“In the Same Predicament as Heretofore”: Proremoval Arguments in Seneca Letters from the Buffalo Creek Reservation in the 1830s and 1840s

This article discusses the arguments made by Seneca supporters of the United States' removal policy and notes the similarity of these arguments to those made by the policy's Iroquois supporters. Yet while one group used their criticisms as a way of rejecting removal, the other instead sought to shape it. I conclude that the main difference distinguishing the argumentation of the opposing groups was their use of the concept of law, with the removal advocates limiting themselves to drawing on US law, albeit in what appears to have been an attempt to gain their independence from US governmental control and supervision. They may also have seen removal in the tradition of older ways of resolving disputes through temporary fragmentation.