E3: The Erie Canal Beyond History Class

Episode Overview

Scholars Danielle Nagle, Dana Olesch and Renee Barry challenge the Erie Canal’s traditional narratives and examine its unintended consequences on marginalized communities. These new history teachers are on an educational journey to reexamine the complex history of the canal and forgotten stories of New York’s “engineering marvel.”

[00:00 / 00:00]

Episode Transcript

Recognizing the Erie Canal’s Detriment and Listening to Unheard Voices

By Valentina Diaz and Emane Haque

Dana Olesch’s research examines the effect of violence on urban areas. Photo by Valentina Diaz.

The Erie Canal is often revered as putting New York on the map and as a catalyst for westward expansion. Researchers are working on integrating historically accurate revisions into the celebrated narrative about the construction of the canal, which they said has traditionally failed to recognize the devastation of marginalized communities. That includes the displacement of indigenous peoples for canal construction and the generational trauma Syracuse’s Black community has faced.

Constructing the Canal: Indigenous Displacement

Renee Barry is a former research fellow at the Erie Canal Museum in Syracuse, New York. When discussing the impact of the canal she said, “the success and economic progress of the Erie Canal was contingent upon the dehumanization and the dispossession of Haudenosaunee peoples and other indigenous peoples of New York.”

Displacement caused by the canal was made possible due to state and federal policies, such as the Buffalo Treaty 1826, which allowed for white settlers to inhabit the western terminus of the canal. Local tribes had a majority of their land stolen, with the Seneca losing three quarters of their territory.

“The divvying up of land was based on English land purchases, not really considering the people that currently inhabited those lands and those treaties that existed at the time,” said Neal Powless, a member of the Onondaga Eel Clan.

There was also a series of 27 illegal treaties that ignored prior legal agreements that protected Haudenosaunee stewardship of the land.

52,480

acres of reservation land that was sold off to white settlers over a twenty year period starting in 1793.

Source: Dispossession of the Haudenosaunee

“It was always about this plan to connect waterways across New York State to expand west. That was all it ever was,” Powless said. “It wasn’t about friendship. It wasn't about respecting and honoring the treaties that were made.”

The damage to the local indigenous community during the construction of the canal goes beyond displacement. An analysis by Barry found “racially motivated violence caused environmental destruction, migration, starvation, and a death toll up to 55.5% of their population, depopulating, damaging, and enabling successive thefts of the lands that would later carry the Erie Canal.”

Historically, the Haudenosaunee and other Indigenous American populations' perspectives regarding the Erie Canal have been excluded, Barry said, which has led to inaccurate representations of the canal’s impact.

“We're like 200 years into reinforcing the same understanding of the Erie Canal, which many people have been taught since they were children. But I think it's important to acknowledge who is shaping these narratives,” Barry said. “Whiteness has shaped the way the Erie Canal history is being discussed, and it's time to bring in different perspectives and center different ideas, specifically listening to the people whose land the Erie Canal trespasses.”

450

illegal leases issued by 1870 by New York State going against federal agreements with the Seneca.

Source: Dispossession of the Haudenosaunee

Rather than glorify the canal, researchers said space should be made to fully contextualize its history. For indigenous communities, reclamation of land overtaken by canal construction requires continual effort.

“You have the families that stayed on the 32 acres in Oneida. You have the families that came back from Onondaga that stay here. You have the families that are still coming back,” Powless said. “200 years later, the Cayuga are still working to go back to their homelands.”

Continued Displacement: I-81 and Syracuse’s 15th Ward

Late Syracuse University professor of African American history Otey Scruggs characterized Syracuse’s 15th Ward as “a refuge from discrimination.” Shaped by segregation, 8 in 9 Black Americans in Syracuse resided in the close-knit neighborhood of almost 4,000 by 1950.

The 15th Ward was home to the first Black-owned record store in Syracuse, Record City Radio. A four-minute walk away was Grant Malone’s Barber Shop. Parallel to Almond Street, you could find Schor’s Meats. And on the south side of Townsend Street stood Little Harlem restaurant – an institution “where old friends meet,” and frequenters can “dance, dine, [and] frolic,” according to restaurant advertisements.

Not 20 years later, these businesses no longer existed. The livelihoods extinguished, the buildings once called home demolished, and the thousands of people and families that lived there uprooted with a big red “X” on their door.

Interstate-81 now stands on the site of this dismantled community. And generationally, many of the families are still forced to live in poverty. The descendants of those displaced grow up with health implications like asthma and lung function impairment due to the air pollution created by the highway.

I-81 is one example of a project that historically faced resistance. White organizers in the 1950s lobbied state politicians to save the Erie Canal Museum – an institution that, at the time, solely recognized the positive attributions of the canal – from demolition tied to I-81. The 15th Ward, however, was not considered deserving of the same salvage.

Syracuse's Lost Community

Researchers are studying the generational trauma they say continues in canal communities. That includes in places the canal no longer exists. These photos show aerial views of downtown Syracuse during the building of Interstates 81 and 690, which demolished the 15th Ward and displaced its predominantly Black community. In 1950, almost 90% of Black residents in Syracuse lived in the 15th Ward. As a result of a slew of urban renewal projects and Interstate-81 construction from 1964 to 1969 (shown in the photos below), the city razed most of the buildings in the Ward and displaced thousands of families.

Before Construction

During Construction

After Construction

Photos courtesy of the Erie Canal Museum.

Dana Olesch, a Ph.D. candidate in Syracuse University’s department of anthropology, studies the 15th Ward, mapping the neighborhood with census data. Olesch said recognition of the continual upheaval of marginalized communities is integral to Syracuse’s historical narrative.

“[Removing] the uncomfortable parts really does a disservice for not only like, you know, our current understanding, but also our future understanding of the canal and the legacy that continues to have,” Olesch said.

This devaluation of Black life often goes unrecognized by the mainstream record, Olesch said. Instead, structures like the Erie Canal are celebrated. But Olesch said there’s danger in this glamorization: It doesn’t encapsulate the lived experience of historically marginalized populations.

“Most people who, you know, were white, who had money, who had influence within the city are not going to be living on the canal,” she said. Because of this, the area was targeted by the development of institutions like hospitals.

“This land was viewed as kind of this empty space that those with the power and influence in Syracuse could just kind of go and take over,” Olesch said.

Destruction of communities for the construction of the Erie Canal is not only parallel to the destruction of the 15th Ward, but rather a “continuation,” according to Olesch.

“Those who are most privileged within society try to use history as a way of legitimizing where they stand in society today and try to say, it's always been good,” Olesch said, “when in reality, history is messy.”

Jordan Scott, assistant archivist at the Onondaga Historical Association, acknowledged the narrative of tolerance in Upstate New York. In her own work of exhibit curation, she is aware that there can be a divide between versions of history.

“Whiteness has shaped the way the Erie Canal history is being discussed, and it's time to bring in different perspectives and center different ideas, specifically listening to the people whose land the Erie Canal trespasses.”

“The disregard that was historically [present] shows that Upstate New York is not that different from the South during that time,” Scott said. “Yes, it was better in some cases compared to the South … but it wasn't as if Black Americans didn't face discrimination up here.”

Initiating dialogue with others that are resistant to comprehensive historical chronicles can be a feat. Scott finds empathy to be a tool of navigation in this dilemma.

“You have to show that it’s not a stark good and bad,” she said. “You want to show the gray area and allow for peoples’ stories to be there.”

For the Erie Canal Museum, this means expanding the narrative entertained in the institution itself. Plaques with additional context and explicit correction now adorn the walls of exhibits. “What else is true?” the plaques read.

Another plaque recognizing the Museum's shortcomings reads, “There are only five depictions of Black individuals in the Museum.” Below the statement is a reflective question: “Do these representations accurately reflect racial diversity at the time in Syracuse and the canal corridor in general?”

Former museum fellow Barry and her research partner have their own plaque displayed that, upon scanning, will lead visitors to their peer-reviewed study. As the 200th anniversary of the Erie Canal fully opening approaches in 2025, Barry hopes this kind of expansion continues.

“I have a very deep, deep wish and dream for the bicentennial is that we can start getting into more of these deeper conversations that allow us to see each other as human, see each other as people who have made mistakes and we can learn from each other and kind of enter the next century together of this history,” Barry said.