At Albany, on 19 July 1701, in the thirteenth year of William III, the sachems, captains and representatives of the Five Nations signed and sealed, in the middle of the high street, the Deed of their Beaver Hunting Ground. They delivered it to Lieutenant Governor John Nanfan, whom they called Corlaer, to send to the king, whom they called Corachkoo. The nations: Maquase, Oneydes, Onnandages, Cayouges, Sinnekes. It is not a peace with France.

The act is not the Great Peace of Montreal in August, nor the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713, nor the 1726 amendment, nor the Two Row Wampum. The Five Nations are not yet Six: the Tuscarora entered later.

The deed describes Canagariarchio: about eight hundred by four hundred miles, between Lake Ottawawa (Huron) and Lake Swege (Erie), as far as the Twichtwichs and Quadoge, including the great falls Oakinagaro and the place Tjeughsaghrondie, alias Fort de Tret. The sachems claim that eighty years earlier they conquered seven Aragaritka nations, and hunted in peace for sixty years, until a Tionondade remnant, succoured by the French of Canada, disturbed the hunting.

The immediate motive: the governor of Canada had sent a force to Tjeughsaghronde, the principal pass, to build a fort without leave. The surrender to the Crown of England is coupled with a reservation: free hunting for the Five Nations and their descendants for ever, undisturbed, under the Crown’s protection. Power to erect forts on the tract remains with the king.

The text recalls the covenant chain renewed yearly with the people of Albany for above eighty years. The marks were given in the presence of the magistrates, officers and inhabitants. The original is at The National Archives, CO 5/1046/758. Samuel Clowes’s map, drawn by Nanfan’s order, shows the tract given to the king.

The July act is not the ratification of 14 September 1726, which reserved a sixty-mile strip along Erie and Ontario, nor Utrecht’s recognition of British suzerainty over the Haudenosaunee.

Image: State Street, Albany, 7 September 2021; Kenneth C. Zirkel, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. Cropped to 16:9. The deed was delivered in the middle of the high street.

Source consulted: Nanfan Treaty. Treaty text: Deed from the Five Nations to the King, of their Beaver Hunting Ground, Albany, 19 July 1701.