Total population | |
---|---|
Approximately 450-550 [1] | |
Regions with significant populations | |
United States ( New York) | |
Languages | |
English, Cayuga | |
Religion | |
Longhouse religion, Handsome Lake religion, [2] Christianity | |
Related ethnic groups | |
Haudenosaunee, Wyandot, other Iroquoian peoples |
The Cayuga Nation of New York is a federally recognized tribe of Cayuga people, based in New York, United States. Other organized tribes with Cayuga members are the federally recognized Seneca-Cayuga Tribe of Oklahoma and the Canadian-recognized Six Nations of the Grand River First Nation in Ontario, Canada.
The name Cayuga (Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫʼ ') means "People of the wet lands."
They belong to the Iroquoian language family, and were one of the original Five Nations of the League of the Iroquois, who traditionally lived in New York. [3] The Five Nations were the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Seneca and Cayuga. When the Tuscarora joined the Iroquois Confederation in 1722, the confederacy became known as the Six Nations.
In early times, the Cayuga lived primarily between Owasco and Cayuga lakes, which lay between the territory of the Onondaga and Seneca. Jesuits founded missions among the Cayuga in the mid-17th century. In 1660, there were approximately 1,500 Cayuga. [3]
In the beginning of the 18th century, the Cayuga primarily lived in three villages, composed of at least 30 longhouses. About 500 people lived in each of these villages. [2] The Cayuga became trading partner with the French from Canada and were active in the beaver fur trade. They also traded with the Huron for birch bark goods. [2]
All the Iroquois nations except the Oneida were allied with the British in the American Revolution. During the war, Cayuga villages such as Coreorgonel, Chonodote and Goiogouen were destroyed during the Sullivan Expedition of 1779. [4] Along with the British, the Cayuga were defeated in the war. The British gave up both their and Indian claims to lands in treaty negotiations, and the Iroquois were forced to cede their lands to the United States.
Most relocated to Canada after the Treaty of Canandaigua in 1794, although some bands were allowed small reservations in New York. A series of federal laws in the 1790s known as the "Nonintercourse Act" required all land purchases involving native tribes to be approved by the federal government. However, after the signing of the 1794 treaty, New York entered into land sales and leases with the Cayuga Nation, without the approval of the United States Congress. In doing so, this meant that the transactions were illegal, as the state of New York did not have the constitutional authority to deal directly with the tribes.
The Cayuga Nation of New York began a land claim action on November 19, 1980, in the United States District Court for the Northern District of New York to pursue legislative and monetary restitution for land taken from it by the State of New York during the 18th and 19th centuries. In 1981, the Seneca-Cayuga Tribe of Oklahoma was added as a plaintiff in the claim.
A jury trial on damages was held from January 18 – February 17, 2000. The jury returned a verdict in favor of the Cayuga Indian Nation of New York and the Seneca-Cayuga Tribe of Oklahoma, finding current fair market value damages of $35 million and total fair rental value damages of $3.5 million. The jury gave the state a credit for the payments it had made to the Cayugas of about $1.6 million, leaving the total damages at approximately $36.9 million. On October 2, 2001, the court issued a decision and order which awarded a prejudgment interest award of $211 million and a total award of $247.9 million.
Both the plaintiffs and the defendants appealed this award. On June 28, 2005, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit rendered a decision that reversed the judgment of the trial court. It ruled in favor of the defendants, based on the doctrine of laches . Essentially the court ruled that the plaintiffs had taken too long to present their case, when it might have been equitably settled earlier.
The Cayuga Indian Nation of New York sought review of this decision by the Supreme Court of the United States, which was denied on May 15, 2006. [5]
Additional disputes over land and sovereignty claims have continued, including, as of 2024, the decision of Cayuga and Seneca Counties to refuse to allow the Cayuga Nation police to be part of the 911 system. [6] [7]
Under the 1794 Treaty of Canandaigua, land for the Cayuga was reserved, [8] [9] namely 64,000 acres at the north end of Cayuga Lake. In 2005, the Cayuga Nation began to purchase land within its claimed territory at the north end of Cayuga Lake, beginning with 70 acres in Union Springs. [10]
The Cayuga Nation is headquartered in Seneca Falls, New York. They are governed by a council of chiefs, chosen by clan mothers. The Cayuga Nation is part of the Haudenosaunee confederacy.
Since August 2003, Clint Halftown serves as the federal representative to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, [11] [12] [13] although a number of self-described "traditionalists" in the community do not recognize his administration. [14] [15] The traditionalist group makes up less than 10 percent of the 550 enrolled members. [16]
There is also a Cayuga Nation Trial Court. [17] Since 2018, the trial judge of this course has been Joseph E. Fahey. [18]
Children of tribal members can be enrolled at birth. As the tribe has a matrilineal kinship system, children are considered to be born into the mother's clan. Descent and inheritance are passed through the maternal lines. The tribe requires members to have a mother who is Cayuga. [19]
The nation controls several businesses, including Lakeside Entertainment, which includes four Class II Gaming facilities, [20] Lakeside Trading convenience stores; Harford Glen Water, a water bottler; Gakwiyo Garden, which grows 35 types of fruits and vegetables and provides food for over one hundred member households; Cayuga Corner, which sells fresh produce and flowers; and Arrow Head Hemp, which produces a variety of CBD products. [21]
The Cayuga Nation had initially became involved in the prospect of casino gaming in 2004 as part of an eventually voided settlement with the state of New York that would have seen a Las Vegas-style casino open in the Catskills. [22]
Lakeside Entertainment is owned by the Cayuga nation and as of 2024 consists of four Class II Gaming facilities. [23]
The Cayuga Indian Nation owns two pieces of property from which it operates its Lakeside Trading Post: a convenience store and gas station operation. One store is located in the Town of Seneca Falls and the other in the village of Union Springs.
On November 25, 2008, the Seneca and Cayuga County Sheriffs' Departments seized all the cigarettes at two locations of the Lakeside Trading Post because of the Cayuga refusal to remit state excise taxes on sales. [24] The Cayuga have said that as a sovereign nation, they do not owe taxes to the state. The Seneca County District Attorney said the counties were in the right because the Cayugas did not own any sovereign land in either county. The state contended that only by operating on sovereign land, i.e. a reservation, would the tribe be exempt from the taxes.
The Cayuga Indian Nation sought to enjoin the authorities from initiating any prosecution and to compel them to return the seized cigarettes. [25] New York Supreme Court Justice Kenneth Fisher denied the Cayugas' motion for a preliminary injunction and dismissed the action.
On February 22, 2020, around 2 AM, Cayuga Nation Police raided the Seneca Falls gas station and demolished it along with other buildings on the property including a school house for indigenous ceremonies, a daycare center, and some tiny homes that were being lived in at that time. [26] [27]
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has generic name (help)The Finger Lakes are a group of eleven long, narrow, roughly north–south lakes located directly south of Lake Ontario in an area called the Finger Lakes region in New York, in the United States. This region straddles the northern and transitional edge of the Northern Allegheny Plateau, known as the Finger Lakes Uplands and Gorges ecoregion, and the Ontario Lowlands ecoregion of the Great Lakes Lowlands.
Owasco is a town in Cayuga County, New York, United States. It is part of the traditional territory of the Cayuga nation. The population was 3,793 at the 2010 census. Owasco is in the eastern part of Cayuga County and is at the southeast city line of Auburn. The town borders Owasco Lake, from where it gets its name.
Among the Haudenosaunee the Great Law of Peace, also known as Gayanashagowa, is the oral constitution of the Iroquois Confederacy. The law was represented by symbols on wampum belts which functioned as mnemonic devices for storytellers, conceived by Dekanawidah, known as the Great Peacemaker, and his spokesman Hiawatha. The original five member nations ratified this constitution near modern-day Victor, New York, with the sixth nation being added in 1722.
The Seneca are a group of Indigenous Iroquoian-speaking people who historically lived south of Lake Ontario, one of the five Great Lakes in North America. Their nation was the farthest to the west within the Six Nations or Iroquois League (Haudenosaunee) in New York before the American Revolution. For this reason, they are called “The Keepers of the Western Door.”
The Phelps and Gorham Purchase was the sale, in 1788, of a portion of a large tract of land in western New York State owned by the Seneca nation of the Iroquois Confederacy to a syndicate of land developers led by Oliver Phelps and Nathaniel Gorham. The larger tract of land is generally known as the "Genesee tract" and roughly encompasses all that portion of New York State west of Seneca Lake, consisting of about 6,000,000 acres (24,000 km2).
The Onondaga people are one of the five original nations of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy in the Northeastern Woodlands. Their historical homelands are in and around present-day Onondaga County, New York, south of Lake Ontario.
The Oneida people are a Native American tribe and First Nations band. They are one of the five founding nations of the Iroquois Confederacy in the area of upstate New York, particularly near the Great Lakes.
The Cayuga are one of the five original constituents of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois), a confederacy of Native Americans in New York. The Cayuga homeland lies in the Finger Lakes region along Cayuga Lake, between their league neighbors, the Onondaga to the east and the Seneca to the west. Today, Cayuga people belong to the Six Nations of the Grand River First Nation in Ontario, and the federally recognized Cayuga Nation of New York and the Seneca-Cayuga Tribe of Oklahoma.
John Abeel III known as Gaiänt'wakê or Kaiiontwa'kon in the Seneca language and thus generally known as Cornplanter, was a Dutch-Seneca chief warrior and diplomat of the Seneca people. As a war chief, Cornplanter fought in the American Revolutionary War on the side of the British. After the war Cornplanter led negotiations with the United States and was a signatory of the Treaty of Fort Stanwix (1784), the Treaty of Canandaigua (1794), and other treaties. He helped ensure Seneca neutrality during the Northwest Indian War.
Handsome Lake was a Seneca religious leader of the Iroquois people. He was a half-brother to Cornplanter, a Seneca war chief.
The Seneca River flows 61.6 miles (99.1 km) through the Finger Lakes region of Upstate New York in the United States. The main tributary of the Oswego River – the second-largest river flowing into Lake Ontario – the Seneca drains 3,468 square miles (8,980 km2) in parts of fourteen New York counties. The Seneca flows generally east, and is wide and deep with a gentle gradient. Much of the river has been channelized to form part of the Erie Canal.
The Seven Nations of Canada was a historic confederation of First Nations living in and around the Saint Lawrence River valley beginning in the eighteenth century. They were allied to New France and often included substantial numbers of Roman Catholic converts. During the Seven Years' War (1756–1763), they supported the French against the British. Later, they formed the northern nucleus of the British-led Aboriginal alliance that fought the United States in the American Revolutionary War and the War of 1812.
There are four treaties of Buffalo Creek, named for the Buffalo River in New York. The Second Treaty of Buffalo Creek, also known as the Treaty with the New York Indians, 1838, was signed on January 15, 1838 between the Seneca Nation, Mohawk nation, Cayuga nation, Oneida Indian Nation, Onondaga (tribe), Tuscarora (tribe) and the United States. It covered land sales of tribal reservations under the U.S. Indian Removal program, by which they planned to move most eastern tribes to Kansas Territory west of the Mississippi River.
The Treaty of Canandaigua, also known as the Pickering Treaty and the Calico Treaty, 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.
The Seneca–Cayuga Nation is one of three federally recognized tribes of Seneca people in the United States. It includes the Cayuga people and is based in Oklahoma, United States. The tribe had more than 5,000 people in 2011. They have a tribal jurisdictional area in the northeast corner of Oklahoma and are headquartered in Grove. They are descended from Iroquoian peoples who had relocated to Ohio from New York state in the mid-18th century.
The Treaty of Fort Stanwix was a treaty finalized on October 22, 1784, between the United States and Native Americans from the six nations of the Iroquois League. It was signed at Fort Stanwix, in present-day Rome, New York, and was the first of several treaties between Native Americans and the United States after the American victory in the Revolutionary War.
The Iroquois, also known as the Five Nations, and later as the Six Nations from 1722 onwards; alternatively referred to by the endonym Haudenosaunee are an Iroquoian-speaking confederacy of Native Americans and First Nations peoples in northeast North America. They were known by the French during the colonial years as the Iroquois League, and later as the Iroquois Confederacy, while the English simply called them the "Five Nations". The peoples of the Iroquois included the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca. After 1722, the Iroquoian-speaking Tuscarora people from the southeast were accepted into the confederacy, from which point it was known as the "Six Nations".
Tadodaho was a Native American Hoyenah (sachem) of the Onondaga nation before the Deganawidah and Hiawatha formed the Iroquois League, or "Haudenosaunee". According to oral tradition, he had extraordinary characteristics and was widely feared, but he was persuaded to support the confederacy of the Five Nations.
The Seneca Nation of Indians is a federally recognized Seneca tribe based in western New York. They are one of three federally recognized Seneca entities in the United States, the others being the Tonawanda Band of Seneca and the Seneca-Cayuga Nation of Oklahoma. Some Seneca also live with other Iroquois peoples on the Six Nations of the Grand River in Ontario.
Fish Carrier or "Ojageght," which translates to English as "he is carrying a fish by the forehead strap," was an Iroquois chief of the Cayuga people. He supported the British during the American Revolution, participating in the Battle of Wyoming in 1778 and the Battle of Newtown in 1779.