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Michael Mantooth

Michael Mantooth

Director of Projects at Lancaster Clean Water Partners and historian of the Conestoga-Susquehannock Tribe.

Sep 17, 2026

13:55
Yeah,
13:56
so that's part of the collective advocacy that we're going to talk about here briefly because that letter confirmed that there's initial survivors.
14:03
They return, they ask for the land, they're given $300 and sent back to New York.
14:06
The Revolutionary War happens.
14:08
Now we don't even know legally, right? Like our tribal history is interrupted by the formation of the United States as an independent country.
14:16
So now from a legal point of view, like where do you take those land claims? And so in 1845, you see the first formal land claims, which were filed by seven Conestoga descendants who were living and surviving among the Oneida in New York at the time.
14:29
But before that, even, you see the collective advocacy come into play because all seven of those same land claimants also signed on to an 1831 agreement claiming that the Oneida would be, you know, quote, good Christian Indians and stay in New York to avoid being removed west, which ultimately did not succeed.

13 MINS LATER

28:10
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