To James Madison from Daniel D. Tompkins, 27 December 1815
From Daniel D. Tompkins
Albany Decemr. 27. 1815
Sir
At a recent council which I held with the Seneca nation of Indians they begged me to address you in their behalf, relative to the nonpayment of their annuity, and of the interest of the stock which they held in the late United States Bank.1 They stated that these payments had been witheld from them at a time when the war between Great Britain and America rendered the receipt of their regular income more essential to them than at any other time;2 that during the whole of that time they were manifesting their confidence in and attachment to the United States by their personal services & by their exertions & advice to keep their nation & the Onondaga’s Oneidas’ &c friendly. They complained with warmth and apparently with indignation, that through their agents & otherwise they had sought an explanation of the causes of witholding their annuity hitherto & a renewal of its payment; & that they had received no explanation or satisfaction whatsoever. Their Orator declared their belief that their remonstrances had never reached your ear; and they therefore entreated me to address a communication directly to you soliciting your kind attention to their wants & grievances, & requesting your direction to the proper department to pay the arrearages due them. Their injunction to make known their feelings on the occasion to you, personally, is my apology for departing in this instance from the more formal course of communicating through the Department to which the superintendence of Indian affairs belongs. With highest respect & esteem I have the honor to be, Sir, Your Obt. St.
Daniel D. Tompkins
RC (DNA: RG 107, LRRS, T-5:9). Docketed as received in the War Department in January 1816.
1. The Seneca Nation was entitled to these annuities under the terms of the 1797 Treaty of Big Tree with the United States. In return for ceding most of their lands west of the Genessee River (nearly four million acres), the Seneca retained eleven small reservations of land and were to be paid $100,000, which sum was invested on their behalf in stock of the Bank of the United States, with the president of the United States acting as trustee. The annual interest on the stock, calculated at $6,000, was to be divided among the communities residing on the reserved tracts (Norman B. Wilkinson, “Robert Morris and the Treaty of Big Tree,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 40 [1953]: 257–78).
2. Interruptions in the payment of the annuities due the Seneca resulted from the disruptions of the War of 1812 and the closing of the first Bank of the United States in 1811. The Seneca had wished to send deputations to Washington to discuss the matter but were dissuaded from doing so by their agent Erastus Granger. However, at a council held in Buffalo on 17 Nov. 1815, Granger recorded that the Seneca wanted to petition Congress for a grant of “land at the Westward” and to send a delegate, Captain Jones, along with Granger, to discuss the problem of the annuity payments. The Seneca complained that “the bank is gone. We do not get our pay. … We want our property transfer[r]ed to some bank in New York. We want the interest of our money for two years paid next spring about the time of corn planting” (Snyder, Red and White on the New York Frontier, 75–76, 82–83). In a 12 Feb. 1816 letter addressed to the Six Nations of New York, Secretary of War William Harris Crawford acknowledged that Peter B. Porter and Erastus Granger had laid the concerns of the Seneca before JM, who granted their request that they might move westward, provided that they did not relocate in Ohio or in the region of Detroit, and stated that their removal would not affect their existing treaty arrangements (DNA: RG 75, LSIA). Nevertheless, in January 1817 Granger noted that the financial affairs of the Seneca remained “truly deplorable. … Their prospects have failed. Their hunting ground is gone. They have availed themselves of their money arising from their public funds, but they fall short. They are in fact in a state of starvation” (Snyder, Red and White on the New York Frontier, 85).