By Lindsay DePietro

(Above: historical map via eriecanalway.org).

While many sing the praises of the Erie Canal and its history in skyrocketing the development of U.S. industrial capitalism and urban growth, a recent meeting on Tuesday, July 8 shed light on a darker side of the canal’s past. 

“The canal was a form of genocide,” Paul Winnie, of the Tonawanda Seneca Nation, said during the Erie Canal’s Indigenous Impact Panel Discussion.

The panel discussion was one of the many events the Buffalo Maritime Center is putting on for the public for their “Erie Canal Boat Summer Series,” a series that is meant to celebrate the Erie Canal Bicentennial.

The last event takes place in September with the Bicentennial Voyage Departure of the Buffalo Maritime Center’s replica of the Erie Canal Boat “Seneca Chief.” 

“As far as the Seneca Chief goes, Onöndowa’ga is what we call ourselves,” Winnie said. “That’s what I want to be called.”

According to the Buffalo Maritime Center website, “While the canal was celebrated as a symbol of progress for New York, that progress was not universal. Its success contributed to the displacement of the Haudenosaunee and led to lasting changes in New York State’s ecosystems, underscoring the complex and far-reaching impact of this historic waterway.”

The discussion panel was held with the goal of discussing and educating the public on this history of the Erie Canal that is seldom learned or talked about.

Chelsea Moore, the education director of the Buffalo Maritime Center, led the panel discussion along with three guests, Winnie, Melissa Parker Leonard, Tonawanda Seneca Descendant and Agnes Williams, of the Cattaraugus territory Seneca.

“I never thought how [the Erie Canal] cut their territory,” Sandy Radens, a panel discussion attendee, said when asked about what she learned from the panel. 

Winnie informed listeners that Thomas Jefferson had talked about the building of the canal in 1787, so it was already envisioned years before it was built. It was, as Winnie said, “all about getting possession of the land from its inhabitants.”

He went on to say that the land was taken from the Mohawk, the Oneida, the Onondaga, the Keuka and then they did not get the land from the Seneca until 1797. 

John Radens, who attended the panel discussion, said the most surprising piece of information he learned was that the Erie Canal affected the Native Americans’ environment. 

Much of the tree growth we see surrounding us today was not what originally covered the land. “What you’re seeing out there is not what was here before, or anything close to it. It was a forest empire that got destroyed. The canal was the end of us pretty much and it was the end of the environment as far as Western New York,” said Winnie.

The canal not only affected the land, but had harsh consequences for the land’s water. 

The Erie Canal introduced so many invasive species into the Great Lakes, including salt water organisms, Williams said. 

“With the build of factory or a steel plant or the Erie Canal or whatever is was that development or progress built, it always interfered with the natural environment and now today in the 21st century, we are living with the effects of that, or not living I should say, because we are really riddled with a lot of diseases.”

She added, “there’s no coincidence that we have Roswell Park and Cleveland Clinic in our region because we have so much cancer. We have to start thinking about our future generations.”

Another attendee and member of the Maritime Center said, “I heard of the Indian Removal Act, I didn’t realize it was operative in this area.”

The most surprising thing he learned from the panel discussion was the “forceful removal of the native people. I should have known it was a land grab, because it always has been, but I didn’t realize it was so blatant here.”

Leonard said her dad taught her where her family’s house was in the Buffalo Creek area. When doing research in the History Museum’s Library on the Buffalo Creek Treaty, she was shocked to learn that the very names on Buffalo street signs today are the same names that strategized to remove the Seneca, including her own family, from their lands.

“I was reading firsthand letters of these gentlemen who were writing back and forth to one another dehumanizing us, talking about why we needed to be removed,” Leonard said. 

The canal opened in 1825 and a year after that Seneca began to lose several of their territories and a lot of acreage of Buffalo Creek. 

“The connection to the canal was it really was an acceleration of our removal. And a lot of times we talk about it as land loss, as if it didn’t affect people,” said Leonard

The effects of the Erie Canal and other harmful acts on Indigenous people are not just of the past but of the present. 

The panel emphasized the importance of education and not only teaching people about the past, but about what is happening to this day. The identity of Native Americans presently is a key missing factor in education.

The powerful message that the panelists made clear: “We’re still here”

“I believe that everyone is equal just like Agnus said,” Claudia Smigelski, a panel discussion attendee, said. “Their plight is also my plight too and the things that they wish for, I wish for too.”