On an October morning in 1825, Gov. DeWitt Clinton of New York stood at the head of a flotilla of dignitaries at the inauguration of the Erie Canal, the 360-mile artificial waterway that stretches from Lake Erie’s eastern shore in Buffalo to Albany on the Hudson River.
The boat carrying Governor Clinton was called the Seneca Chief, a reference to the Indigenous nation that, together with the rest of the Haudenosaunee (or Iroquois) Confederacy, had dominated western and central New York for centuries.
Farther back in the procession was another boat, called Noah’s Ark, which unlike the Seneca Chief, actually carried members of the tribe. They shared the vessel with eagles, deer and a bear, as part of a dehumanizing sideshow.
This fall, as New York marks the Oct. 26 bicentennial, or 200th anniversary, of the Erie Canal, which helped open up regions west of New York for the young United States, organizers are attempting to balance celebration with reflection on some of the painful history that accompanied the achievement.
Eastern white pine trees, a Haudenosaunee peace symbol, will be planted between Buffalo and New York City as one gesture meant to acknowledge how the canal’s construction harmed the Haudenosaunee, whose traditional territory encompasses nearly its entire route.
That harm was substantial. The state obtained land for the Erie Canal through coercive negotiations with the Haudenosaunee. And after the canal opened New York’s frontier to waves of white settlers, the increased need for land became an argument for further land grabs.
To be sure, the dispossession of Indigenous communities by the Erie Canal is a history that has captured scholarly attention, and has been acknowledged before this year’s celebration. But the prominence of that history in the bicentennial celebration bucks an increasingly more prominent trend across the nation of eliding rather than confronting painful episodes in American history.
“For so long, the standard story about the Erie Canal has been that it’s a great engineering marvel and an engine of progress,” said Terry Abrams, past president of the Tonawanda Reservation Historical Society. “But that came at a cost, and that cost was born by Seneca and other Haudenosaunee people. It’s just part of the whole story.”
The Erie Canal made it possible to ship goods between New York and Great Lakes ports like Chicago. It opened the way for booming trade and settlement in the growing country’s interior.
The land it covered, though, had previously belonged to the nations of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, which includes the Senecas, Cayugas, Onondagas, Oneidas, Tuscaroras and Mohawks.
In the decades before the canal opened, Haudenosaunee nations lost vast expanses of territory, largely through treaties and sales now considered fraudulent. Many of the canal’s leading proponents profited directly from transactions that separated Indigenous people from their land.
“We as Haudenosaunee people were right in the way, all across the state,” said Melissa Parker Leonard, who traces her Seneca heritage back to the 18th century and runs an advocacy organization called 7th Gen Cultural Resources. “When the canal opened, it was like the last step to really remove us,” she added.
The Erie Canal bicentennial comes at a time of raging debate over the proper framing of historical injuries to minority groups.
Various states have passed laws restricting the way educators can talk about racism and other injustices. The Trump administration recently ordered a review of exhibitions at the Smithsonian Institution to ensure that they do not include “divisive or partisan narratives,” and more broadly has criticized historical narratives that cast shadows on the idea of American exceptionalism.
New York has taken some steps to acknowledge past misdeeds. In May, Gov. Kathy Hochul formally apologized to the Senecas for the “historic atrocities” committed at the Thomas Indian School, a state-run boarding school 30 miles south of Buffalo that at least 2,500 Indigenous children were forced to attend.
The white pine tree planting is one of several components of the Erie Canal celebration that will bring the relatively unknown story of Indigenous land dispossession to wider audiences. The Erie Canal Museum in Syracuse and other museums and organizations along the waterway will also host Haudenosaunee speakers and events.
And when a replica of the Seneca Chief set off from Buffalo on Sept. 24 for a voyage to New York City, the first speech was not given by an elected official or prominent donor but rather by Joe Stahlman, a historian of Tuscarora descent.
“Two hundred years can seem like a long time,” Mr. Stahlman said. “It’s right that we pause to reflect on what that means to us.”
The attention to these negative effects, though, has drawn some criticism as the Oct. 26 bicentennial nears.
Mark Poloncarz, the Erie County executive, complained this month that a Buffalo History Museum exhibit called “Waterway of Change” was “pretty negative,” focusing too much on the harm done to the Haudenosaunee instead of celebrating the canal’s importance to Buffalo and the growing nation.
“I think we need to celebrate our history and also identify some of the issues in our history,” Mr. Poloncarz, a Democrat, told The Buffalo News. “But it is a day to celebrate it.”
The commemoration in Buffalo has largely been driven by the Buffalo Maritime Center, a nonprofit focused on boatbuilding and the maritime history of the region.
Its working copy of the Seneca Chief, assembled over four years by more than 200 volunteer novices, left the Buffalo Harbor on Wednesday before a cheering crowd of hundreds. It will inch down the canal and the Hudson River before reaching New York City in time for the official bicentennial date of Oct. 26.
Brian Trzeciak, executive director of the Buffalo Maritime Center, said it was critical to share an “expanded narrative” of the canal that recognizes the harm it caused.
“The Erie Canal was a great accomplishment; it made New York State what it is,” Mr. Trzeciak said. “However, you have to talk about what led up to that, and you have to balance it out.”
Local Senecas and Mr. Trzeciak worked together on the idea of planting 28 eastern white pine trees along the length of the canal path.
The tree is central to Haudenosaunee culture and philosophy. Leaders from all the member nations are said to have buried their weapons beneath a white pine to mark the founding of their confederacy.
Three days before the launch of the Seneca Chief, about 75 people, mostly Senecas, gathered to plant the first tree at Seneca Bluffs Natural Habitat Park, a small plot at a bend in the Buffalo River.
The park is within the historic boundaries of the Buffalo Creek Reservation. The land was taken from the Senecas in 1838 through a treaty that the historian Laurence Hauptman ranked as “one of the major frauds in American Indian history.”
White pines can live for more than 200 years, meaning that the saplings planted this fall might still be standing during the canal’s quadricentennial and beyond. If so, they would add another layer of meaning to an already complex history.
“Around us today are the living descendants of those who were told to step aside for progress,” Ms. Parker Leonard said before the planting. “Today we acknowledge this painful history, not to dwell in sadness but to speak honestly so that healing and moving forward are possible.”
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