On Hamilton’s campus, right above the Hamilton College sign at the bottom of College Hill Road, stands a small granite monument that marks the Fort Stanwix Line dividing British Colonial territory from Native American land. The monument serves as a reminder of the College’s founding history and that it is located on ancestral Oneida land. While Hamilton students, faculty and community members have likely passed the small granite monument on foot or in a car many times before, few know its significance or the history behind it.

Seth Schermerhorn, Director and Associate Professor of American Studies, said, “I’ve seen administrators, who, in seeing [the] map of this line, asked, which side is the College on? You should know that, but also you don’t really understand that the vast majority of what today [is] College property is on the west side of that line and firmly in what would have been considered Indian territory at that time.”

The construction of the Hamilton-Oneida Academy, that preceded Hamilton College, was built on the Oneida side of the Fort Stanwix line. Schermerhorn suspected that, “Shenendoah [or Skenandoah] and Oneidas would have become partners with that academic institution, but then it didn’t really work out.”

As someone who received an education alongside both other white and Native students, Samuel Kirkland later hoped to replicate that model in the founding of the Hamilton-Oneida Academy. According to The Journals of Samuel Kirkland, Kirkland was the first white student at More’s Indian Charity School in Connecticut run by Eleazar Wheelock. Wheelock’s intention was to teach Native people Christianity, agriculture and husbandry. The Journals of Samuel Kirkland specifies Wheelock’s goal for his school and says, “At the end of their course, the young savages, hopefully civilized, were to return to their tribes as missionaries and teachers.”

After a few years of school, Kirkland became a missionary, and traveled to Central New York to preach the gospel to the Iroquois. After living with Seneca for a year and a half, according to On the Hill, he arrived at the Oneida village in July of 1766. On the Hill says, “Kirkland devoted himself to learning the language of the Oneidas, and as he became proficient he began delivering his sermons in that language.”

Maurice Isserman, Professor of American History and author of On the Hill: A Bicentennial History of Hamilton College, 1812–2012 described how Kirkland dedicated his life to converting the Oneida to Christianity. Isserman said that Kirkland in 1764, “builds up a church and forges close ties to Chief Skenandoah.” Then soon after, when the American Revolution began, Kirkland, according to Isserman, “helps recruit the Oneida to support the revolutionary cause.”

After the Revolutionary War, Kirkland returned to the Oneida region and began thinking about opening his own academy. In 1793, according to The Journals of Samuel Kirkland, Kirkland went to Philadelphia and asked for support from President George Washington and Alexander Hamilton to open the Hamilton-Oneida Academy. According to On the Hill, the school for high school aged students, “would disprove the belief held by some whites that Indians ‘have such a viciousness and depravity of disposition as forbids their civilization.’” Both Washington and Hamilton supported him and Hamilton was a founding member of the Board of Trustees for the Academy. The school was officially approved on Jan. 31, 1793 in which Kirkland was not a trustee, but a crucial financier.

The Hamilton-Oneida Academy was planned to be a place for white and Native students to be educated together, but from the start of the College, the Native co-founders seemed to be excluded from real leadership. The Journals of Samuel Kirkland state that Native Chiefs were intended to be appointed to the Board of Trustees. However, it seems that the white trustees held mistrust and prejudice against the Chiefs and did not want them in leadership. The Journals of Samuel Kirkland offers, “after consulting with some of the more judicious Indians, they thought it might occasion jealousies among them to which they were so much inclined.” Instead, no chiefs were on the board of the Academy, but instead were invited to just attend meetings once or twice a year. This marked a start to the institution’s turn away from its original goals to educate both Native and white children.

Despite Kirkland’s original commitment to universal education, On the Hill describes how the first class of the Hamilton-Oneida Academy seemed to consist of four Native children and around 25 white students. Three months after its opening, the school burnt to the ground. After the reconstruction of the building and its reopening, it seemed that only one Native student continued to attend the school.

Isserman further describes how with limited records of the Hamilton-Oneida Academy, that “there are a few Native American students in the first year or so. But for whatever reason, they disappear. And it becomes all it’s their children who are educated at the academy.”

In 1797, the Society of Scotland, that once pledged their support for Kirkland’s missionary work, revoked their financing because as stated by The Journals of Samuel Kirkland, “It was clear that the Society was losing faith in the efforts to help the Indians in America.”

A lot of the history about why Native students did not stay at the Academy remains unknown. According to The Journals of Samuel Kirkland, from the early stages of the Academy, “The Indians were dissatisfied that they were expected to pay tuition and that more of their young people were not admitted.” However, there is no known physical documentation of what the experience of Native students at the Hamilton-Oneida Academy was like and why they did not stay.

All that remains is the oral history passed down through Oneida members. The Spectator reached out to members of Oneida Indian Nation for interviews, but did not hear back. This article relies on Hamilton-centered historical documentation and lacks Oneida voices telling this history. Like the missing pieces of history from the College, The Spectator recognizes the limited and incomplete perspective of this story without any direct Oneida perspective.

Schermerhorn spoke to some oral histories that he has heard from Oneida members. On a tour in August of 2016 of 60 College Hill Road, or the “1793 House” (located next to Skenandoa House), with members of Oneida that “[the Oneida] sort of thought of this as a place where Oneida students, centuries ago, would have been profoundly unhappy before they came home from college in that first semester and I think never returned.”

Although there are no verified historical documents stating that Oneida students may have had unpleasant experiences in the basement of 1793 House, Schermerhorn stated the importance of still listening to oral histories. He said, “I would say that for us as non-native people to be utterly dismissive of Native people and whatever claims that they’re making would be a kind of a jerk move.”

After a brief closure and bankruptcy, the Hamilton-Oneida Academy continued successfully until the establishment of the College, but no Native student ever graduated. On the Hill describes, “Thus the Hamilton-Oneida Academy neglected the ostensible purpose for which it had been founded.” Kirkland died in 1808.

Kirkland and Chief Skenandoah remained close friends, even requesting to be buried next to each other. An article on the Oneida Indian Nation website titled “The Skenandoah Boulder Honors Instrumental Oneida Leader” written by Kandice Watson describes how Chief Skenandoah, “always held great respect for his clergyman. In fact, it was his wish to be buried next to Samuel Kirkland in Clinton, NY after his death, which his Nation and family honored in 1816.” The two men were moved to the Hamilton cemetery in 1856.

On The Spectator’s visit to the grave of Kirkland and Skenandoah with Schermerhorn, he noted, “you can’t miss the relative size. [The graves are] very near one another, maybe next to one another, but they don’t really have an equitable [representation]. Whatever the plan was, [it] was apparently not to make them roughly the same size.”

By the time Hamilton College was founded in 1812, the co-education model for Native and white settlers to attend school together was abandoned. By 1812, Isserman said, “Kirkland is four years in his grave” and Skenandoah was believed to be over one hundred years old. On the Hill elaborates how, “As the contraction of the proposed institution’s name from “Hamilton-Oneida” to “Hamilton” suggests, the education of Oneida youth no longer counted among the trustees’ concerns.”

Schermerhorn said that because of Hamilton’s location on the Native American side of Fort Stanwix line and Chief Skenandoah’s close relationship to Kirkland, the two men may have been considered “co-founders of the institution.” That being said, Schermerhorn was perplexed about how people seldom, “go a step further and say, so what that actually means is that [the Oneidas] were business partners who were kind of cut out of a business deal.”

Not only has Hamilton never graduated an Oneida person from the College, Schermerhorn questions what Hamilton owes, “by virtue of the fact that they’ve excluded their co-founders from the institution historically.”

Between the founding of Hamilton College in 1812 and the 1960s, The Spectator could not find any documentation or reports of interactions between Oneida and the College. This leaves a large gap of around 150 years of undocumented history about the relations between Hamilton and Oneida.

“As the contraction of the proposed institution’s name from ‘Hamilton-Oneida’ to ‘Hamilton suggests,’ the education of Oneida youth no longer counted among the trustees’ concerns” — Maurice Isserman in On the Hill

The next documentation of the relationship between the College and Oneida Indian Nation found by The Spectator was an article in a 1960 issue of the paper titled “Missionary Founded Hamilton” and in sub-text, “Taught Indians.” This brief article describes the founding of the College, but does not mention the then present-day Nation.

Published on November 10, 1967, The Spectator wrote an article titled, “Former Hamilton ‘Residents’ Visited.” This article highlights a visit a few Hamilton students paid to Oneida Reservation in 1967. The article describes how when the Hamilton students tried to locate the then Oneida Reservation, “The manager of the Gulf Oil station in Sherill laughed when we asked directions. ‘Well the reservation,’ he chuckled, ‘it’s a couple of trailers and a farmhouse a few miles south on 46.’” The authors of the article noted that the gas station manager was mostly correct from what they could see. On the Oneida Reservation, they only found trailers, an archery range, and a vacant field used for powwows.

The Hamilton students spent two hours at Oneida Reservation in which they talked “with Princess Shenandoa, a dark-skinned, handsome girl in her early twenties. She spoke glowingly of her ancestors.”

The Hamilton students noted the legal struggle over land, but did not note Hamilton’s part in this history. They reported in The Spectator, “litigation which has been going on for the past three years and which has just now come to a climax.” The article describes the Oneidas’ then efforts to sue the State of New York for stolen land over 150 years. The students wrote, “They [the Oneidas] want funds to maintain their traditions, to improve housing, to attract industry, and to set up their own education system.”

The article also noted, “Because this reservation is so small, most of the 2,000 Oneidas living in New York State reservations live on the 6,000 acre Onondaga Reservation south of Syracuse.” The Spectator could not find other documentation between the College and Oneida Indian Nation until the 1990s. Schermerhorn reflected on how events between the College and Oneida grew post-1990 since that “would be the date [after] the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, or IGRA, and this is the means through which cemetery after Skenandoah. Scheremerhorn explained that this was Joanne Shenandoah, a seventh generation descendent of Chief Skenandoah, who came to visit Hamilton and performed here several times over her life. Scheremerhorn interpreted burying her body in Hamilton’s cemetery as almost, “an Oneida legal claim saying, this is our land. And updating it with burying [Shenandoah] here. I don’t think the College considered that when they were quickly moving [to bury her body in the cemetery], but that’s how I see it.”

There are new administrative efforts to change Hamilton student’s lack of knowledge and interaction with Oneida Indian Nation. When Ngonidzashe Munemo, Vice President of Academic Affairs and Dean of Faculty, started at Hamilton in July of 2022, Goodale described how, “part of his deanship was a priority to establish a Native and Indigenous Studies program of some sort here.”

From there, a board of faculty and administrators started the further development of an Indigenous and Native American Studies program in which they again enlisted the insight of Derek Montroy. Goodale said, “When we’re interviewing candidates, he [Montroy] is able to be the Nation representative there.”

Dr. Brianna Burke, Visiting Associate Professor of Environmental Studies, started at Hamilton in August of 2023 as the first faculty fellow under the Indigenous and Native American Studies (NAIS) initiative from an internal Hamilton grant. She is working with the Oneida Indian Nation to discuss how we can build a stronger collaborative relationship with them.

The same board overseeing NAIS is currently working on hiring the second faculty fellow. Goodale said that hopefully that second person will be hired sometime over the next month or six weeks.

Burke talked about Hamilton’s partnership with Oneida to co-author a co-written land acknowledgement. She described, “It is rare for an institution to be able to co-author such a statement in collaboration, and fitting that we were able to do it here, given the institution’s history.” This land acknowledgement will be shared and discussed to greater community members on Thursday, March 28.

In terms of the future, Burke said, “We hope next year to have community events where speakers and programming are split between both Hamilton College and the Oneida soon-to-be opened community center; we also hope to create opportunities for internships and partnerships.”

Schermerhorn hoped that the American Studies department he oversees would “transform American Studies into basically Native American and Indigenous Studies,” under his leadership. Now, he said, “I don’t think that’s gonna happen that way.”

However, when asked about the development of Indigenous and Native American Studies as a discipline, Goodale said there is hope for, “a minor [or] potentially a major down the line.” The development of the field of study is in the planning stages and Goodale said that “[it’s] still not completely set in stone.”

Schermerhorn recommends students to take classes focused on Indigenous and Native history and culture. He hopes that the College will hire the next person under the new grant, “who specializes in this region.” He said, “I think that person exists. But I don’t know that they’ve applied for the job, and therefore I’m not sure that we can hire such a person.”

Goodale, Mumemo, Burke, and Montroy all are working hard to strengthen Hamilton’s relationship with Oneida. On April 3 and 4, all of them are traveling to New York City to request funding and grant approval from external foundations to establish this partnership on a deeper and more official level.

Elaborating on this grant, Goodale explained that it would fund joint hires between Oneida and Hamilton to “solidify this partnership.” However, there are some employment lines they must consider, and they need support from other organizations that they will speak to in New York City. The goal is to collaboratively hire two more people; one who would be the director of the program and another as a programming coordinator who would serve as liaisons for this partnership of the College and Nation. The purpose for this partnership is to plan and discuss, as Goodale described, “where our partnership can meet in the middle where we’re working and pulling on each other’s strengths, but also recognizing our [Hamilton’s] commitment.”

Goodale elaborated that running academic programming, something that he said, “we do really well,” is part of hopeful future collaboration. He said, “Anything that we can do to help their community’s education in areas that they want it,” is the most important place to start.

To utilize Hamilton’s resources, Goodale mentioned that, “we’ve been talking about having workshops for Oneida youth to help them write their college essays, to any college or university out there, it doesn’t have to be Hamilton.”

He speculated that maybe there may be, “opportunities for other ecological landscape knowledge [learning] that Oneida might be interested in [leading for] our environmental studies students.” All future partnership and programming is being approached, according to Goodale, “in a very collaborative way with particular attention to what the Oneida want to get out of this.”

While still hopeful for Hamilton’s new plan and grant, Schermerhorn remains skeptical about some things. He said, “Hamilton’s kind of like a revolving door. New people come in, new people go out. And so in some ways, I feel like this whole initiative is trying to give a little bit of a Native flavor for largely marketing purposes to students who probably as a whole don’t really care that much about it.” Goodale emphasized the need for structures to be put into place so that once Hamilton students, faculty, and administrators come and go, the relationship can remain strong and mutually beneficial between Hamilton and Oneida Indian Nation.

Since Schermerhorn said that working on rewriting the land acknowledgement required legal consolation to ensure the College will not actually lose any of its right of the land, he does not, “think they’re really looking to change their business model or anything. I think their priority is not justice.”

Structural changes remain difficult as Goodale explained, “A lot of times people want to know are we gonna have a tuition waiver for Oneida students? But Hamilton isn’t quite set up that way to do something like that. So using our educational resources and putting it into building community relationships is really the place where the Oneida have asked for us to work with them.”

From Schermerhorn’s perspective, he is unsure about the mutually beneficial relationship between the College and the Nation. He said, “I think that the College is doing it strategically for their own reasons and sometimes those reasons will line up with Oneida’s, other times they won’t.”

Goodale described how change and relationship building takes time. He said, “Much of our community, they want to see things happen now. And I get that, but it’s very worthwhile for us to be recognizing our own history, and trying to address in a positive way where we did fall short in the past.” He continued, “I think we have identified some real interesting places to try and more formally do this work and in a way more collaborative way to have a partner with the Oneida Indian Nation on this.”