By Rebecca Downing
Colgate’s campus is situated in the lands of the Oneida Nation. New research outlines how the land was obtained and how the University came to be on its present location.
Origins
Prior to the arrival of Europeans, the Oneida people — one of the original tribes of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Nation — and their ancestors had lived in the region for millenia. The Oneidas, or “People of the Standing Stone,” called Hamilton Da-nde-no-sa, or “round stone dwelling.” They “believed that they were protected by the Creator’s gift of a boulder that appeared magically every time they moved their villages.”2
The region was rich with resources, and the Oneidas lived in an area covering more than six million acres of fertile lands extending from the St. Lawrence River to today’s Pennsylvania border. They were semi-sedentary people who raised the “Three Sisters” crops of maize, beans, and squash using a form of slash-and-burn horticulture. In addition, they gathered wild plants, berries, and nuts; hunted deer, fowl, and other game, and fished the abundant lakes and rivers,3 employing a temporary campsite in the vicinity of Colgate’s campus off and on into the early 1600s, according to archaeology conducted by professor Jordan Kerber (sociology and anthropology, Native American studies) and his Colgate student researchers.4
Of note, after the Revolutionary War, prominent New York State families conspired to gain control of these resource-rich lands.8 For example, politician Philip Schuyler, the father-in-law of U.S. founding father Alexander Hamilton — for whom Colgate’s hometown would later be named — was “the individual most responsible for the New York State-Oneida Treaty of September 12, 1795, held at Albany that dispossessed the Oneidas of approximately 250,000 acres.”9
Schuyler and other powerful New York families such as the Livingstons “‘tripped over their own feet’ competing with each other in their lust for Indian lands. Each saw that if New York State was opened up by the improvement of navigable waterways, the building of canals, and the construction of roads and turnpikes, the result would be a sizable increase of white population. Economic growth would spur land sales (as well as land prices), benefiting themselves and their political cronies.”10
Governor George Clinton had made promises to the Oneidas: that they and their lands would be respected, and that he would enforce state constitutional law forbidding Indian land sales to individuals without legislative permission. But, he was soon breaking them. With the Treaty of Fort Schuyler in 1788, New York State acquired 5 million acres for “safekeeping” through what Hauptman calls “a late–18th-century version of a Mafia protection racket.” Oneida Chief Good Peter “and his supporters were caught — on one hand fearing avaricious land speculators colluding with some of his people; and on the other, he feared the likelihood that the state government would not protect them and allow numerous non-Indian settlers to pour in and trespass on Oneida territory” — so they reluctantly conceded to Clinton and signed the “accord.”11
Despite Governor Clinton’s questionable actions in executing that treaty, U.S. Federal courts in more recent days have decided that it was legally binding.12
By the early 1790s, acts of the state legislature provided for the survey and sale of the lands ‘acquired’ at the Fort Schuyler Treaty. William Stephens Smith — son-in-law of U.S. founding father John Adams, then vice president of the United States — purchased six of these townships. Soon after, Smith sold parcels within one township to Dominick Lynch of Utica, including a 123-acre parcel south of what would become the village of Hamilton. Lynch, in turn, sold that farm to Samuel Payne.
Payne’s Farm
With that purchase, Payne and his wife, Betsey, became the first non-Indian settlers in the area, in 1794.
Arriving the next year, Payne’s brother Elisha purchased a nearby lot, founding what was first called in 1796 “Payne’s Settlement,” now the Village of Hamilton.13 Although Samuel served briefly as a judge and a New York State assemblyman [1804–1806], he was mainly a merchant and worked his lot as a farmer.
Samuel and Elisha became active members of the Madison Baptist Association, founders of the First Baptist Church in Hamilton (where Samuel served as a deacon), and joined 11 others in founding the Baptist Education Society of the State of New York.14
In 1826, Payne sold his land to the society for half its value — $2,000 — to serve as the campus for the Hamilton Literary and Theological Institution, which would become Colgate University. Not long thereafter, the society constructed its first building, the Western Edifice, of Chenango sandstone quarried from the hill.15 (Chenango, the name of the valley below, is an Iroquois word meaning “bull thistle,” a medicinal plant used by Oneidas to treat upset stomach.16)
The Baptists and the Oneidas
The archaeological evidence suggests that the Oneidas did not permanently reside in the Town of Hamilton, including Colgate’s campus. Native Americans employed a temporary campsite in the vicinity of Hamilton off and on for thousands of years into the 1600s, but, as yet, “No evidence of a permanent village site, no palisaded structure, and no longhouse residence have ever been found.”17 Archaeological testing on the Colgate campus in 2004 found no evidence of prehistoric or historic materials before Samuel Payne set up his farm.18
Although eventual possession was made possible by the state treaty with the Oneidas at Fort Schuyler, none of the original 13 founders of the Hamilton Literary and Theological Institution had participated in the councils in 1788, nor in other treaties with the Oneidas.19
Although they protested to Washington against the forcible removal of the Oneidas from New York, local Baptists, including those at the Hamilton Literary and Theological Institution, later supported efforts to cooperate with federal authorities in pushing Indian removal policies.
Laurence M. Hauptman is SUNY Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History at SUNY New Paltz, where he taught courses on Native American history, New York history, and Civil War history for 40 years. The author, co-author, or co-editor of numerous articles and books on the Haudenosaunee and other Native Americans, he has been honored by the N.Y.S. Board of Regents, Pennsylvania Historical Association, Wisconsin Historical Society, New York Academy of History, N.Y.S. Historical Association, and Mohonk Consultations. Hauptman has testified as an expert witness before committees of both houses of Congress and in the federal courts. He has served as a historical consultant for the Wisconsin Oneidas, the Cayugas, the Mashantucket Pequots, and the Senecas. He is the recipient of the State Archives Lifetime Achievement Award and the Peter Doctor Memorial Indian Scholarship Foundation Award (twice) from the Six Nations for his writings and applied work on behalf of Native Americans in eastern North America. In 2011, the Seneca Nation of Indians bestowed on him the name Haiwadogêsta, meaning “interpreter” or “he straightens or explains the words.”
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