As the Niagara History Center commemorates the bicentennial of the Erie Canal, a new temporary exhibit has gone up in the Changing Exhibit Room in the Outwater House at 215 Niagara St. in Lockport. “The Haudenosaunee and the Erie Canal: Dispossession and Displacement,” shows how the idea and construction of the Erie Canal impacted the Indigenous people of New York.
Highlights of the exhibit include material on loan from the Tonawanda Indian Reservation Historical Society, as well as artifacts from the History Center’s own collection such as baskets and beadwork. Images of the movers and shakers involved including Red Jacket, DeWitt Clinton and Jesse Hawley are also featured.
The idea of a canal was first conceived by New York’s Surveyor General Cadwallader Colden in 1724, more than a hundred years before the canal opened. Efforts to obtain the land from the Six Nations of the Haudenosaunee continued throughout the 1700s, making it easier to build a canal. Once built, the Erie Canal made the land more valuable, and provided better access for Euro-Americans to settle in Western New York.
The Haudenosaunee and the Erie Canal will be open through January and is free to the public.
The Niagara History Center is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays, with exceptions for holidays. Additional information on the History Center is available at www.niagarahistory.org or by telephone at 716-434-7433.