Cornplanter (1732-1836) was a leading warrior and village leader among the Seneca, one of six nations of the Iroquois Confederacy. He earned his role as leader largely through military command and personal influence, which attracted friends and relatives to live on his reserved lands.

Cornplanter was born sometime between 1732 and 1746, in the village of Conewaugus on the Genesee River in New York, the son of a Seneca woman and a Dutch trader named John Abeel (O'Bail). It should be noted that Lewis Henry Morgan erroneously states that it was Cornplanter's mother who was white rather than his father. This is important in that the Seneca, like other Iroquois people, are matrilineal, reckoning membership in the tribe through their mothers. Cornplanter had two half siblings who were born to his mother and a Seneca father: a brother, Handsome Lake, the Seneca prophet; and a sister who became the mother...