On an October morning in 1825, Gov. DeWitt Clinton of New York stood at the head of a flotilla of dignitaries at the inauguration of the Erie Canal, the 360-mile artificial waterway that stretches from Lake Erie\u2019s eastern shore in Buffalo to Albany on the Hudson River. <\/p>\n
The boat carrying Governor Clinton was called the Seneca Chief, a reference to the Indigenous nation that, together with the rest of the Haudenosaunee (or Iroquois) Confederacy, had dominated western and central New York for centuries.<\/p>\n
Farther back in the procession was another boat, called Noah\u2019s Ark, which unlike the Seneca Chief, actually carried members of the tribe. They shared the vessel with eagles, deer and a bear, as part of a dehumanizing sideshow.<\/p>\n
This fall, as New York marks the Oct. 26 bicentennial, or 200th anniversary, of the Erie Canal, which helped open up regions west of New York for the young United States, organizers are attempting to balance celebration with reflection on some of the painful history that accompanied the achievement.<\/p>\n
Eastern white pine trees, a Haudenosaunee peace symbol, will be planted between Buffalo and New York City as one gesture meant to acknowledge how the canal\u2019s construction harmed the Haudenosaunee, whose traditional territory encompasses nearly its entire route.<\/p>\n
That harm was substantial. The state obtained land for the Erie Canal through coercive negotiations with the Haudenosaunee. And after the canal opened New York\u2019s frontier to waves of white settlers, the increased need for land became an argument for further land grabs.<\/p>\n
To be sure, the dispossession of Indigenous communities by the Erie Canal is a history that has captured scholarly attention, and has been acknowledged before this year\u2019s celebration. But the prominence of that history in the bicentennial celebration bucks an increasingly more prominent trend across the nation of eliding rather than confronting painful episodes in American history.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor so long, the standard story about the Erie Canal has been that it\u2019s a great engineering marvel and an engine of progress,\u201d said Terry Abrams, past president of the Tonawanda Reservation Historical Society. \u201cBut that came at a cost, and that cost was born by Seneca and other Haudenosaunee people. It\u2019s just part of the whole story.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Erie Canal made it possible to ship goods between New York and Great Lakes ports like Chicago. It opened the way for booming trade and settlement in the growing country\u2019s interior.<\/p>\n
The land it covered, though, had previously belonged to the nations of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, which includes the Senecas, Cayugas, Onondagas, Oneidas, Tuscaroras and Mohawks.<\/p>\n
In the decades before the canal opened, Haudenosaunee nations lost vast expanses of territory, largely through treaties and sales now considered fraudulent. Many of the canal\u2019s leading proponents profited directly from transactions that separated Indigenous people from their land.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe as Haudenosaunee people were right in the way, all across the state,\u201d said Melissa Parker Leonard, who traces her Seneca heritage back to the 18th century and runs an advocacy organization called 7th Gen Cultural Resources. \u201cWhen the canal opened, it was like the last step to really remove us,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
The Erie Canal bicentennial comes at a time of raging debate over the proper framing of historical injuries to minority groups.<\/p>\n
Various states have passed laws restricting the way educators can talk about racism and other injustices. The Trump administration recently ordered a review of exhibitions at the Smithsonian Institution to ensure that they do not include \u201cdivisive or partisan narratives,\u201d and more broadly has criticized historical narratives that cast shadows on the idea of American exceptionalism.<\/p>\n
New York has taken some steps to acknowledge past misdeeds. In May, Gov. Kathy Hochul formally apologized<\/a> to the Senecas for the \u201chistoric atrocities\u201d committed at the Thomas Indian School, a state-run boarding school 30 miles south of Buffalo that at least 2,500 Indigenous children were forced to attend.<\/p>\n The white pine tree planting is one of several components of the Erie Canal celebration that will bring the relatively unknown story of Indigenous land dispossession to wider audiences. The Erie Canal Museum in Syracuse and other museums and organizations along the waterway will also host Haudenosaunee speakers and events.<\/p>\n And when a replica of the Seneca Chief set off from Buffalo on Sept. 24 for a voyage to New York City, the first speech was not given by an elected official or prominent donor but rather by Joe Stahlman, a historian of Tuscarora descent. <\/p>\n \u201cTwo hundred years can seem like a long time,\u201d Mr. Stahlman said. \u201cIt\u2019s right that we pause to reflect on what that means to us.\u201d<\/p>\n The attention to these negative effects, though, has drawn some criticism.<\/p>\n Mark Poloncarz, the Erie County executive, complained this month that a Buffalo History Museum exhibit called \u201cWaterway of Change<\/a>\u201d was \u201cpretty negative,\u201d focusing too much on the harm done to the Haudenosaunee instead of celebrating the canal\u2019s importance to Buffalo and the growing nation.<\/p>\n