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American Indians and the Right to Vote: United States v. Elm (1877), Its Origins, and Its Impact
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 April 2021
Abstract
In November 1876, two Oneida Indians, Abram Elm and Lewis Doxtator, were arrested for voting illegally in the twenty-third congressional district election in New York. Their trial was held the next year in a federal court in the Northern District of New York, the same venue where Susan B. Anthony had been tried and convicted on a similar charge four years earlier. This essay focuses on the significance of the historically neglected United States v. Elm case, its origins, why the decision was rendered, and its short-term and long-term impact. Importantly, United States v. Elm has cast a long shadow over Supreme Court decisions—from the time of Elk v. Wilkins in 1884 right up to City of Sherrill v. Oneida Indian Nation in New York in 2005. In going to the polls, the two Native Americans were not trying to deny their Oneida identity; they saw themselves as dual citizens advocating a different course of resistance.
Keywords
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- Information
- The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era , Volume 20 , Issue 2 , April 2021 , pp. 234 - 251
- Copyright
- © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era (SHGAPE).
References
Notes
1 United States v. Elm, 25, Fed Cas. 1006 (Case no. 15,048, N.D.N.Y., Dec. 24, 1877). New York State Legislature Assembly Document no. 51, Report of the Special Committee to Investigate the Indian Problem of the State of New York, Appointed by the Assembly of 1888, vol. 2 (Albany, NY: Troy Press Co., 1889), 385–90 (hereafter cited as Whipple Report).
2 United States v. Anthony, 24 F. 829 (1873); Anthony, Susan B., An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony on the Charge of Illegal Voting at the Presidential Election in Nov. 1872 […] (Rochester, NY: Daily Democrat and Chronicle Book Print, 1874)Google Scholar. For a good (but all too brief) treatment of the Elm case, see Deborah A. Rosen, American Indians and State Laws Sovereignty, Race, and Citizenship, 1790–1880 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007), 33, 119–20, 267n41, 269n53.
3 Stephen Kantrowitz, “White Supremacy, Settler Colonialism, and the Two Citizenships of the Fourteenth Amendment,” Journal of the Civil War Era 10 (March 2020): 46.
4 Elk v. Wilkins, 112 U.S. 94 (1884); City of Sherrill v. Oneida Indian Nation of New York, 125 S.C. 1478 (2005). See also the dissenting opinion in Oneida Indian Nation of New York v. City of Sherrill, 337 F.3d 139 (2003).
5 Joseph Heath, the attorney for the Onondaga Nation, described the Iroquois Confederacy Grand Council’s opposition to dual citizenship on the Onondaga Nation website. See Joseph Heath, “The Citizenship Act of 1924: An Integral Pillar of the Colonization and Forced Assimilation Policies of the United States in Violation of Treaties,” June 7, 2018, www.onondaganation.org/news/2018/the-citizenship-act-of-1924. For the Treaty of Canandaigua, see Treaty with the Six Nations, 7 Stat. 44 (Nov. 11, 1794), in Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties, vol. 2: Treaties, ed. Charles J. Kappler (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1904), 34–37, https://americanindian.si.edu/static/nationtonation/pdf/Treaty-of-Canandaigua-1794.pdf (accessed Dec. 20, 2020).
6 For the Treaty of Fort Stanwix, see Treaty with the Six Nations, 7 Stat. 15 (Oct. 22, 1784), in Kappler, Indian Affairs, 2:5–6, https://americanindian.si.edu/static/nationtonation/pdf/Treaty-of-Fort-Stanwix-1784.pdf (accessed Dec. 20, 2020).
7 Indian Trade and Intercourse Act of 1790, Pub. L. No. 1–33, § 4, 1 Stat. 137, 138 (July 22, 1790). Five other Trade and Intercourse Acts were passed by Congress from 1793 through 1834.
8 Tiro, Karim M., The People of the Standing Stone: The Oneida Nation from the Revolution through the Era of Removal (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2011), 91–114.Google Scholar See also Hauptman, Laurence M., Conspiracy of Interests: Iroquois Dispossession and the Rise of New York State (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1999), 1–99.Google Scholar
9 Tiro, People of the Standing Stone, 111–14, 163–67; Whipple Report, 2:309–43.
10 See Tiro, People of the Standing Stone, 173–86; and Hauptman, Laurence M., An Oneida Indian in Foreign Waters: The Life of Chief Chapman Scanandoah, 1870–1953 (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2016), 1–22.Google Scholar For missionary presence among the Oneidas in New York, see Tiro, Karim M., “Oneidas and Missionaries, 1667–1816,” in The Wisconsin Oneidas and the Episcopal Church: A Chain Linking Two Traditions, ed. Gordon McLester, L. III et al. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2019), 19–35 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Karim M. Tiro,“‘We Wish to Do You Good’: The Quaker Mission to the Oneida Nation, 1790–1840,” Journal of the Early Republic 26 (Fall 2006): 353–76; Oberg, Michael Leroy, Professional Indian: The American Odyssey of Eleazer Williams (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), 49–76;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Pilkington, Walter, ed. The Journals of Samuel Kirkland: Eighteenth Century Missionary to the Iroquois, Government Agent, Father of Hamilton College (Clinton, NY: Hamilton College, 1980).Google Scholar On the classic treatment of Christianity among the Oneidas in both New York and Wisconsin, see Bloomfield, Julia K., The Oneidas (NY: Alden Brothers, 1907).Google Scholar
11 An Act relative to the Oneida Indians, passed Apr. 18, 1843, chap. 185, Laws of the State of New York, passed at the Sixty-Sixth Session of the Legislature […] (Albany, NY: C. Van Benthuysen and Co., 1843), 244.
12 An Act in relation to the Oneida Indians, passed Dec. 15, 1847, chap. 486, Laws of the State of New York, passed at the Frist meeting of the Seventieth Session of the Legislature […] (Albany, NY: Charles Benthuysen, 1847), 726.
13 For original and recorded New York State treaties with the Oneidas, see record series nos. A4699 and AO448, New York State Archives, Albany, NY. Most of these state treaties with the Oneidas are conveniently reprinted in the Whipple Report, 237–365.
14 Wonderley, Anthony, Oneida Iroquois Folklore, Myth, and History: New York Oral Narratives from the Notes of H. E. Allen and Others (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2004), 24.Google Scholar By 1890, Oneidas in New York numbered less than three hundred souls. In that year, Oneida territory in New York totaled 742.66 acres, mostly allotted lands. Thomas Donaldson, comp., The Six Nations of New York: Extra Census Bulletin for the 11th Census of the United States for the Year, 1890 (Washington, DC: U.S. Census Printing Office, 1892), 25.
15 Cooper, Susan Fenimore, Rural Hours (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, [1850] 1968), 117–20.Google Scholar
16 French, J. H., Gazetteer of the State of New York […] (Syracuse, NY: R. Pearsall Smith, 1860), 469n4.Google Scholar
17 Hammond, Luna M., History of Madison County, State of New York (Syracuse: Truair, Smith, and Co., 1872), 118.Google Scholar
18 Tiro, People of the Standing Stone, 173–86.
19 On the continued distribution of treaty cloth in this time period, see “State News,” Albany (NY) Argus, Sept. 17, 1875. See also Treaty of Canandaigua, in Kappler, Indian Affairs, 2:34–37; Treaty with the Oneida, 7 Stat. 47 (Dec. 2, 1794), in Kappler, Indian Affairs, 2:37–39, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GOVPUB-Y4_IN2_11-1c227893bfbe1da6dd96b6883fd0205b/pdf/GOVPUB-Y4_IN2_11-1c227893bfbe1da6dd96b6883fd0205b.pdf (accessed Dec. 20, 2020).
20 For the Oneida efforts to challenge state treaties, see these New York State Assembly and State Senate documents: 1867 AD 181, 1874 AD 79, 1866 SD 5, and 1872 SD 75, available at the New York State Library (hereafter cited as NYSL).
21 D. Sherman, commissioner of Indian affairs, Oct. 9, 1877, in Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs to the Secretary of the Interior for the Year 1877 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1877), 168, http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/History.AnnRep77 (accessed Dec. 20, 2020).
22 United States Census of 1860, Town of Lenox, Madison County, New York, Schedule 4, Productions of Agriculture, 15; United States Department of the Interior, Office of Indian Affairs, Census of 1886: Oneida Reservation in New York, in Toni Jollay Prevost, comp., Indians from New York: A Genealogy Reference, vol. 3 (Bowie, MD: Heritage Books, 1995), 142–43.
23 On Peter Elm, see Pilkington, Journals of Samuel Kirkland, 315, 325, 345, 356–58, 365, 369, 389, 411.
24 The federal district court concluded that Elm was born in central New York (see endnote 1). Elm’s birthplace is recorded as Canada in Compiled Military Service Record, Abraham [Abram] Elm, Private Co. B, 5th Vermont Infantry Regiment, Records of the War Department, RG 94, National Archives, Washington, DC. Yet his date of birth and birthplace in central New York are recorded in H. C. Cutler, GAR (Grand Army of the Republic), post no. 235, as Avon, Livingston County, New York, Post Description Book, GAR Records, series B1706, subseries 11, box 74, folder 9, New York State Archives, Albany, NY (hereafter cited as GAR Post Description Book), as well as in the U.S. Censuses of 1900 and 1910, and in the New York State Census of 1892.
25 Abraham [Abram] Elm, Civil War Pension Record, certificate no. 771598, Records of the War Department, RG 94, National Archives, Washington, DC; Toni Jollay Prevost, comp., Indians from New York in Wisconsin and Elsewhere, vol. 1 (Bowie, MD: Heritage Books, 1995), 25, 48, 67, 84–85; and Prevost, Indians from New York, 3:143, 145. See also the 1875 and 1892 New York State Censuses and the 1910 U.S. Census.
26 Town of Lenox, Madison County, New York State Census, 1865; Prevost, Indians from New York, 3:143; Elm, Civil War Pension Record; GAR Post Description Book; U.S. Censuses of 1870–1910.
27 Elm, Compiled Military Service Record. For this Vermont regiment, see Benedict, George G., Vermont in the Civil War: A History of the Part Taken by the Vermont Soldiers and Sailors in the War for the Union, vol. 1 (Burlington, VT: Free Press Association, 1888), 180–207;Google Scholar and Peck, Theodore S., Revised Roster of Vermont Volunteers and Vermonters Who Served in the Army and Navy of the United States during the War of the Rebellion, 1861–66 (Montpelier, VT: Press of the Watchman Publishing Co., 1892), 142–43.Google Scholar
28 Elm, Compiled Military Service Record. According to Eugene Murdock, Elm was one of more than 10,000 substitutes in the waning months of the war. While no record exists of what arrangements Elm made in becoming a substitute in Vermont, the practice of hiring substitutes was quite common where he resided. Murdock, Eugene C., Patriotism Limited, 1862–1865: The Civil War Draft and the Bounty System (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1967), 25, 31, 215.Google Scholar
29 GAR Post Description Book; author interview with Ray Elm, Onondaga Historical Association, Syracuse, NY, June 13, 1991. The late Ray Elm was Abram Elm’s grandson.
30 For the 1802 Oneida suffrage petition, see “Names of Indians St, Regis and Five of the Six Nations,” William M. Beauchamp MSS, box 15, folder 3, item 288, p. 59, New York State Museum, Albany. Although a minority within their communities, other Hodinöhsö:ni´ called for U.S. citizenship and voting rights into the twentieth century. See for example [An anonymous Onondaga], “The Negro and the Indian,” Syracuse (NY) Daily Courier, Mar. 30, 1857; and the comments made by Rev. Bruce, Louis Sr. [Mohawk] in Official Record of Indian Conference, Called to Determine the Status of the Six Nations on the Indian Reservations of the State of New York […], Mar. 6–7, 1919 (Syracuse, NY: Onondaga Historical Association, 1919), 65–66.Google Scholar
31 Jackson ex dem. Smith v., Goodell, 20 Johns. 188 (NY 1822).
32 Goodell v. Jackson, ex. dem. Smith, 20 Johns. 693 (NY 1823).
33 Strong v. Waterman, 11 Paige 607 (NY 1845). Kettner, James H., The Development of American Citizenship, 1608–1870 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1978), 294, 294n24.Google Scholar Kettner incorrectly claimed that after 1843, New York State accepted “remnants” of American Indian tribes as qualifying for citizenship. Yet in New York State, American Indians’ right to vote was debated and repeatedly rejected even after the Elm decision in 1877.
34 For this failed legislative action, “Concurrent resolution on the subject of extending the right of suffrage to the Indians of the state,” see 1846 SD 63, NYSL.
35 Maltz, Earl M., “Rethinking the Racial Boundaries of Citizenship: Native Americans and People of Chinese Descent,” in The Civil War and the Transformation of American Citizenship, ed. Quigley, Paul (Baton Rouge: Louisiana University Press, 2018), 68.Google Scholar
36 Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., 497–99, 522–26 (1866).
37 Civil Rights Act of 1866, 14 Stat. 27–30, Pub. L. No. 39–31 (Apr. 9, 1866).
38 U.S. Const., amend. XIV, §§ 1–2 (July 9, 1868). For a further discussion of the congressional debate on the status of Indians relative to this amendment, see Kantrowitz, “White Supremacy,” 29–46.
39 President Ulysses S. Grant, First Inaugural Address, Mar. 4, 1869, Washington, DC, www.ulyssessgrant.org/p/president-ulysses-s.html.
40 U.S. Const., amend. XV, § 1 (Feb. 3, 1870).
41 S. Rep. No. 268, 41st Cong., 3rd Sess. (Dec. 14, 1870).
42 “Legislative Acts/Legislative Proceedings,” New York Herald, May 2, 1876; “Legislative Acts/ Legislative Proceedings,” New York Herald, Mar. 25, 1877.
43 Parker, Ely S., commissioner of Indian affairs, Oct. 31, 1870, in Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs to the Secretary of the Interior for the Year 1870 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1870), 9 Google Scholar, http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/History.AnnRep70 (accessed Dec. 20, 2020); Charles W. Calhoun, The Presidency of Ulysses S. Grant (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2017), 267. For the best treatment of Parker as commissioner, see C. Joseph Genetin-Pilawa, “Ely S. Parker and the Contentious Peace Policy,” Western Historical Quarterly 41 (Summer 2010): 196–217; see also Joseph Genetin-Pilawa, C., Crooked Paths to Allotment: The Fight over Federal Indian Policy after the Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011), 73–111.Google Scholar
44 “Notes on Education,” New York Tribune, Dec. 21, 1876.
45 See for instance “Oriskany Centennial … White Men and Indians Joining Together in the Celebration,” New York Herald, Aug. 6, 1877.
46 H.R. Rep. No. 405, 16 Stat. 40, 41st Cong., 1st Sess. (Apr. 8, 1869). On Grant’s peace policy, see Calhoun, Presidency of Ulysses S. Grant, 263–76; Genetin-Pilawa, Crooked Paths to Allotment, 73–111; Prucha, Francis Paul, The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984), 479–533;Google Scholar and Utley, Robert M., The Indian Frontier of the American West, 1846–1890 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1984), 129–56.Google Scholar
47 Utley, Indian Frontier of the American West, 157–203.
48 Quoted in Genetin-Pilawa, Crooked Paths to Allotment, 101–2. Parker’s travail is also covered in Armstrong, William H., Warrior in Two Camps: Ely S. Parker, Union General and Seneca Chief (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1978), 152–61.Google Scholar
49 Genetin-Pilawa, Crooked Paths to Allotment, 100–12.
50 16 Stat. 566, 41st Cong., 3rd Sess. (Mar. 3, 1871).
51 For the resolution of the claims, see New York Indians v. United States, 33 Ct. Cl. 510 (1898); the U.S. Supreme Court confirmed the Court of Claims decision in 170 U.S. 464 (1899).
52 Parker defended his action by pointing out that the Indian nations had become “wards,” too dependent on the United States, and they were thus too powerless to negotiate equitable agreements to help their people. See U.S. House of Representatives, House Executive Document No. 1, 41st Cong., 2nd Sess., serial set 1414, 448 (Mar. 5, 1871).
53 For Tilden’s racist views, see his speech, “The Republican Policy Irritating,” to the Democratic State Convention on Mar. 11, 1868, in Tilden, Samuel J., Writings and Speeches of Samuel J. Tilden, vol. 1, ed. Bigelow, John (N.Y.: Harper and Brothers, 1885), 409–12.Google Scholar For his views on Indian policy, see “The Indian Question,” Samuel J. Tilden MSS, Writings, ca. 1880–1886, box 72, folder 3, New York Public Library, New York City. Tilden’s father Elam was a political operative for Van Buren’s Albany Regency, and young “Sammy” became a protégé and ally of the “Little Magician of Kinderhook” at an early age. Brooks, John L., Columbia Rising: Civil Life on the Upper Hudson from the Revolution to the Age of Jackson (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 445–47, 456.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
54 See endnote 8. See also Anthony Wonderley, “‘Good Peter’s Narrative of Several Transactions Respecting Indian Lands’: An Oneida View of Dispossession, 1785–1788,” New York History 84 (Summer 2003): 237–73. The author’s fieldwork over the past fifty years also confirms this generalization about Hodinöhsö:ni´s’ long-standing contempt for Albany’s political leadership.
55 “Bacon, William Johnson (1803–1889),” Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, https://bioguideretro.congress.gov/home/memberdetails?memindex=B000020 (accessed Dec. 20, 2020).
56 According to the missionary John Sergeant Jr., Kirkland had promised the Oneidas not to covet their land. See Sergeant to Timothy Pickering, Jan. 3, 1795, Timothy Pickering MSS, no. 62, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston. Yet Kirkland worked with both state officials and private land companies to help dispossess the Oneidas. See Samuel Kirkland to Governor of New York and Land Commissioners of the Land Office of New York State, Dec. 18, 1788, Samuel Kirkland MSS, no. 11b, Hamilton College, Clinton, NY; see also Petition of Gorham and Phelps, Feb. 7, 1789, Samuel Kirkland MSS, no. 113, and Oliver Phelps to Samuel Kirkland, Nov. 14, 1790, Samuel Kirkland MSS, Hamilton College, Clinton, NY.
57 See Pilkington, Journals of Samuel Kirkland, 193, 245–47, 420. For his rejection by the Oneidas, see Tiro, People of the Standing Stone, 90; and Taylor, Alan, The Divided Ground: Indians, Settlers, and the Northern Borderland of the American Revolution (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006), 65.Google Scholar
58 “Lord, Scott (1820–1885),” Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, https://bioguideretro.congress.gov/Home/MemberDetails?memIndex=L000442 (accessed Dec. 20, 2020); “New York and Connecticut; Activity of Both Parties,” New York Tribune, Oct. 26, 1876; “Scott Lord,” New York Tribune, Nov. 8, 1876. Hodinöhsö:ni´ including Chief Maris Pierce had attended Dartmouth in the nineteenth century, although Pierce was the only graduate. See Calloway, Colin, The Indian History of an American Institution: Native Americans and Dartmouth (Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College Press, 2010).Google Scholar
59 For Belknap’s impeachment, see Calhoun, Presidency of Ulysses S. Grant, 528–53.
60 Quoted in Calhoun, Presidency of Ulysses S. Grant, 551.
61 “News Items,” Cazenovia (NY) Republican, Dec. 30, 1875.
62 Oneida (NY) Democratic Union quoted in “News Items,” Cazenovia Republican, Dec. 30, 1875.
63 “News Items,” Cazenovia Republican, Dec. 30, 1875.
64 “The Indian as Voter,” Oneida (NY) Dispatch, May 18, 1877; “United States Cases,” Utica (NY) Morning Herald, Apr. 7, 1877; Windham (NY) Journal, Apr. 12, 1877. Judge Wallace also presented the background as to why the defendants were in his courtroom. See Elm, 25 F. 1006.
65 John E. Smith, ed., Our County and Its People: A Description and Biographical Record of Madison County, New York (Boston: Boston History Co. 1899; repr., Markham, VA: Apple Manor Press, 2014), 513, 522; “The Election To-morrow Names of Candidates Before the People,” New York Times, Nov. 5, 1860; “Local Politics,” Cazenovia Republican, Sept. 28, 1876; “Oneidas Entitled to Vote,” New York Times, Nov. 12, 1877.
66 See endnote 64.
67 “Crowley, Richard (1836–1908),” in Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, https://bioguideretro.congress.gov/home/memberdetails?memindex=C000945 (accessed Dec. 20, 2020); Mrs. Richard [Julia M. Corbitt] Crowley, Echoes from Niagara: Historical, Political, Personal (Buffalo, NY: C. W. Moulton, 1890), 197–220.
68 Elm, 25 F. 1006; Goodell v. Jackson, 20 Johns. 693.
69 “The Indian as Voter,” Oneida Dispatch, May 18, 1877.
70 Summers, Lionel M., “Wallace, William James (Apr. 14, 1837–Mar.11, 1917),” in Dictionary of American Biography, vol. 19, ed. Malone, Dumas (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1936), 378 Google Scholar; Chester, Alden, Courts and Lawyers of New York: A History, 1609–1925, vol. 2 (New York: American Historical Society, 1925), 1143;Google Scholar The Dinner in Honor of Judge William J. Wallace on His Retirement from the Bench Given by the Members of the Bar of the State of New York, May 29, 1907 (New York: New York State Bar Association, 1907); “Hon. William J. Wallace,” New York Times, Apr. 5, 1874; “Memorial for Ex-Judge Wallace,” New York Times, Mar. 14, 1917.
71 Cazenovia Republican, Mar.15, 1877.
72 See endnote 1.
73 See endnote 1.
74 See endnote 1.
75 See endnote 1.
76 Elk, 112 U.S. 94.
77 Elk, 112 U.S. 94.
78 General Allotment Act, 24 Stat. 388–91 (Feb. 8, 1887); Burke Act, 34 Stat. 182–83 (May 8, 1906). For the devastating effects of the federal competency commission’s work among the Wisconsin Oneidas, see Hauptman, Laurence M., “The Wisconsin Oneidas and the Federal Competency Commission of 1917,” in The Oneida Indians in the Age of Allotment, 1860–1920, eds. Hauptman, Laurence M. and Gordon McLester, L. III (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2006), 200–25.Google Scholar
79 Whipple Report, 512.
80 Whipple Report, 527.
81 Charles F. Tabor [New York State Attorney General] to Andrew J. Ponlow, Sept. 26, 1889, Annual Report of the New York State Attorney General (Albany, 1889), reprinted in 1889 AD 96, NYSL.
82 T. E. Hancock [New York State Attorney General] to Charles R. Skinner [New York State Superintendent of Public Instruction], Oct. 7, 1896, Annual Report of the New York State Attorney General (Albany, 1896), reprinted in 1896 SD 2, NYSL.
83 “Chiefs of Six Nations to Reject Citizenship,” Syracuse (NY) Post-Standard, May 9, 1920.
84 For the historic case on Indian voting rights, see, Harrison v. Laveen, 196 P.2d 456 (Ariz. 1948). See also McCool, Daniel, Olson, Susan M., and Robinson, Jennifer L., Native Vote: American Indians, the Voting Rights Act, and the Right to Vote (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 1–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
85 The reservation disestablishment argument was rejected by the federal courts in United States v. Boylan, 256 F. 468 (1919), 265 F. 165 (1920); in Oneida Indian Nation of New York, et al. v. County of Oneida, New York, et al., 414 U.S. 661 (1974); in Oneida County v. Oneida Indian Nation of New York State, 470 U.S. 226 (1985); and in Oneida Nation v. Sherrill, 337 F.3d 139.
86 Sherrill v. Oneida Nation, 125 S.C. 1478.
87 Abram Elm’s grave site can be found on the website Find A Grave, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/67726663/abram-elms (accessed Dec. 20, 2020).
88 Author interviews with Ray Elm, Fort Stanwix National Historic Site, Rome, NY, Oct. 20, 1984; Syracuse, NY, Apr. 21, 1985; Onondaga Indian Reservation, May 6, 1990; and at the Onondaga Historical Association, Syracuse, NY, June 13, 1991. For more on this remarkable Oneida, see the Oneida Indian Nation website, www.oneidaindiannation.com/ray-elm.