Seneca

A people

Brandywine Falls dropping 60 feet over a sandstone ledge into the gorge at Cuyahoga Valley National Park.
Erik Drost, Wikimedia Commons · CC BY 4.0

Background

Three Seneca governments sit on the Bureau of Indian Affairs list of federally recognized tribes, the Seneca Nation of Indians, the Seneca-Cayuga Nation and the Tonawanda Band of Seneca. They are the governments of one people rather than three peoples. The Seneca Nation of Indians calls the Seneca the largest of the six nations of the Iroquois Confederacy. Its constitution was established in 1848, with elected executive and legislative branches and an elected judicial branch. More than 8,500 Seneca citizens and their families live across its Allegany, Cattaraugus and Oil Spring territories in western New York, including the cities of Buffalo and Niagara Falls. Cuyahoga Valley records that the Treaty of Fort Meigs in 1817 set up a reservation for the Seneca along the Sandusky River. In 1832 the Seneca living with the Lewistown Shawnee were marched west with them to Kansas, and on December 18 they arrived to find the tract they had been given was owned by the Cherokee, who objected to their settling there.

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Parks on its homelands

Brandywine Falls dropping 60 feet over a sandstone ledge into the gorge at Cuyahoga Valley National Park.Cuyahoga Valley National Park

The 1817 Treaty of Fort Meigs set up a reservation for the Seneca along the Sandusky River. In 1832 Seneca living with the Lewistown Shawnee were marched to Kansas with them. Source

Sources

Checked September 2026.

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