Lot Essay
Cataloged by PK; 27 Apr 2017
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WYANDOT NATION – Manuscript Document Signed with totems by eight Indian chiefs, being a petition to the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States by the Wyandot Nation to retain the villages of Brownstown and Maguaga, Detroit, 31 October 1807.
One page, 748 x 540mm, laid down to linen-backing, (some minor splitting along folds, a few tiny chips with partial loss to five or six words). Provenance: Walter R. Benjamin; Frank T. Siebert (his sale), Sotheby’s New York, May 21, 1999, lot 339.
An important early manuscript petition to Jefferson’s Congress, seeking to retain tribal lands as promised by the federal government in 1789. A petition by the Wyandot Nation to the U.S. Congress to retain the villages of Brownstown and Maguaga along the Detroit River. Signed by eight representatives of four tribes with their pictorial totems, including a turtle, a horse, birds, and other animals. The petition argues that the Wyandot ”have been a long time in possession of these Villages ... that they have divested themselves of the habit of gaining a subsistence by Hunting and Fishing and applied themselves to the cultivation of the Earth for support; that they have contracted a strong partiality for the spot that gave them birth ... that they have contracted a partiality for the comforts resulting from a settled life; and that to deprive them of their houses, and their fields, and turn them destitute, into the woods, would to them be extremely distressing.” The petition cites the Treaty of Fort Harmar (1789) as well as the oral promise of General Anthony Wayne that the Wyandot could remain in these villages. In addition to the signatures of the two Wyandot chiefs there are the signatures of two representatives each of the Chippewa, Ottawa, and Pottawatomie Nations, who “think it their duty to enforce the request of their Brethren, the Wyandots, because they think it just and reasonable, and because some of them were present at the Treaty of Greenville, and were witness of the assurance, which General Wayne made ... that their Brethren never should be disturbed in the possession of those Lands.” The petition proved unsuccessful. Four of the tribes represented on the present document ceded their lands (including the two villages mentioned here) in the Treaty of Michigan, which went into effect a month later.
One page, 748 x 540mm, laid down to linen-backing, (some minor splitting along folds, a few tiny chips with partial loss to five or six words). Provenance: Walter R. Benjamin; Frank T. Siebert (his sale), Sotheby’s New York, May 21, 1999, lot 339.
An important early manuscript petition to Jefferson’s Congress, seeking to retain tribal lands as promised by the federal government in 1789. A petition by the Wyandot Nation to the U.S. Congress to retain the villages of Brownstown and Maguaga along the Detroit River. Signed by eight representatives of four tribes with their pictorial totems, including a turtle, a horse, birds, and other animals. The petition argues that the Wyandot ”have been a long time in possession of these Villages ... that they have divested themselves of the habit of gaining a subsistence by Hunting and Fishing and applied themselves to the cultivation of the Earth for support; that they have contracted a strong partiality for the spot that gave them birth ... that they have contracted a partiality for the comforts resulting from a settled life; and that to deprive them of their houses, and their fields, and turn them destitute, into the woods, would to them be extremely distressing.” The petition cites the Treaty of Fort Harmar (1789) as well as the oral promise of General Anthony Wayne that the Wyandot could remain in these villages. In addition to the signatures of the two Wyandot chiefs there are the signatures of two representatives each of the Chippewa, Ottawa, and Pottawatomie Nations, who “think it their duty to enforce the request of their Brethren, the Wyandots, because they think it just and reasonable, and because some of them were present at the Treaty of Greenville, and were witness of the assurance, which General Wayne made ... that their Brethren never should be disturbed in the possession of those Lands.” The petition proved unsuccessful. Four of the tribes represented on the present document ceded their lands (including the two villages mentioned here) in the Treaty of Michigan, which went into effect a month later.