Hamilton and the Oneida Nation: stolen land and opportunities
by Taylor Kim ’19, Staff Writer
Hamilton College was originally founded as the Hamilton-Oneida Academy — a co-educational institution for both the white inhabitants of the area and the Oneida Nation. Before European contact, the Nation occupied six million acres of land from the St. Lawrence River to the Susquehanna River. It was a sovereign government as well as a member of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, also referred to as the Iroquois by white settlers.
During the American Revolutionary War, the Nation and the Tuscaroras sided with the Revolutionaries against the British and their fellow members of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. Professor Isserman’s bicentennial history of Hamilton College implies that Kirkland persuaded the Nation to join the Revolutionaries, especially since the other members of the Confederacy supported the British. I personally take these written histories with a grain of salt because I can never be sure of how the stories have changed over time, especially if they have been written from the viewpoint of white colonizers.
After the war, the members of the Confederacy who had sided with the British had their land taken away by the state government of New York and Massachusetts State, as well as private companies such as the Phelps-Gorham Company. Samuel Kirkland himself was a part of these deals with private companies and profited off of 2,000 acres of former Seneca land.
The Nations that did side with the Revolutionaries fared no better. Although the details are debated, the Oneida Nation “agreed to cede” most of their land to New York State for a cash payment. According to the Nation’s history on their website, the Oneidas had agreed to simply lease their land but New York State gave itself the title. In a separate agreement, the Oneida Nation gifted Samuel Kirkland the Kirkland Patent: a lot of two square miles. It is common knowledge that the United States government and its various state governments have continually oppressed and taken advantage of the Indigenous peoples by using deceiving treaties, failing to uphold these treaties, and outright stealing land and murdering people.
After receiving this land, Samuel Kirkland built the Hamilton-Oneida Academy in an effort to educate Oneida youths to “fit them for politicians and schoolmasters [and] to introduce the manners and customs of white people among them.” From my modern perspective, the start of the Academy was not as innocent and noble as we may think. Although Kirkland desired to provide an education to members of the Nation, why provide an education at all? Was it simply to further colonize the Oneida Nation by indoctrinating youths with European worldviews and values, all so that the Europeans could have an “easier” time interacting with them?
Professor Isserman writes that the school intended to enroll the “most gifted Indians” from the Seneca, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Tuscarora tribes. These students were to learn English, arithmetic, “the principles of human nature,” and the “history of civil society” to “learn the difference between a ‘state of nature and a state of civilization.’”
To me, this sounds like the Americans, unsurprisingly, were trying to colonize the members of the tribe under the guise of enlightenment and education.
The first class of the Academy included four Indian students and 25 white students. Only three months after being built, a fire destroyed it and the Academy had to be rebuilt and reopened the following spring. Only one Indian student remained. From that moment onwards, the Academy, and its reincarnation as Hamilton College, has not serviced the Oneida Nation or any other Indian nation.
This is where you and I — current students of Hamilton College, alumni, and members of the administration — should be concerned. It is difficult to determine what the morally correct response is to our history. On one hand, I am unsure that attending the Academy would have been beneficial to the Oneida Nation. On the other, if Oneida students had graduated from there and continued to pursue higher education, perhaps the Nation would have had leaders that were better able to protect their rights.
Additionally, I am unsure of what the Oneida Nation desired at the time from the Academy. Did they want to attend or did they disapprove of it? Perhaps opinion differed from person to person.
Regardless, Hamilton College sits on land that was once owned by an Indigenous group who have been wronged by white people, and the College remains a predominantly white institution. While I am of course not saying that white people do not currently deserve a college education, I do think it would be the morally right thing to do to acknowledge that our school’s history is not as innocent as we may think.
Samuel Kirkland profited tremendously from his missionary work with the Oneida Nation. Without his involvement with them, he would not have been the affluent landowner he was when he passed away. Land grabbing benefitted colonizers and it continues to benefit the affluent today.
The median household income of Hamilton students is $208,600 and 20 percent of our students come from families who have annual incomes of $630,000 or more. While I do not wish to make a blanket moral judgement about wealthy people, I think that our skew towards educating the wealthy indicates that there is more we can do as an institution to improve our relationship with the Oneida Nation. Our student population is neither representative of the United States as a whole nor the original intent of the Hamilton-Oneida Academy.
I understand that being connected to the wealthy keeps the College funded and enables students like me to attend and have an amazing chance at upward mobility.
As a well-endowed non-profit institution that owes so much to the Oneida Nation, we should, at the very least, offer a Hamilton education to Oneida students. I want to clarify that this suggestion is not one made out of pity or charity. The Oneida Nation has successful enterprises that enables them to continuously invest in their communities, creating opportunities, jobs, and entertainment in this area.
Instead, I suggest this small step because of our debt to the Nation. Without them, we would not be here. I would not be a low-income student who is one step closer to realizing her dream of becoming a public servant. I personally owe so much to the Nation and writing this one article is only a show of gratitude.
I hope that I have been respectful and educated in my writing on both the Nation and the College because I have been provided for by both. I hope I can continue my writing on the Nation by asking members of their leadership board what they want to see the College do in the future and continuing to acknowledge the terms of our history together.
