Sidebar: Red Jacket — hero or traitor?
The great Seneca leader Red Jacket played an ambiguous role in the negotiations
at Big Tree. Although publicly posturing against the sale of any lands, he worked
behind the scenes to keep the talks alive.
His reputation was tarnished
when it was later learned that he had secretly received a substantial “gift”
for his part in the negotiations.
Born around 1750 in what is now Seneca
County, Red Jacket, or Sagoyewatha (He Keeps Them Awake), was a leader and orator
known for his resistance to white influence on Iroquois culture.
He opposed
attempts by white missionaries, other whites and even Seneca prophet Handsome
Lake to change some traditional Seneca ways of life. Red Jacket and the Seneca
aided the British during the American Revolution; he was rewarded with a British
red coat, hence his hame.
Red Jacket died in 1830 of cholera on New York's
Buffalo Creek Reservation. A monument to the great Seneca leader stands in Buffalo.
Sidebar: Jeremiah
Wadsworth
Founder of a real estate empire
Jeremiah Wadsworth, appointed as federal commissioner for the Treaty of Big Tree,
was a major landowner in western New York, despite having made only one previous
trip to the area.
Born in Hartford, Conn., in 1743, Wadsworth became a
wealthy merchant and served as Commissary General of the Continental Army earning
the title colonel.
After an inspection trip to the wilderness area in 1788,
he purchased 25,000 acres of land from developers Phelps and Gorham, as an investment.
His land was located east of the Genesee River, and therefore not directly affected
by treaty negotiations which concerned land west of the river. The inability of
Robert Morris to obtain clear title to the western territories, however, had a
depressing effect on area development.
Wadsworth had earlier engaged his
more youthful cousins, James and William Wadsworth, of Farmington, Conn., to make
the arduous trip west, settle the wilderness and act as his sales agents. The
brothers arrived in 1790 and settled near Geneseo. With additional purchases,
the combined landholdings of the Wadsworth family in western New York eventually
grew to almost 250,000 acres. The extended family remains a large landowner in
the area to this day.
The visit to preside over the negotiations at Big
Tree was Col. Wadsworth's last trip to the valley he so greatly influenced. He
died in Hartford in 1804.
The late Barber Conable was a former Genesee Country
Congressman, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and president of the World
Bank. He and his wife, Charlotte, were profiled in the Autumn
'96 issue of Genesee Country.
