"The Code of Handsome Lake, the Seneca Prophet"

The Indian Committee of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (PYM) began in 1795 and continues at the present time. Previous to this, Philadelphia area Friends formed the Friendly Association for Regaining and Preserving Peace with the Indians by Pacific Measures. The "Friendly Association" grew out of the violence of the French-Indian War of the mid-1700s and was active as a formal organization from around 1755 to 1764.

Work of the Indian Committee included teaching Native American people and their children, monitoring legislation affecting First Nations, and helping them combat frauds and abuses. The Committee worked primarily with the Seneca Nation on the Allegany and Cattaraugus Reservations in New York. Earliest work was with Cornplanter on both sides of the border in Pennsylvania and New York. In 1798, Cornplanter (Gaiänt'wakê) invited five Quaker missionaries to the Seneca Nation to instruct the members in husbandry and to establish a school. This group included three young men, Henry Simmons, Halliday Jackson, and Joel Swayne, as well as two Quaker elders, John Pierce and Joshua Sharpless. The men established a mission, including a model farm and a school, which was run by Henry Simmons beginning in the fall of 1798. Handsome Lake (Sganyodaiyo), Cornplanter's half brother, was exposed to Quakerism through these missionaries.

Work was also centered at Quaker Bridge ("Tunesassa"), New York, where Friends established a boarding school in 1852 adjacent to the Allegany Reservation. Friends Indian School operated as a boarding school for Native American children until 1938. The completion of the Kinzua Dam (Allegheny Reservoir) led to the flooding of much of the Allegany Reservation and the evacuation of Seneca families. Philadelphia Friends were active in helping the Seneca Nation fight the construction of the Kinzua Dam.

In 2022, the Committee's name was changed to the Quaker Fund for Indigenous Communities Granting Group.

Source: Philadelphia Yearly Meeting Records: Quaker Fund for Indigenous Communities and its predecessors (Indian Committee, Friendly Association) (1795- ) finding aid (QM.Phy.838)

Handsome Lake, also known as Sganyodaiyo (1735-1815), was born circa 1735, in a Seneca village in present day New York. He was a Seneca religious leader and reformer among the Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy and was prominent in the alliance of New York tribes. He was the half brother of Cornplanter, a Seneca chief. Handsome Lake played an important role in reviving the traditional religion among the Six Nations. His preaching combined traditional Haudenosaunee (People of the Longhouse) religious beliefs with a revised code meant to revive traditional cultural values. This code was later published as "The Code of Handsome Lake" by Arthur C. Parker. He died in 1815.

Arthur Caswell Parker (1881-1955) was born in 1881 on the Cattaraugus Reservation of the Seneca Nation of New York, the son of Frederick Ely Parker, a mixed race Seneca, and Geneva Hortense Griswold, a woman of Scots-English descent. He was an anthropologist who at the beginning of the 20th Century studied the Iroquois. Highly respected both by academics and the Iroquois, he wrote numerous works on their material culture, linguistics, folklore, archeology, and ethnology. He was the director of the Rochester Museum of Arts and Sciences from 1924 to 1945. In 1935, he was elected first president of the Society for American Archaeology. In 1944, Parker helped to found the National Congress of American Indians. He died in 1955.