The Last Speech of Deskaheh (1925)

_{Mary Bergan General, Deskaheh’s widow, with Tehanetorens (Ray Fadden), the founder of the Six Nations Museum, at the memorial monument to Deskaheh at the Sour Springs Cayuga Longhouse, Ohsweken, Grand River Territory}

The Last Speech of Deskaheh (1925)

On the evening of March 10, 1925, suffering from a serious attack of pleurisy and pneumonia, [Deskaheh, Cayuga Chief of the Younger Bear Clan] made his last speech. It was before a radio microphone in Rochester. Once more, and more forcefully than ever, he hurled defiance at big nations who disregard the claims of smaller peoples

Nearly everyone who is listening to me is a pale face, I suppose. I am not. My skin is not red but that is what my people are called by others. My skin is brown, light brown, but our cheeks have a little flush and that is why we are called red skins. We don’t mind that. There is no difference between us, under the skins, that any expert with a carving knife has ever discovered.

My home is on the Grand River. Until we sold off a large part, our country extended down to Lake Erie, where, one hundred forty winters ago, we had a little sea-shore of our own and a birch-bark navy.

You would call it Canada. We do not. We call the little ten miles square we have left the “Grand River Country.” We have the right to do that. It is ours. We have the written pledge of George III that we should have it forever as against him or his successors and he promised to protect us in it.

We didn’t think we would ever live long enough to find that a British promise was not good. An enemy’s foot is on our country, and George V knows it for I told him so, but he will not lift his finger to protect us nor will any of his ministers. One who would take away our rights is, of course, our enemy.

Do you think that any government should stop to consider whether any selfish end is to be gained or lost in the keeping of its word?

In some respects, we are just like you. We like to tell our troubles. You do that. You told us you were in great trouble a few winters ago because a great big giant with a big stick was after you. We helped you whip him. Many of our young men volunteered and many gave their lives for you. You were very willing to let them fight in the front ranks in France. Now we want to tell our troubles to you.

I do not mean that we are calling on your governments — we are tired of calling on the governments of pale-faced peoples in America and in Europe. We have tried that and found it was no use. They deal only in fine words — we want something more than that. We want justice from now on. After all that has happened to us, that is not much for us to ask. You got half of your territory here by warfare upon redmen, usually unprovoked, and you got about a quarter of it by bribing their chiefs, and not over a quarter of it did you get openly and fairly. You might have gotten a good share of it by fair means if you had tried.

You young people of the United States may not believe what I am saying. Do not take my word, but read your history. A good deal of true history about that has got into print now. We have a little territory left — just enough to live and die on. Don’t you think your governments ought to be ashamed to take that away from us by pretending it is part of theirs?

You ought to be ashamed if you let them. Before it is all gone, we mean to let you know what your governments are doing. If you are a free people you can have your own way. The governments at Washington and Ottawa have a silent partnership of policy. It is aimed to break up every tribe of Redmen so as to dominate every acre of their territory. Your high officials are the nomads today — not the Red People. Your officials won’t stay home.

Over in Ottawa, they call that policy “Indian Advancement”. Over in Washington, they call it “Assimilation.” We who would be the helpless victims say it is tyranny.

If this must go on to the bitter end, we would rather that you come with your guns and poison gases and get rid of us that way. Do it openly and above board. Do away with the pretense that you have the right to subjugate us to your will. Your governments do that by enforcing your alien laws upon us. That is an underhanded way. They can subjugate us if they will through the use of your law courts. But how would you like to be dragged down to Mexico, to be tried by Mexicans and jailed under Mexican law for what you did at home?

We want none of your laws and customs that we have not willingly adopted for ourselves. We have adopted many. You have adopted some of ours — votes for women, for instance. We are as well behaved as you and you would think so if you knew us better.

We would be happier today, if left alone, than you who call yourselves Canadians and Americans. We have no jails and do not need them. You have many jails, but do they hold all the criminals you convict? And do you convict or prosecute all your violators of the thousands of laws you have?

Your governments have lately resorted to new practices in their Indian policies. In the old days, they often bribed our chiefs to sign treaties to get our lands. Now they know that our remaining territory can easily be gotten from us by first taking our political rights away in forcing us into your citizenship, so they give jobs in their Indian offices to the bright young people among us who will take them and who, to earn their pay, say that our people wish to become citizens with you and that we are ready to do it. But that is not true.

Your governments of today learned that method from the British. The British have long practiced it on weaker peoples in carrying out their policy of subjugating the world, if they can, to British Imperialism. Under cover of it, your lawmakers now assume to govern other peoples too weak to resist your courts. There is no three-mile limits or twelve-mile limits to strong governments who wish to do that.

About three winters ago, the Canadian Government set out to take mortgages on farms of our returned soldiers to secure loans made to them intending to use Canadian courts to enforce these mortgages in the name of Canadian authority within our country. When Ottawa tried that, our people resented it. We knew that would mean the end of our government. Because we did so, the Canadian Government began to enforce all sorts of Dominion and Provincial laws over us and quartered armed men among us to enforce Canadian laws and customs upon us. We appealed to Ottawa in the name of our right as a separate people and by right of our treaties, and the door was closed in our faces. We then went to London with our treaty and asked for the protection it promised and got no attention. Then we went to the League of Nations at Geneva with its covenant to protect little peoples and to enforce respect for treaties by its members and we spent a whole year patiently waiting but got no hearing.

To punish us for trying to preserve our rights, the Canadian Government has now pretended to abolish our government by Royal Proclamation, and has pretended to set up a Canadian made government over us, composed of the few traitors among us who are willing to accept pay from Ottawa and do its bidding. Finally, Ottawa officials, under pretense of a friendly visit, asked to inspect our precious wampum belts, made by our Fathers centuries ago as records of our history, and when shown to them, these false-faced officials seized and carried away those belts as bandits take away your precious belongings. The only difference was that our aged wampum-keeper did not put up his hands — our hands go up only when we address the Great Spirit. Yours go up, I hear, only when some one of you is going through the pockets of his own white brother. According to your newspapers, they are up now a good deal of the time.

The Ottawa government thought that with no wampum belts to read in the opening of our Six Nations Councils, we would give up our home rule and self-government, the victims of superstition. Any superstition of which the Grand River People have been victims are not in reverence for wampum belts, but in their trust in the honor of governments who boast of a higher civilization.

We entrusted the British, long ago, with large sums of our money to care for when we ceded back parts of their territory. They took $140,000 of that money seventy-five winters ago to use for their own selfish ends, and we have never been able to get it back.

Your Government of the United States, I hear, has just decided to take away the political liberties of all the redmen you promised to protect forever, by passing such a law through your Congress in defiance of the Treaties made by George Washington. That law, of course, would mean the breaking up of the tribes if enforced. Our people would rather be deprived of their money than their political liberties — so would you.

I suppose some of you never heard of my people before and that many of you, if you ever did, supposed that we were all long gone to our Happy Hunting Grounds. NO!! There are as many of us as there were a thousand winters ago. There are more of us than there used to be and that makes a great difference in the respect we get from your governments.

I ask you a question or two. Do not hurry with your answers. Do you believe — really believe — that all peoples are entitled to equal protection of international law now that you are so strong? Do you believe — really believe — that treaty pledges should be kept? Think these questions over and answer them to yourselves.

We are not as dependent in some ways as we were in the early days. We do not need interpreters now. We know your language and can understand your words for ourselves and we have learned to decide for ourselves what is good for us. It is bad for any people to take the advice of an alien people as to that.

You Mothers, I hear, have a good deal to say about your government. Our Mothers have always had a hand in ours. Maybe you can do something to help us now. If you white mothers are hard-hearted and will not, perhaps you boys and girls who are listening and who have loved to read stories about our people — the true ones, I mean — will help us when you grow up if there are any of us left then to be helped.

If you are bound to treat us as though we were citizens under your government, then those of your people who are land-hungry will get our farms away from us by hooks and crooks under your property laws and in your courts that we do not understand and do not wish to learn. We would then be homeless and have to drift into your big cities to work for wages, to buy bread, and have to pay rent, as you call it, to live on this earth and to live in little rooms in which we would suffocate. We would then be scattered and lost to each other and lost among so many of you. Our boys and girls would then have to intermarry with you, or not at all. If consumption (tuberculosis) took us off or if we brought no children into the world, or our children mixed with the ocean of your blood, then there would be no Iroquois left. So boys and girls, if you grow up and claim the right to live together and govern yourselves — and you ought to — and if you do not concede the same right to other peoples — and you will be strong enough to have your own way — you will be tyrants, won’t you? If you do not like that word, use a better one, if you can find one, but don’t deceive yourselves by the word you use.

Boys, you respect your fathers because they are members of a free people and have a voice in the government over them and because they helped to make it and made it for themselves and will hand it down to you. If you knew that your fathers had nothing to do with the government they are under, but were mere subjects of other men’s wills, you could not look up to them and they could not look you in the face. They would not be real men then. Neither would we.

The Fathers among us have been real men. They cry out now against the injustice of being treated as something else and being called incompetents who must be governed by another people — which means the people who think that way about them.

Boys — think this over. Do it before your minds lose the power to grasp the idea that there are other peoples in this world beside your own and with an equal right to be here. You see that a people as strong as yours is a great danger to other peoples near you. Already your will comes pretty near to being law in this world where no one can whip you. Think then what it will mean if you grow up with a will to be unjust to other peoples, to believe that whatever your government does to other peoples is no crime, however wicked. I hope the Irish Americans hear that and will think about it — they used to when that shoe pinched their foot.

This is the story of the Mohawks, the story of the Oneidas, of the Cayugas — I am a Cayuga, of the Onondagas, the Senecas, and the Tuscaroras. They are the Iroquois. Tell it to those who have not been listening. Maybe I will be stopped from telling it. But if I am prevented from telling it over, as I hope to do, the story will not be lost. I have already told it to thousands of listeners in Europe — it has gone into the records where your children can find it when I may be dead or be in jail for daring to tell the truth. I have told this story in Switzerland — they have free speech in little Switzerland. One can tell the truth over there in public, even if it is uncomfortable for some great people.

This story comes straight from Deskaheh, one of the chiefs of the Cayugas. I am the speaker of the Council of the Six Nations, the oldest League of Nations now existing. It was founded by Hiawatha. It is a League which is still alive and intends, as best it can, to defend the rights of the Iroquois to live under their own laws in their own little countries now left to them, to worship their Great Spirit in their own way, and to enjoy the rights which are as surely theirs as the white man’s rights are his own.

If you think the Iroquois are being wronged, write letters from Canada to your ministers of Parliament, and from the United States to your Congressmen and tell them so. They will listen to you for you elect them. If they are against us, ask them to tell you when and how they got the right to govern people who have no part in your government and do not live in your country but live in their own. They can’t tell you that.

One word more so that you will be sure to remember our people. If it had not been for them, you would not be here. If one hundred and sixty-six winters ago, our warriors had not helped the British at Quebec, Quebec would not have fallen to the British. The French would then have driven your English-speaking forefathers out of this land, bag and baggage. Then it would have been a French-speaking people here today, not you. That part of your history cannot be blotted out by the stealing of our wampum belts in which that is recorded.

I could tell you much more about our people, and I may some other time, if you would like to have me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWt7RExnslQ

Chief Deskaheh Tells Why He Is Over Here Again (1923)

I am on my way to the League of Nations, and stopped off to tell why, to you who care to know. I go because your Imperial Government refused my plea, for protection of my people as of right against subjugation by Canada. The Canadian “Indian Office” took that refusal to mean that it could do as it wished with us. The officials wished to treat us as children and use the rod. This trouble has been going from bad to worse because we are not children. It became serious three years ago, when the object, to break us up in the end as tribesmen, became too plain for any doubt. Then l came to London to complain under the pledge of the Crown.

These were our grievances. When our men returned home from fighting for you, and three hundred went, leaving forty asleep under the sod, the Indian Office undertook a new scheme to enforce Canadian citizenship upon us, one at a time, but regard less of whether we consented to the conditions. They call it over there “enfranchising” us, although we have our own franchises, men, and women, too, and are quite satisfied on that score. We would not have consented to take Canada’s franchises if she had asked us politely to do so.

We are Red Indians, but what is more, we are Iroquois: the People of the Six Nations; the Mohawk, the Onondaga, the Oneida, the Cayuga, the Seneca, the Tuscarora. We are very willing to remain allies of the British as against days of clanger, as we have been for two hundred and fifty years, and faithful allies, too; but we wish no one-sided alliance, nor will we ever be subjects of another people, even of the British, if we can help it. Any of our people may freely renounce allegiance to the Six Nations, but we object to the Dominion Government rewarding those becoming British subjects by turning over to them portions of our National Funds happening to be in Dominion bands, and such is the practice of the Indian Office.

We are burdened with scores of apostates quitting us for Canadian enfranchisement, who have returned to us as British paupers after squandering their ill-gotten moneys. So the move of the Indian Office, the department of “The Savages,” as that office calls itself in Canada, to “enfranchise” more of us and weaken our ranks, did not work. Then the Indian Office undertook to lend our returned soldiers money to buy farms, a generous measure you may think. But all who knew how to farm really had all the land they needed. Those who did not know how would fail. There were a few only who, tempted at the sight of the money, gave mortgages to the Indian Office as security for the loans. That Office took those mortgages readily, for, if not paid, the fact would afford a reason, partially good, for pushing political dominion within our borders by use of the domestic Courts of Canada. Courts are established to deal out justice, but not to seize power. We were not blind.

Our Council — the very same in which Captain Joseph Brant used to sit — knew that no domestic Courts have a right to apply the law of one people over another. Our Council knew, too, that if the Indian Office could by hook or by crook buy and sell our lands piece by piece, when our own Government had not consented, the Six Nations would slowly but surely be scattered to the winds and soon gone for ever as a separate people, swallowed up in the alien population surrounding us, not of our blood. So our Council resisted and stood its ground. I then became a marked man and would be in a Canadian prison now on some trumped-up charge if the
Mounted Police had caught me — and they tried.

They have recently caught and jailed many of my people for being loyal to their own Six Nations, for that is looked on now over our border in the Dominion as a crime or a contempt of court on our part subject to punishment by Canada. Wishing to send me upon this mission, my people insisted that I seek asylum south of the Great Lakes, while they were raising the necessary funds to send me. l went and they worked and saved and raised the money.

The Indian Office is now practising what it calls law enforcement. It is experimenting on our people with the penal laws of Canada in reference to what may be eaten and drunk, and as to what may be done on certain days. We know nothing of those laws, but we learn that certain of them are quite old and some quite new. We had nothing to do with the making of them. Under colour of those laws, nevertheless, the Dominion Government has lately violated the Six Nation domain, and has wrongfully seized many of my people and cast them into Canadian prisons. That is where it has recently put several of our loyal members who, refusing to ask leave of the Indian Office Autocrats under the Indian Act, used fuel from their own woodlands to preserve their own lives in winter season. To keep warm Canadian farmers do not have to ask leave of anyone.

This impressment of a domestic judiciary into service for subjugation of tribal Red Men is in imitation of a policy devised by the government of the United States. Not satisfied with those autocratic measures of a civil sort, the Dominion Government has at last committed an act of war upon us, without just cause, by making an hostile invasion of our domain in December last with a Canadian armed force, remaining since in our midst, with the result of serious trouble for our Council in its efforts to carry on our own duly constituted Government.

Along with these aggressions the Indian Office has denied us the use of our own public funds. Those funds arose from cessions of parts of our domain on the Grand River to the British Crown, made mostly over one hundred years ago, with the agreement that the sale moneys should be retained by the British Crown, but in express trust, for the use of the Six Nations and under Royal promise to pay to us the interest moneys annually earned thereon.

The Crown, for convenience, turned over to the Dominion Government, soon after the establishment of the Dominion, those funds for administration according to the terms of that trust and promise, and they are now held at Ottawa, except the large sums which have been wasted and misappropriated, and for which no accounting has been rendered, although the Six Nations have long tried to get one.

The principal and the earnings are now being used by the Indian Office for such objects as it sees fit. For many years the earnings of those funds have been depleted by payments made through the Indian Office to men, alien to us, in reward for political services of no concern to the Six Nations. And now that Office is using those funds to incite rebellion among our own people, with the purpose to set up in place of our duly constituted Council a Six Nation Government devised by Canadians, to rest in fact upon Canadian authority supported by mounted police. No revenue from those funds has been available for use by the Six Nation Council or as income for my people for upwards of two years last past, with the result that our officials are for the fit st time serving without pay moneys for meeting the necessary expenses of any peaceful resistance to these aggressions practised upon us we have had to raise through loans and contributions.

When we issued our own public bonds to secure our own people and friends who made those advances, the Indian Office undertook to defame our credit and financial honour, using Canadian newspapers for that purpose. But we got the money — good friends over here have helped us.

During the last year we have offered to submit to impartial arbitration the justice of our cause but our offer was rejected by the Dominion Government. We in turn rejected its proposal that our differences be submitted for judgment to a Canadian Government tribunal to be set up for that special purpose. We would accept no tribunal not free to be impartial between us.

The Indian Office decided since that time to conduct an investigation into our morality. No doubt you will soon be hearing that we are a wicked people. That step is intended by the Indian Office to divert attention from its own wrong-doings. We will submit our morality to no other people for judgment, least of all to officials of a Government whose double standard is matter or record in its own so-called laws to which they say we must submit. No one before ever said Must to the Six Nations, or dictated terms of surrender to them.

That law the “Indian Act,” so-called, provides that in the case of Red people, a widowed mother or wife may not inherit from her deceased husband except as she established before officials of that Indian Office that she is a woman of good moral character. The Canadians have no such law applying to their own women. You said that the three hundred men we sent over here were good. They were sons and husbands of our women.

I am going to Geneva, and I suppose many stones have been placed in my path. But I must go there because your Imperial Government refused to keep good the British Crown’s promise of protection, pledged not only by Royal document delivered to Captain Brant, which we hold, but under the old covenant chain of friendship that Sir William Johnson and Captain Brant kept bright so long. Our document reads that the Six Nations, as the King’s faithful allies, may settle upon the Grand River lands as a safe retreat under his protection for them and their posterity for ever.

Your Colonial Secretary, who spoke for you, thought that our covenant chain was no longer good. He cast us off two years ago. He held that the British Crown was no longer responsible to us. We deny that such responsibility could be transferred to the Dominion of Canada without our consent, and we never consented. Our memory is not short. It is as true today, I am sorry to say, as it was two hundred years ago, that the nearest neighbours of the Six Nations, if they are of European stock, cannot be trusted to be just to us. That was the reason Sir William Johnson received his appointment from London to deal for you with us and not from the local governments of the British colonies which adjoined our domains. We have neighbours now hungry for lands we still own. They long for a very valuable tract of ours adjoining the City of Brantford, which even the Canadian Courts say is ours, yet the Indian Office will not permit us to use that land, to have any income from it, or to make a sale of it for ourselves.

If we have no special claim on British justice on the score of faithful and very useful services of our fathers in British need of long ago, as we believed we had, we who live to-day have a special right at Geneva. We helped to make possible the League of Nations, and did our full share by your side in the Great War. Now we mean to look to the League of Nations for the protection we so much need, to prevent complete destruction of our Government and the obliteration of the Iroquois race which would soon follow.

London, August 1923

The Redman’s Appeal for Justice: To the League of Nations – Deskaheh (1923)

The Honourable Sir James Eric Drummond, K.C.M.G., C.B., Secretary-General of the League of Nations, Geneva.

Sir,

Under the authority vested in the undersigned, the Speaker of the Council and the Sole Deputy by choice of the Council composed of forty-two chiefs, of the Six Nations of the Iroquois, being a state within the purview and meaning of Article 17 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, but not being at present a member of the League, I, the undersigned, pursuant to the said authority, do hereby bring to the notice of the League of Nations that a dispute and disturbance of peace has arisen between the State of the Six Nations of the Iroquois on the one hand and the British Empire and Canada, being Members of the League, on the other, the matters in dispute and disturbance of the peace being set out in paragraphs 10 to 17 inclusive hereof.

2. The Six Nations of the Iroquois crave therefore invitation to accept the obligations of Membership of the League for the purpose of such dispute; upon such conditions as may be prescribed.

3. The constituent members of the State of the Six Nations of the Iroquois, that is to say, the Mohawk, the Oneida, the Onondaga, the Cayuga, the Seneca and the Tuscarora, now are, and have been for many centuries, organised and self-governing peoples, respectively, within domains of their own, and united in the oldest League of Nations, the League of the Iroquois, for the maintenance of mutual peace; and that status has been recognised by Great Britain, France and the Netherlands, being European States which established colonies in North America; by the States successor to the British Colonies therein, being the United States of America, and by the Dominion of Canada, with whom the Six Nations have in turn treated, they being justly entitled to the same recognition by all other peoples.

4. Great Britain and the Six Nations of the Iroquois (hereinafter called “The Six Nations”) having been in open alliance for upwards of one hundred and twenty years immediately preceding the Peace of Paris of 1783, the British Crowns in succession promised the latter to protect them against encroachments and enemies making no exception whatever, and King George the Third, falling into war with his own colonies in America, promised recompense for all losses which might be sustained by the Six Nations in consequence of their alliance in that war and they remain entitled to such protection as against the Dominion of Canada.

5. Pursuant to such alliance and to his promise of protection and recompense King George the Third, about the year 1784, acquired the territorial rights of the occupants of certain domains bordering the Grand River and Lake Erie, over which the Six Nations had exercised suzerain rights, and lying northerly of the boundary line then recently fixed between him and the United States of America, such rights of the occupants being so acquired by His Britannic Majesty to induce the Six Nations to remove to that domain as a common home-land in place of their separate ancient homes on the south of the line. Thereupon the Six Nations (excepting certain numbers of those people who elected to remain), at the invitation of the British Crown and under its express promise of protection, intended as security for their continued independence, moved across the Niagara and thereafter duly established themselves and their league in self-government upon the said Grand River lands, and they have ever since held the unceded remainder thereof as a separate and independent people, established there by sovereign right.

6. The Six Nations crave leave to refer, in support and verification of their status and position as an independent State, and of their recognition as such, to (inter alia) the following documents, facts and circumstances:—

The Treaties between the Six Nations and the Dutch.

The Treaties between the Six Nations and France.

The Treaties between the Six Nations and the British and particularly the treaty between the Mohawk and others of the Six Nations electing to become parties thereto, and the British under date of October 25th, 1784.

The Memorial of His Britannic Majesty’s Government in support of the claim of the Cayuga Nation being one of the components of the Six Nations against the United States of America filed the 4th December, 1912, in the Arbitration of outstanding Pecuniary Claims between Great Britain and the United States.

In regard to the said Memorial, lastly referred to, the Six Nations desire particularly to note (inter alia) the following passage contained in the said Memorial:— “The Six Nations were recognised as independent nations and allies by the Dutch and afterwards by the English to whom the Dutch surrendered their possessions in 1664.”

7. The Six Nations have at all times enjoyed recognition by the Imperial Government of Great Britain of their right to independence in home-rule, and to protection therein by the British Crown — the Six Nations on their part having faithfully, discharged the obligations of their alliance on all occasions of the need of Great Britain, under the ancient covenant chain of friendship between them, including the occasion of the late World War.

8. Because of the desire of Great Britain to extend its colonial domain, and of the Six Nations to dispose of domain not deemed by them at the time as of future usefulness, the British Crown prior to 1867, the year in which the Dominion of Canada was established, obtained from the Six Nations cessions of certain parts of their Grand River domain for purpose of sale to British subjects, retaining, by consent of the Six Nations, the stipulated sale moneys for the cessions, but in express trust for the use of the Six Nations and the British Crown at the same time promised to pay to the Six Nations the interest moneys annually earned by those funds; but subsequently the Imperial Government of its sole accord handed over to the Dominion Government such funds, but for administration according to the terms of that trust and promise, and the fund is now in the actual possession of the Dominion Government, the beneficial rights remaining as before in the Six Nations.

9. The circumstances and causes leading up to the matters in dispute and the said matters in dispute are set out in the next following paragraphs.

10. The Parliament of the Dominion of Canada, in or about the year 1919, enacted a measure called an Enfranchisement Act amendatory of its Indian Act so-called, imposing or purporting to impose Dominion rule upon neighbouring Red men, and the administrative departments undertook to enforce it upon citizens of the Six Nations, and in the next year those departments undertook to apply Canadian laws for the tenure of private property to the remaining territory of the Six Nations which had long before been sub-divided by and among the people thereof; and mortgages of proprietary title to those private parcels under those laws have recently been taken by authorised Officials of the Dominion from certain citizens of the Six Nations, tempted by loans of the public funds of Canada and, under cover of Canadian laws, but in violation of Six Nation Laws, administration over such titles and parcels has since been undertaken by various departments of the Dominion Government at the instance of the Mortgagees.

11. The Dominion Government is now engaged in enforcing upon the people of the Six Nations certain penal laws of Canada, and, under cover thereof, the Dominion Government is violating the Six Nation domain and has wrongfully seized therein many nationals of the Six Nations and cast them into Canadian prisons, where many of them are still held.

12. Large sums of the Six Nations’ funds held by the Dominion Government have been misappropriated and wasted without consent of the Six Nations and misappropriation thereof is still being practised by the Dominion Government and accountings thereof, asked for by the Six Nations, have never been made.

13. All the measures aforesaid have been taken without the consent of the Six Nations, and under protest and continued protest of the duly constituted Council thereof, and with the manifest purpose on the part of the Dominion Government to destroy all de jure government of the Six Nations and of the constituent members thereof, and to fasten Canadian authority over all the Six Nations’ domain, and to subjugate the Six Nation peoples, and these wrongful acts have resulted in a situation now constituting a menace to international peace.

14. The Dominion Government for the manifest purpose of depriving the Six Nations of means for self-defence, has withheld for three years last past moneys earned by the said trust funds, and is now disbursing the principal thereof, together with such earnings, for such objects as it sees fit, and has ignored the request of the Six Nations, recently made upon it, that the said funds in its hands be turned over to the Six Nations; and the Dominion Government, after firm opposition by the Six Nations to these aggressive measures, and for about two years last past, has been using these trust funds to incite rebellion within the Six Nations, to furnish occasion for setting up of a new Government for the Six Nations, tribal in form but devised by the Dominion Parliament and intended to rest upon Canadian authority under a Dominion Statute known as the “Indian Act.”

15. To the manifest end of destroying the Six Nations Government, the Dominion Government did, without just or lawful cause, in or about December of the year 1922, commit an act of war upon the Six Nations by making an hostile invasion of the Six Nations domain, wherein the Dominion Government then established an armed force which it has since maintained therein, and the presence thereof has impeded and impedes the Six Nations Council in the carrying on of the duly constituted government of the Six Nations people, and is a menace to international peace.

16. The aforesaid acts and measures of the Dominion Government are in violation of the nationality and independence of the Six Nations, and contrary to the successive treaties between the Six Nations and the British Crown, pledging the British Crown to protect the Six Nations; and especially in violation of the treaty pledge of October 25th, of the year 1784, of the same tenor, entered into between King George the Third of Great Britain and the Six Nations, hereinbefore referred to which, never having been abrogated by either party, remains in full force and effect and all of which were and are binding upon the British Crown and the British Dominion of Canada; and the said acts and measures were and are in violation as well of the recognised law of Nations, the Six Nations never having yielded their right of independence in home-rule to the Dominion of Canada, and never having released the British Crown from the obligation of its said covenants and treaties with them, but they have ever held and still hold the British Crown thereto.

17. In the month of August of the year 1921, the Six Nations made earnest application to the Imperial Government of Great Britain for the fulfilment on its part of its said promise of protection, and for its intervention thereunder to prevent the continued aggressions upon the Six Nations practised by the Dominion of Canada, but the Imperial Government refused.

18. The Six Nations have within the year last past and with the acquiescence of the Imperial Government of Great Britain, negotiated at length through its Council with the Government of the Dominion of Canada for arbitration of all the above-mentioned matters of dispute, when the Six Nations offered to join in submission of the same to impartial arbitration, and offered also to treat for establishing satisfactory relations, but those offers were not accepted.

19. The Six Nations refrained from engaging the armed Canadian troops, making the invasion aforesaid, in reliance on protection at the hands of the League of Nations under the peaceful policies of its covenant and they continue so to rely.

20. The Six Nations now invoke the action of the League of Nations to secure:—

(1) Recognition of their independent right of home-rule.

(2) Appropriate indemnity for the said aggressions for the benefit of their injured nationals.

(3) A just accounting by the Imperial Government of Great Britain, and by the Dominion of Canada of the Six Nations trust funds and the interest thereon.

(4) Adequate provision to cover the right of recovery of the said funds and interest by the Six Nations.

(5) Freedom of transit for the Six Nations across Canadian territory to and from international waters.

(6) Protection for the Six Nations hereafter under the League of Nations, if the Imperial Government of Great Britain shall avow its unwillingness to continue to extend adequate protection or withhold guarantees of such protection.

The Six Nations invoke also the action of the League of Nations to secure interim relief as follows:—

(a) For securing from the Dominion of Canada for unrerestricted use by the Six Nations, sufficient funds for the purposes of this application from the moneys of the Six Nations held in trust as aforesaid, the balance of which, as admitted by the Dominion Government, approximates seven hundred thousand dollars, but which in truth largely exceeds that amount.

(b) For securing suspension of all aggressive practices by the Dominion of Canada upon the Six Nation peoples pending consideration of this application and action taken thereunder.

Done in behalf of the SIX NATIONS this Sixth day of August, in the year One Thousand nine hundred and twenty-three.

[signed] Deskaheh

Sole Deputy and Speaker of the Six Nations Council.

THE PLEDGE OF KING GEORGE III

(L.S.) Frederick Haldimand, Captain General and Governor in Chief of Quebec and Territories depending thereon, &c., &c., &c., General and Commander in Chief of His Majesty’s Forces in the said Province and the Territories thereof, &c., &c., &c.

Whereas His Majesty having been pleased to direct in consideration of the early attachment to his cause manifested by the Mohawk Indians, and of the loss of their settlement which they thereby sustained, that a convenient tract of land under His protection should be chosen as a safe and comfortable retreat for them and other of the Six Nations who have either lost their settlements within the territory of the American States, or wish to retire from them to the British; l have at the desire of many of these His Majesty’s faithful allies, purchased a tract of land from the Indians situated between the lakes Ontario, Huron and Erie, and I do hereby in His Majesty’s name, authorise and permit the said Mohawk Nation, and such other of the Six Nation Indians as wish to settle in that quarter to take possession of and settle upon the banks of the river commonly called Ouse or Grand River, running into Lake Erie, allotting them for that purpose six miles deep from earn side of the River, beginning at Lake Erie and extending in that proportion to the head of the said River, which them and their posterity are to enjoy for ever.

Given under my hand and seal at arms at the Castle of St. Lewis at Quebec the 25th day of October, 1784, and in the 25th year of His Majesty’s Reign.

Fred. Haldimand

By His Excellency’s Command,
R. Mathews.