Erroneous and Divisive Land Acknowledgement Statement by Gettysburg College

I wrote a Letter to the Editor of the alumni magazine at Gettysburg College, my alma mater, in response to an article about the Land Acknowledgement statement adopted by the school, which was erroneous, misleading and unnecessarily divisive. The letter was not published. What follows is the draft (minus the lack of indentation for paragraphs because of the ongoing glitch with the blog host): Last month’s College Magazine reported that Gettysburg College has joined the movement of making a Land Acknowledgement Statement that the school sits on “unceded Indigenous land including the traditional homelands of the Susquehannock/Conestoga, Seneca and Haudenosaunee Confederacy, Leni Lenape and Shawnee Nations.” What is implicit in the statement that the school occupies stolen land was made explicit by one of its proponents who claimed that the “Indigenous Peoples who used to live on this land . . . were unjustly removed. . . .” The history of the Indigenous Nations of Pennsylvania since the arrival of European migrants is a complex one of invasion, migration, a lack of an Indigenous concept of land ownership, and competing claims of land use rights, but some clarifications can nonetheless be made. The Iroquoian-speaking Susquehannock (also known as the Conestoga) were inhabiting the Susquehanna Valley of Central Pennsylvania, including what is now Gettysburg, by the time of European contact in the Seventeenth Century. They always enjoyed good relations with Pennsylvania’s proprietary provincial government of the Penn Family. The Susquehannock population had declined by the end of the century through disease and military defeat by the powerful Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy, of which the Seneca were members, that was conquering the homelands of other Indigenous Nations. Most Susquehannock voluntarily relocated elsewhere, including merging with their Iroquoian kinsmen, forming the Mingo Indigenous People in the Ohio Valley. The few remaining were given protection by Pennsylvania at Conestoga, near the Susquehanna River. After a massacre during Pontiac’s Rebellion, the last surviving couple died without issue. The Haudenosaunee Confederacy claimed hunting rights over a vast territory from Central Pennsylvania to the Ohio Valley and into the Great Lakes region—claims that were not recognized by other Indigenous Nations, some of whom inhabited parts of Central Pennsylvania or hunted in it, like the Leni Lenape (Delaware), who primarily inhabited the woodlands of eastern Pennsylvania and the States around the Delaware River. The Confederacy later ceded their claims in Pennsylvania through treaties in the early Eighteenth Century, including in 1736 for the land south of the Blue Mountain to the Maryland border, including the current location of Gettysburg College. The cession alienated the Leni Lenape from their friends, the Penns. After some Indigenous had been killing European settlers during the French and Indian War, the Indigenous Nations switched to supporting the British, however, in the Treaty of Easton in 1758 between the Haudenosaunee, Leni Lenape, Shawnee, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. In exchange, some land and hunting rights in the Ohio Valley were returned to the Confederacy and the Alleghany Mountains in western Pennsylvania became the boundary between the Europeans and the Indigenous, beyond which European settlement was prohibited. Most Leni Lenape later migrated from Pennsylvania and surrounding areas, and others were removed from other States, but some remained in other eastern States. The Shawnee, who were Algonquian-speaking kinsmen of the Leni Lenape, had been under pressure from the Haudenosaunee invasion of their Ohio Valley homeland. By the early Eighteenth Century, some Shawnee migrated to the parts of central Pennsylvania claimed by the Confederacy. Like some Susquehannock, some Shawnee and Leni Lenape joined the Mingo, while others became unwilling Haudenosaunee tributaries, until the Shawnee migrants returned to their homeland after the Treaty of Easton. South Central Pennsylvania was thus the homeland primarily of only one Indigenous Nation and no Indigenous Peoples were forcibly removed from it. Acknowledging the historic presence of Indigenous Nations, recognizing their contributions, and coming to terms with the mistreatment of them are worthy endeavors. A more accurate and less divisive statement would better serve the purpose.