Posted
on July 19, 2013
Before I get to the "Treaty of Nanfan," I want to mention something exciting that is happening today, July 29, 2013:
It's Wave at Saturn Day!
Now...back to Nanfan!
This is what was supposed to have happened on this date in 1701:
It's Wave at Saturn Day!
As it has twice before, the robot space explorer named Cassini will be photographing Earth from a billion miles away. This time, scientist Carolyn Porco is urging everybody to go outside, smile really big (you can say "cheese" if you want), and wave at the camera at the time that this photo is being taken.
Porco has called today "The Day the Earth Smiled."
Where I live, with Pacific Daylight Time, the photo is being taken at 2:27 in the afternoon. Here is a website that tells people in other time zones when they can wave at the (invisible to our eyes) camera. And here is an article with more info.
Now...back to Nanfan!
This is what was supposed to have happened on this date in 1701:
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| The green portion is the land that was supposedly granted to England in 1701. |
Representatives
of the Five Nations (the Iroquois Confederacy, a group of Native
American nations) sat down with John Nanfan, the acting governor of
the British colony of New York. They hammered out a treaty that
granted to the British king an enormous swath of land that includes
the present-day states of Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and
southern Ontario, Canada. This chunk of land was sometimes called the
Beaver Hunting Grounds.
These lands were, at that point, pretty much controlled by Native Americans who were aligned with French colonists rather than by the Iroquois, and France did not recognize this treaty. So it was pretty unimportant.
But
there are historians who say that this treaty was even less than unimportant--they say that it never existed at all!
Thomas Kennedy is one of these historians. He says that what many call the Nanfan Treaty is really the Albany Deed
of 1701; the Five Nations deeded a large chunk of land to the British
New York Colony in return for the king's protection against the
French. Rather than being connected to acting governor Nanfan,
Kennedy states that this deed (not a treaty) is the result of New York
Governor Bellomont, who died in office on March 5, 1701.
It
seems clear to me that Governor Bellomont could have worked toward
gaining rights to this land, but it finally came to pass during
Nanfan's brief acting-governorship, and that the name passed down in
various histories got fudged around and changed for reasons that are
not very nefarious—such as confusion or forgetfulness. But I can also clearly see that this is one of several possibilities—and I really do not know the truth of the matter.
 |
| By the way, the "Five Nations" of the Iroquois Confederacy eventually became Six Nations. |
From
what I can tell, the Iroquois deeded the same land several times,
sometimes to the same people and other cases to different people. I
have heard that the concept of land ownership and land rights meant
very different things to the various peoples—and I imagine that, as the British and American governments reneged on (backed out of) signed treaties, over and over, Native American tribes became more and more skeptical of any new treaties. Apparently the same thing happened
with the deeds given out by Native Americans to European settlers—the
latter became increasingly skeptical of any “deed” or “title”
given by Five Nations peoples as something that cannot be counted on.
It seems to me that all the groups active in that corner of North America at the time took turns conquering and being conquered, and that there was little that an agreement or law could do when force was used to take land and resources. But it's definitely hard to know what really happened in New York in 1701. Even if we could examine
historical documents, we would be hard pressed to authenticate them
and certainly have no hope of discovering what people were thinking
as they wrote or signed those documents!
Also
on this date:
Plan
ahead:
Check
out my Pinterest pages on July
holidays, historical
anniversaries in July,
and July
birthdays.
And
here are my Pinterest pages on August
holidays, historical
anniversaries in August,
and August
birthdays.
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