Kinzua Dam on the Allegheny River in Pennsylvania, is one of the largest dams east of the Mississippi River. It is located within the Allegheny National Forest and its impounded waters reach nearly to Salamanca, NY, on the Allegany Reservation of the Seneca Nation in Cattaraugus County.
The dam has cast a long shadow on Seneca life since World War II. The project, formally dedicated in 1966, broke the Treaty of Canandaigua of 1794, flooded about 10,000 acres of Seneca lands in New York and Pennsylvania, and forced the relocation of hundreds of tribal members.
In Laurence M. Hauptman’s In The Shadow of Kinzua: The Seneca Nation of Indians Since World War II (Syracuse Univ. Press, 2013), he presents presents both a policy study, namely how and why Washington, Harrisburg, and Albany came up with the idea to build the dam, as well as a community study of the Seneca Nation of Indians in the postwar era.
Sold to the Senecas as a flood control project, the author argues that major reasons for the dam were the push for private hydroelectric development in Pennsylvania and state transportation and park development in New York.
The book draws on forty years of federal, state, and tribal archival research, as well as numerous interviews with Senecas. Hauptman explores the political background of the Kinzua dam while also providing a detailed, at times very personal account of the devastating impact the dam has had on the Seneca Nation and the resilience the tribe has shown in the face of this crisis.
In The Shadow of Kinzua was selected for a 2014 AASLH Leadership in History Award of Merit.
Laurence M. Hauptman is SUNY Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History. Hauptman is the author, coauthor, or coeditor of numerous books on the Iroquois, including Seven Generations of Iroquois Leadership: The Six Nations Since 1800, which was awarded the 2012 Herbert Lehman Book prize from the New York Academy of History.
Book Purchases made through this Amazon link support the New York Almanack’s mission to report new publications relevant to New York State.
See more new books HERE.
Source link
