Maris B. Pierce was born at “Old Town” on the Allegany Reservation in 1811, the son of John Pierce. During his youth, he attended a Quaker school on the reservation. Later he was sent to the Fredonia Academy by his father, and then attended 2 years at the Academy in Homer, New York. After his early education, Pierce went to Thetford, Vermont, to study and prepare for college. In 1836, at the age of 25, he entered Dartmouth College, becoming a part of the first generation of college educated Haudenosaunee. The year before graduating, Pierce was appointed as one of the four Seneca attorneys representing the Tonawanda, Allegany, Cattaraugus, and Buffalo Creek Reservations in Washington, D.C. Pierce fought the Treaty of Buffalo Creek of 1838 and assisted in its renegotiation in 1842. After graduating college, he settled on the Buffalo Creek Reservation and continued his advocacy against the removal of Seneca from their lands.

Norton was a Mohawk Indian.

Pocket diary of a journey taken by the author and several fellow Quakers from Kingswood, NJ to a settlement that is now in Erie County. It provides detailed descriptions of frontier and pioneer life; the social life and customs of native peoples, particularly the Seneca Indians on the Buffalo Creek Reservation. The diary provides many details of the Quaker settlement situated along Eighteen Mile Creek in the Holland Purchase. Original is at the New York State Library.

Includes reservation maps which show names of individual residents