Treaty of Canandaigua

The Treaty of Canandaigua (or Konondaigua, as spelled in the treaty itself) is a treaty signed after the American Revolutionary War between the Grand Council of the Six Nations and President George Washington representing the United States of America.

It was signed at Canandaigua, New York on November 11, 1794, by fifty sachems and war chiefs representing the Grand Council of the Six Nations of the Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) Confederacy (including the Cayuga, Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Seneca and Tuscarora tribes), and by Timothy Pickering, official agent of President George Washington.

In the late 1780s and early 1790s the state of New York had sought the land of the Six Nations and began to pursue deceptive and illegal land transactions with the Native Americans. Both the making of treaties and the outright purchases of land by the individual states were illegal under Article 9 of the Articles of Confederation and also under the Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution. Despite this, New York secured 26 leases, many for 999 years, taking almost all the native territory. Becoming worried that these maneuvers might push the Six Nations to join the pan-Indian military alliance to defend the Ohio Valley, the United States Federal government sent a delegation to Canandaigua in the Seneca Territory.

The treaty established peace and friendship between the United States of America and the Six Nations, and affirmed Haudenosaunee land rights in the state of New York, and the boundaries established by the Phelps and Gorham Purchase of 1788.

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