The Tonawanda Senecas' Heroic Battle Against Removal by Hauptman Laurence M.;

Author:Hauptman, Laurence M.; [Hauptman]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 3407139
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Published: 2011-04-11T00:00:00+00:00

7

The Whig Mouthpiece

Although Native Americans are too often presented as simply acted upon and naive victims in the inevitable march of westward expansion, the Tonawanda Senecas disprove this generalization. In the mid-1840s, the council of chiefs hired exceptional attorneys to fight for their rights in their struggle against the Ogden Land Company. First, they hired William Linn Brown, a “Philadelphia lawyer,” the nationally respected attorney and lobbyist who had political connections to President Polk and worked for him and the State Department in various diplomatic efforts. Because of Brown's busy schedule and the growing tensions caused by the increasing encroachment of white settlers on the Tonawanda lands, Brown was replaced after the effort to influence the United States Senate failed.1 The chiefs then hired John H. Martindale, a thirty-one-year-old attorney from Batavia, in Brown's place to help the Tonawandas stave off removal. From 1846 to 1861, Martindale was the lead attorney for the numerous suits brought by and against the Tonawandas, the chief counsel for the Tonawandas in treaty negotiations, and the key figure in the later repurchase of the reservation.

Martindale was born in Hudson Falls, New York on March 20, 1815. His father, Henry Clinton, was a Yankee from Massachusetts who practiced law at Sandy Hill, in Washington County, New York and who eventually was elected to Congress for four terms (1823 to 1831). Originally a Federalist, Henry Clinton Martindale became an anti-Jackson, anti-Mason Whig who was later tied politically to Governor William Seward.2

Henry Clinton sent his son John to the United States Military Academy in 1831, at a time when West Point was becoming a major civil engineering institution under the forceful leadership of Sylvanus Thayer. In the class of 1835 were two individuals who influenced John Martindale's life: George Meade and Montgomery Blair. Meade's and Martindale's paths were to cross in the Civil War. Blair's and Martindale's lives were to come together in the turbulent 1850s and were to have an impact on the Tonawandas' crusade for justice. Martindale was graduated third in his class at West Point and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the 1st Dragoons. Instead of accepting his assignment, which would have undoubtedly led to his participation in the horrific Second Seminole War (1835–1842) in the Everglades in Florida, Martindale immediately took a leave of absence from the army and eventually resigned his commission in 1836. He was one of ninety-eight commissioned officers, eight in his 1835 class alone, who resigned during the Second Seminole War. This excessive number of resignations, including that of Martindale, could not be totally attributed to protest over the war, since greater financial benefits in civil engineering and in the business world were available to top graduates of West Point. Added to this was the overall disarray of the army during the Jacksonian era.3

In 1836, Martindale was appointed assistant engineer of the Saratoga and Washington Railroad Company. Two years later, after reading law, he moved from the east bank of the Hudson River to Batavia, a small town and headquarters of the Holland Land Company.

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