jefferson, in 1804, to re- 

 move the Indians west of the Mississippi ; " and in his special message 

 of January 14, 1840, he states that 40,000 Indians had been removed 

 there since 1837 from different States.! 



In 1838 a law of the United States for carrying into effect a treaty 

 which had been adopted l)y the Senate for the emigration of the Xew 

 York Indians, was amended, the treaty not having been accepted by 

 the Senecas. In the summer of this year, the Ogden Company 

 notified the Governor of Massachusetts, Mr. Everett, that a council 

 was to be held at Buffalo Reservation with the Indians, for the accept- 

 ance of thfs treaty, whereby that company would become the purchaser 

 of the Indian title, and asked that Massachusetts should be present by 

 her superintendent, according to the terms of the agreement with 

 Xew York in ITSG, and meet the United States commissioner to pro- 

 tect her own rights and those of the Indians, 



*Doty's Livingston's County History. Svo. 1876. 



•'■This message will not be found in Williams" Statesman's ^Manual ; but was a si>ecial mes- 

 sage and must be sought for only in ttie journals of the Senate. 



