Phelps and Gorham Purchase - Council at Buffalo Creek

Council At Buffalo Creek

On July 8, 1788, Phelps met with the five nations of the Iroquois Confederacy (including Mohawks, Oneidas, Onandagas, Cayugas, and Senecas) at Buffalo Creek to execute a deed or treaty for rights to a portion of their land. The land purchased included approximately the eastern third of the territory ceded to Massachusetts by the Treaty of Hartford, from the Genesee River in the west to the Preemption Line in the east, which was the boundary that had been set between the lands awarded to Massachusetts and those awarded to New York State by the Treaty of Hartford. The agreement included a small tract of land west of the Genesee running south from Lake Ontario approximately 24 miles (39 km) and extending west from the river 12 miles (19 km) from "the westernmost bend of the Genesee," with this western boundary paralleling the course of the Genesee. This 184,300-acre (746 km2) tract west of the Genesee was known as The Mill Yard Tract, so named because Phelps and Gorham asked for the land so they could build a sawmill and gristmill. For this extinction of title, Phelps and Gorham paid the native Americans $5,000, plus an annuity of $500. The area to which title was extinguished comprised some 2,250,000 acres (9,100 km2), including the Mill Yard Tract.

Boundaries established by Phelp's agreement were reaffirmed between the United States and the Six Nations by Article 3 of the Treaty of Canandaigua in 1794.