The Indian-white struggle in today's upstate New York began, effectively, with the American Revolution. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the region was controlled by the powerful Iroquois Confederacy, an alliance of six Indian nations, including the Oneidas. After the American victory, development-minded white leaders began to eye Iroquois "virgin territory" as profitable frontier property. By 1825, when the state completed work on the Erie Canal, it had appropriated much of the Oneidas' 6 million acres.

By any technical definition, the State of New York did not "steal" this land. All sides in today's dispute agree that most of the land was bought and paid for. The problem, according to the Oneida claim, is that the state had no right to buy it--and the self-appointed Oneida leaders had no authority to sell it.

Legally, the Oneidas base their claim on the 1790 Trade and Intercourse Act, which mandated federal approval of all Indian land sales. New York State, they contend, ignored both federal law and Indian will when it purchased the Oneida land. That argument has worked well for other East Coast tribes. In 1980, for instance, Maine paid $81.5 million to the Passamaquoddy, Penobscot, Houlton and Maliseet Indians; with it came the right to repurchase 300,000 acres of ancestral land.

The potential windfall notwithstanding, the Oneidas argue that the land claim is about more than maximizing returns on a legal loophole. The federal government, they say, betrayed its "sacred pledge," in the Treaty of Canandaigua in 1794, to reserve land for the Oneidas. "The United States," the treaty declared, "will never claim the same, nor disturb them." That promise, the Oneidas assert, means that central New York is now and has always been Indian land. The US Supreme Court, in a series of rulings over the past three decades, has mostly agreed. In a landmark 1974 decision, the Court ruled that the Oneidas could sue in federal court, sparking an entire generation of claims in the original thirteen colonies. Although many of those claims, from Maine to Connecticut to South Carolina, have long since been resolved, the New York claims remain unsettled. Of the six Indian land claims now facing New York, the Oneidas' is by far the largest.

In 1985, the Court once again ruled in favor of the Oneidas, finding Madison and Oneida counties liable for the Oneidas' loss of land. For the next thirteen years the parties made halfhearted efforts to come to an agreement on damages. Then, in December 1998, a reinvigorated and newly prosperous Oneida Nation decided it had had enough stalling. With the support of the federal government the Oneidas filed an amended complaint seeking to add the State of New York and 20,000 local property owners as defendants in the suit. The long-neglected claim suddenly became the hottest political issue in the region. In January 1999 UCE and other landowners' groups staged a massive motorcade encircling the Turning Stone, with as many as 5,000 local residents protesting the Oneidas' legal maneuvers.

At the same time, the parties to the suit agreed to settlement talks, but these proved a dismal failure. Ronald Riccio, the court-appointed "Settlement Master," described them as one long experiment in "rhetoric, posturing, bickering, and maneuvering." In a stinging report last February, he wrote that "most parties have not been willing to subordinate their own self-interest to the overriding interest of the innocent Oneida and non-Oneida members of the public who are daily suffering fear and anxiety." Talks ended last spring. Then, in September, a US District Court judge excluded the landowners from the suit but agreed to add the State of New York as a defendant. That decision, too, rebuked the Oneidas for their "bad faith" and "irresponsible rhetoric." The tribe has decided not to appeal.

Barring epiphany or compromise, the Oneida claim will continue to wind its way through the courts for approximately the next decade, and other tribes pursuing such claims nationwide will continue to watch its progress. In earlier phases, the Oneidas say, the claim bogged down because the tribe lacked the resources to see it through. Today, flush with cash from the Turning Stone casino, the tribe has vowed not to repeat the past.

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