Deed from the Five Nations to the King, of their Beaver Hunting Ground, more commonly known as the Nanfan Treaty, was an agreement made between the representatives of the

Iroquois Confederacy The Iroquois ( or ), officially the Haudenosaunee ( meaning "people of the longhouse"), are an Iroquoian-speaking confederacy of First Nations peoples in northeast North America/ Turtle Island. They were known during the colonial years to ...

with

John Nanfan John Nanfan (1634–1716) was a Lieutenant Governor of the Province of New York from 1698 to 1702. He served as acting governor for about a year between the death of the Earl of Bellomont and the arrival of Bellomont's successor, Lord Cornbury ...

, the acting colonial governor of New York, on behalf of

The Crown The Crown is the state in all its aspects within the jurisprudence of the Commonwealth realms and their subdivisions (such as the Crown Dependencies, overseas territories, provinces, or states). Legally ill-defined, the term has differ ...

. The treaty was conducted in

Albany, New York Albany ( ) is the capital of the U.S. state of New York, also the seat and largest city of Albany County. Albany is on the west bank of the Hudson River, about south of its confluence with the Mohawk River, and about north of New York Cit ...

, on July 19, 1701, and amended by both parties on September 14, 1726. The Five Nations (which became the 'Six Nations' after 1720) granted "after mature deliberation out of a deep sense of the many Royal favours extended to us by the present great Monarch of England King William the Third" the title to a vast area of land, covering significant portions of the present-day

Midwestern United States The Midwestern United States, also referred to as the Midwest or the American Midwest, is one of four census regions of the United States Census Bureau (also known as "Region 2"). It occupies the northern central part of the United States. I ...

and southern

Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central Ca ...

that they had claimed as a hunting ground, as far west as 'Quadoge' (now

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...

), by

right of conquest The right of conquest is a right of ownership to land after immediate possession via force of arms. It was recognized as a principle of international law that gradually deteriorated in significance until its proscription in the aftermath of Worl ...

during the later

Beaver Wars The Beaver Wars ( moh, Tsianì kayonkwere), also known as the Iroquois Wars or the French and Iroquois Wars (french: Guerres franco-iroquoises) were a series of conflicts fought intermittently during the 17th century in North America throughout t ...

of the 17th century. As the vast majority of the Beaver Hunting Grounds described in the Nanfan Treaty were also claimed by

New France New France (french: Nouvelle-France) was the area colonized by France in North America, beginning with the exploration of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence by Jacques Cartier in 1534 and ending with the cession of New France to Great Britain and Spa ...

or its Algonquian Indian allies, the French did not recognize the treaty (it did recognize Iroquois

suzerainty Suzerainty () is the rights and obligations of a person, state or other polity who controls the foreign policy and relations of a tributary state, while allowing the tributary state to have internal autonomy. While the subordinate party is ca ...

to the British crown in the 1713

Treaty of Utrecht The Peace of Utrecht was a series of peace treaties signed by the belligerents in the War of the Spanish Succession, in the Dutch city of Utrecht between April 1713 and February 1715. The war involved three contenders for the vacant throne ...

) and the English made no real attempt to settle these parts for the time being. In the amended agreement 25 years later, the strip of land 60 miles wide adjoining Lakes Erie and Ontario, starting at

Sandusky Creek The Sandusky River ( wyn, saandusti; sjw, Potakihiipi ) is a tributary to Lake Erie in north-central Ohio in the United States. It is about longU.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Ma ...

, was reserved for continued Six Nations occupation and use, with the permission of its owner under the 1701 agreement, the King of Great Britain. A copy of the treaty, containing the totem images of more than a dozen Iroquois chiefs, is part of the collections of the British National Archives.

References

Other sources

*"Deed from the Five Nations to the King, of their Beaver Hunting Ground," in
A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774–1875
'

- a copy of the Nanfan Treaty {{Canadian Aboriginal and indigenous law Iroquois Treaties of indigenous peoples of North America Treaties of the Kingdom of Great Britain 1701 treaties 1701 in New France 1701 in the Thirteen Colonies Native American history of Illinois Native American history of Indiana Native American history of Michigan Native American history of New York (state) Native American history of Ohio Native American history of Pennsylvania First Nations history in Ontario First Nations history in Quebec Louisiana (New France) Northwest Territory History of the Midwestern United States Collection of The National Archives (United Kingdom)

See also

References

Other sources