ONONDAGA NATION—Every spring a United Parcel Service truck pulls up to the log Long House beside the lacrosse field at the Onondaga Nation and drops off bolts of cloth—modern remnants of a colonial treaty between the Indians and the white man's government.

The quality of the cloth has been declining for years. This year it was so bad the chiefs threatened to return it to the federal government. About 2,100 yards of cheesecloth—loose-weave gauzy cotton named for its use as a cheese wrap—was substituted for $4,500 worth of clothing, domestic animals and farm implements called for in Article VI of the Canandaigua Treaty signed in 1794. The cloth is one payment made annually for land on which Central New Yorkers live. It's one of the few treaty obligations still honored.

The state makes small payments, too. The Dept. of Social Services makes annual cash payments and shipments of salt, a holdover from the days when salt was mined from Indian land.

For the Indians, the treaty obligations are a practical part of life. For the Bureau of Indian Affairs, they're more symoblic.

"I remember when we were children we would go to the Long House and there were piles of beautiful calico cloth," said Helen Powless, an Onondaga grandmother and lifelong resident of the territory south of Nedrow. "Then we would all get new clothes."

The amount of cloth has shrunk since 1794 because the price set in the treaty has no cost-of-living clause. If this had been written in the treaty, the amount of cloth given today should be worth $72,000, according to Syracuse University economics professor Jim Price.

Several years ago the cloth arrived, and it wasn't calico. Undyed muslin was substituted by Interior Dept.'s Bureau of Indian Affairs. The BIA is replacing this year's cheesecloth with undyed muslin.

"It was awful," Seneca Chief Bernard Henry said of the cheesecloth. "What can you make out of cloth like that?"

Dean White, Syracuse regional liason for the BIA explained. "One of our procurement officers in Arlington, Va. shopped around and tried to get more cloth for the money," he said. "She thought it would be the same quality as previous years, but it wasn't."

A purchase order was signed in Sept. for 2,100 yards of muslin replacement to be divided according to population and delivered to Onondaga, Oneida, Cayuga and Seneca nations, White said. "But knowing how slowly government works, I don't know when it will arrive," he said. BIA won't ask for the cheesecloth back, White said.

Leon Shenandoah, an Onondaga chief, chairman of the Iroquois confederacy, said the apparent lack of respect for the treaty is nothing new. He leads the six Indian nations joined under a common consitution with their capital at Onondaga. "We used to get much better cloth. You could make shirts out of it, anything you wanted. They are always trying to take from us what is ours," he said. "This is one of the only ways they hold to the treaties and then they do this."

But that doesn't mean the treaties aren't important to Shenandoah and others. "As long as we keep getting that cloth, they are honoring the treaty, even if they don't honor the other parts," he said, adding Indians hope someday the boundaries set by the treaty will still be honored. Shenandoah said he believes the government is afraid of the power of the treaties, signed to last forever.

"In the past, the elders were invited to Washington for the president's inauguration because the treaty says there will be peace and friendship between the chiefs and presidents," he said. "But the last time they only invited us to one of the parties—not the real one—so I didn't go. They don't want us to go to the president and say, 'What about the treaties?'"

Onondaga chief Irving Powless, Jr. said in 1954 a representative of then-Vice President Richard Nixon approached the tribes involved in the treaty and offered more than $1 million to end the annual cloth and other obligations of the treaty. "But we wouldn't take that money," he said. "Whatever I have and whatever I see I have to preserve for my great- grandchildren--not just mine, but all of them. We have to think of seven generations to come, and to them a treaty of peace and friendship is more important than money would be."

Evelyn Pickett of the BIA office in Washington said although there isn't a federal record of the 1954 meetings, they could have occurred. "That was a time when the federal government was very much interested in terminating treaty obligations," she said.

When Powless talks treaties, his first question is, "Who are these treaties between? They are between you and me," he said. "Individuals, not governments. Your people have to realize, the way Indians do, that maintaining the treaties is up to all of us."

Oren Lyons, faithkeeper of the Onondaga Nation, offered another perspective on the treaties. "Most people think treaties are about the white man giving Indians something when we really were the givers," he said. "White people came to us, and we gave our land."

Powless explained an Indian view of the land grabbing that went on in the 1700s and 1800s. "It would be like you and I going into an apartment house today and finding an empty apartment and setting up house there. But what happens when the landlord comes?" he said. "White people came on to our lands and thought yf we weren't there that day that it was not our land. They filled up all the rooms in the house of the Haudenosaunee, the people of the Long House."

Powless talked about the treaties this week in his log home living room on Onondaga Nation. At one point he jumped up and pulled down from a crossbeam a grammar school map of New York in 1763. It shows settlements of the Dutch and British along the eastern side of New York and the entire central and west portions as Indian lands.

"The whole idea of the treaties was not to keep the Indians in, but to keep the white people out. But the white people kept on coming into our territory," he said, gesturing across the map. "They would write to Albany for a charter and then circuit judges started showing up and the territory would be lost. But they were just inside an empty room. And just because a room is empty doesn't mean it isn't owned."

Powless keeps copies of treaties in his home computer—right at his fingertips to print out and refer to. One treaty signed with New York in 1795 calls for delivery of salt to the Onondaga Nation. Because, according to White, the lands ceded to the Indian nation in the treaty were used for salt production, the treaty stipulates that the salt be replaced by the government.

Sylvia Coppola, Indian Affairs assistant with NYS Dept. of Social Services in Buffalo, said this year's salt delivery cost between $1000 and $1,500. The price tag has jumped considerably since 1950—when the cost was $9, Coppola said. The delivery also occurs in the spring. The modern equivalent of 150 bushels of table salt is dropped off, packaged in bags, at the Long House. It is divided among nation residents. Coppola said the treaty calling for the salt was signed July 28, 1795. In 1817, another treaty was signed, increasing the amount of salt from 100 bushels to 150 bushels, Coppola said.

Small amounts are also paid to the Iroquois, based on treaties that took their lands. Based on the 1795 and 1817 treaties, the Onondaga Nation recieves annuities that this year amounted to $2,430. That's $1.65 per person. The Cayugas and the Western band of Cayugas split an annuity of $2,300, for treaties signed in 1789 and 1795, according to social service records. Mohawks at Akwesasne, or St. Regis, recieved a payment of $2,131.67. The Seneca Nation recieved $500 this year for a treaty signed in 1815.

But even though payments on state treaties are being made, Indians contend the treaties are not valid ones. "The non-intercourse act was passed by the U.S. Congress in 1790 prohibiting states from making treaties," Powless said. "But NY kept right on doing it."

The concept of a treaty signed forever seems to be a foreign to the governments, Powless said. "They think just because something is old it's not in force anymore. Well, we have been here for 70,000 years. A 200 year old treaty is something new to us."