Gathered on a bridge at Long Branch Park last Saturday, a dozen people awaited the arrival of the Seneca Chief. Rather than a leader of the Seneca Nation, the anticipated guest was a replica of the first boat to traverse the Erie Canal 200 years ago.
Those on the bridge were not waiting to celebrate the vessel, but to meet it with a call to action.
Shortly before noon, Tadodaho (spiritual leader) Sid Hill and other representatives of the Onondaga Nation unfurled a 25-foot blue banner. Iridescent balloon weights were tied to the bottom to hold it down. In large white letters, it read:
Return Maple Bay
Indigenous Lands in Indigenous Hands
#LakeBack
The canary yellow Seneca Chief emerged around the corner a few minutes later, flanked by a tugboat, several kayaks, and an entourage of followers.
“They were cheering for our banner, which tells me something. Which gives me hope,” said Betty Lyons Hill, the executive director of the American Indian Law Alliance and a citizen of the Onondaga Nation, after the ship had disappeared from sight.
In the 19th century, the Erie Canal generated enormous revenue for New York State through tolls and the economic benefits of connected waterways. Upstate cities flourished on its shores. Millions of tons of timber, manufactured goods, and more traveled across the state through the canal.
But the canal also carved through Haudenosaunee land.
When the Erie Canal was built, it crossed seven Seneca reservations, according to a statement the Tonawanda Band of Senecas issued this September.
The 363-mile Canal opened in 1825. Building it required felling trees across its route, and connecting the Great Lakes to the Hudson River opened up a pathway for invasive species to travel across the state. The population boomed alongside the new waters. The Canal changed the ecosystem of New York State.
“The history of the Erie Canal and the impacts of the Erie Canal, that for Haudenosaunee Nations, was genocidal,” said Roggie Drew, “and on the other hand, for New York State, and specifically for a specific number of people, was extremely lucrative.”
In a media advisory about the protest last week, Lyons called the canal “an open ecological wound and a constant reminder of the work that remains to restore and heal our Mother, the Earth.”
The protesters used the focus on the canal’s bicentennial to draw attention to their fight to reclaim another local water.
Lyons and other Onondaga leaders in May reignited their efforts to win back a portion of land on Onondaga Lake, the Nation’s spiritual epicenter and ancestral seat of power. In 2011 and 2016, the Onondaga County Legislature passed two non-binding resolutions to transfer a parcel of land on the lake. After Murphy’s Island, the parcel originally slated for transfer, was deemed too hazardous for the Nation’s use absent extensive environmental remediation, the county and nation began exploring Maple Bay as a suitable alternative. Maple Bay is a section of shoreline on Onondaga Lake.
Discussions between County Executive Ryan McMahon’s administration and the Nation’s leadership have failed to yield a transfer.
Onondaga Lake is “a part of who we are and our Confederacy,” said Lyons. “It should matter to everybody because it’s the birthplace of western democracy.”
According to Haudenosaunee oral history, it was here that the Peacemaker gathered five warring nations. They buried their weapons under the Great Tree of Peace and formed the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. Lyons said she dreamed that someday the lake would be swimmable. Today, it is a federal Superfund site.
“My hope is measured with reality,” said Lyons.
One of the voices cheering on the Onondagas belonged to Bob Searing, the Onondaga Historical Association’s curator. As a student of history, Searing said he felt fortunate to ride atop the Seneca Chief with his young son.
Searing commended the Buffalo Maritime Center for using the replica packet boat as a vessel to convey a nuanced and rigorous history of the canal that embraced the canal’s achievements while engaging with some of the canal’s harm to the Haudenosaunee.
Dueling truths such as these, Searing said, undergird the complex history of the Erie Canal, and mirrors the country itself. He said the journey of the replica Seneca Chief, and the multifaceted educational outreach it was delivering, could inspire Central New Yorkers to expand their understanding of the canal’s history.
“Does that negate the harsh historical realities? Of course, it does not,” said Searing. “Does it possibly, you know, bring some people to start to go back and do some research and start to ask questions about the canal and just American history writ large?”
The Seneca Chief and its ensuing canal caravan arrived at another event on Onondaga Lake’s shoreline. About 150 people had assembled to welcome the boat as it docked in Liverpool.
The Buffalo Maritime Center hosted the interactive educational event, which allowed interested attendees to board the historical boat and hear from a survey of speakers on how the canal’s enduring legacy is both a point of pride and pain, depending on perspective. Signage and speakers focused on both the engineering triumphs of the canal and the ensuing devastation for indigenous nations.
Chelsea Moore, the education director of the Buffalo Maritime Center, said that the goal of the commemoration was to tell the story of the canal from a variety of angles. Scientists could learn about the aquatic invasive species it had spread. Those interested in boat construction might learn about the process of rebuilding the Seneca Chief. She added that the name of the boat inspired a particular focus on the canal’s effect on the Haudenosaunee.
Searing said that the bicentennial was “almost certainly the most perspective laden and conscientious [Erie Canal celebration] that the state of New York has been involved in.”
Throughout the 33-day voyage, those onboard the Seneca Chief will plant white pine trees as a “symbolic tribute” to the Haudenosaunee, according to the Buffalo Maritime Center.
Before allowing people to board the docked ship, Paul Winnie, a citizen of the Tonawanda Seneca nation, spoke to the assembled crowd. Winnie was only allotted a few minutes to speak, but made the most of his time by explaining to his audience how the Erie Canal’s creation, and the migration and economic development that followed, devastated the native Senecas in what is now New York State’s Western Corridor.
The Senecas and their allies are currently fighting against the creation of the Science and Technology Advanced Manufacturing Park just upstream of the Tonawanda Seneca reservation.
Winnie also reflected on how efforts to honor the Haudenousaunee have shifted over two centuries. While the New Yorkers of 1825 may have thought that naming their boat “Seneca Chief” was a sign of respect, Winnie called it a “mascot issue.”
“If I get one person, that’s the seed that I planted. It was worth the 100-mile drive to come here to have one person understand,” Winnie said. Soon after, someone came up to ask him for more information. Winnie happily directed the man to more resources, and remarked that he had accomplished his goal.
Though he wished he could have spoken longer and in greater depth about the Erie Canal’s painful legacy, Winnie was grateful for the opportunity to share his side of an oft-told yet incomplete story — especially at a time when President Donald Trump’s administration is actively revising historical records.
“They want to change the way the Smithsonian displays things, and how are these people going to understand this if I can’t talk about it?” Winnie said. “People don’t understand the whole history.”
Back at the bridge at Long Branch, Hill, the Haudenosaunee’s Tadodaho, expressed a similar sentiment. Hill praised the protest after the Seneca Chief passed beneath the Onondagas’ banner and sailed on toward the dock in Liverpool.
“It should be in the history books,” Hill said of the landgrabs and theft of indigenous waterways that flourished during and after the canal’s construction.
Hill similarly said that the Haudenosaunees’ efforts to reassert their own historical accounts of their experiences comes at the same time as a growing movement in America seeks to rewrite, erase, or obscure the nation’s history to remove uncomfortable details and simplify American history.
“We just started getting the word out, and now there’s a bigger campaign to squash history,” Hill said. “So, we’ll just have to work even harder.”
Behind Hill, an informative sign proclaims “Progress.” It features a timeline of the federal, state, and local governments’ efforts to clean Onondaga Lake. The first date is in 1896.
The Onondaga Nation does not appear anywhere on the sign. The timeline likewise makes no mention of the American actions that made Onondaga Lake, at one point, the most polluted lake in the United States.
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