New Growth on Old Roots

For much longer than Christ Church has stood keeping watch over it, this valley was part of the vast lands of the Oneida people, one of the Six Nations of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois). Things changed in 1768 when the Six Nations signed a treaty with the British at Fort Stanwix drawing a line on the map. Lands east of the line were ceded to the British and opened for settlement, but the lands west of the line were supposedly inviolably Haudenosaunee territory. Starting from the west, the line took in the entire Ohio River, at Fort Pitt it turned northeast and followed the Allegheny River, until it jumped over to the Susquehanna near the colonial border. Not too far after that the line turned due north and headed toward Fort Stanwix by following the Unadilla River. This, of course, brought it within five miles from where Christ Church would be erected some sixty-six years later....

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