Fort Stanwix, Treaties

Fort Stanwix, Treaties of

(1768, 1784) Agreements by which the Iroquois Confederacy ceded land in what is now western Pennsylvania, Kentucky, West Virginia, and New York, opening vast tracts to white exploration and settlement. In 1768 about 3,400 Iroquois gathered at Fort Stanwix (now Rome), N.Y., to sign a new treaty with the British that replaced the Proclamation of 1763. Pressure from white settlers and fur traders for additional land forced the new U.S. government to renegotiate the treaty. Weakened by the frontier campaign against them during the American Revolution, the Iroquois were persuaded to cede more land and in 1784 to sign the second treaty, also called the Treaty with the Six Nations.