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Map of Phelps and Gorham Purchase 1802–1806. The Phelps and Gorham Purchase was the sale, in 1788, of a portion of a large tract of land in western New York State owned by the Seneca nation of the Iroquois Confederacy to a syndicate of land developers led by Oliver Phelps and Nathaniel Gorham.
In 1788, following the United States victory in the American Revolutionary War, Oliver Phelps and Nathaniel Gorham purchased all of Massachusetts's preemptive right to land in Western New York, some 6,000,000 acres (24,000 km 2; 9,400 sq mi) (the "Phelps and Gorham Purchase").
Oliver Phelps and Nathaniel Gorham then purchased the pre-emption right from Massachusetts, but failed to extinguish the Indian title to this tract and defaulted on their purchase in 1790. Robert Morris next purchased the pre-emption right from Massachusetts in 1791 for $333,333.34 (about $5.98 million today).
Iroquois lands circa 1720 A map showing the Phelps and Gorham Purchase, the Morris Reserve, and the Holland Purchase. Aboriginal title in New York refers to treaties, purchases, laws and litigation associated with land titles of aboriginal peoples of New York, in particular, to dispossession of those lands by actions of European Americans.
Phelps and Gorham wanted to buy 2,600,000-acre (11,000 km 2), but the Indians refused to sell the rights to any land west of the Genesee River. Phelps suggested that the Indians could take advantage of a grist mill to grind their maize which would relieve the women of the grinding work.
By coincidence, the Preemption Line is near the meridian of the Capitol at Washington (77° 00' 33" W of Greenwich), but the popular assumption that the Preemption Line was intended to be on that meridian seems to be a myth, since the District of Columbia had not been surveyed at the time of the 1786 treaty; in fact Benjamin Ellicott helped map and survey the District of Columbia in 1791 ...
The right sold applied to all land west of a line running from the mouth of Sodus Bay on Lake Ontario, due south through Seneca Lake, to the 82nd milestone on the Pennsylvania border near Big Flats (the "Pre-emption Line"), and all the way to the Niagara River and Lake Erie (the "Phelps and Gorham Purchase").
The area around Pultneyville — a hamlet on the town's Lake Ontario shore – was a frequent meeting ground for Iroquois people. In 1788, the area became part of the Phelps and Gorham Purchase, a 6,000,000-acre (24,000 km 2) tract of land sold to Oliver Phelps and Nathaniel Gorham by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.