Walter Taylor, social worker and community consultant, was born in Colorado in 1918. He grew up in Massachusetts and received a bachelor's degree in physics from Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine, and a master's degree in Human Development from the University of Chicago.
Taylor began his professional career in social service by working for the State of Minnesota as a consultant in child welfare helping emotionally disturbed and blind children; he eventually became the Assistant Director of Services for the Blind. In 1958 after ten years in Minnesota, Taylor joined the staff of Wisconsin's Public Welfare Department, Division of Children and Youth. For a 16-county area that included two Indian reservations, he served as a community consultant helping communities recognize and solve their local problems.
In 1960 Taylor began working for the Quakers and became more involved with Indian groups. As a national representative for the American Indian Program of the American Friends Service Committee, he traveled throughout the country and consulted with project staff and committees on their efforts to assist various American Indian communities. During this time he also worked part-time for the Indian Committee of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of Friends assisting the Seneca Nation of Indians to formulate policy, plans, and proposals in response to the construction of the Kinzua Dam in Pennsylvania. (Additional information on the dam follows this biographical sketch.) On September 1, 1962 he began work as a full-time representative of the Indian Committee, and served in this position until 1965. He continued in an advisory capacity until 1966.
Taylor then returned to Wisconsin where he became the Director of a VISTA training program at the University of Wisconsin-Extension preparing volunteers for service on Indian reservations. In 1968 he left for Canada where Taylor at this writing (1976) is currently employed by the Children's Aid Society of Vancouver, British Columbia.
History of the Kinzua Dam
The construction of the Kinzua Dam, its effect on the Seneca Indians, and Taylor's active involvement comprises a major portion of this collection. A brief history follows in order to aid the researcher.
Authorized in 1938, the Kinzua Dam was a federal project designed to provide a comprehensive flood control and low water regulation system for the Allegheny Valley. Built on the Allegheny River just above Warren, Pennsylvania, its construction created a 27-mile-long lake reservoir that flooded 10,000 acres or 1/3 of the Allegheny Indian Reservation in New York State, home of the Seneca Indians. Many people denounced its construction as a violation of the 1794 Treaty of Canadaigua (Pickering Treaty), in which the United States government had originally ceded this land to the Senecas. In addition it flooded 3/4 of a 908-acre land grant given to the Cornplanter Indians, descendants of Chief Cornplanter, an independent Seneca, by the Pennsylvania state legislature in 1791. Legal efforts to stop construction ended in June 1959 when the U.S. Supreme Court allowed a 1958 U.S. Court of Appeals' decision to stand; the lower court had ruled that Congress did have the right to authorize the construction of the dam.
In 1960 ground was broken. Senecas and other interested parties opposed to the dam still tried to halt further construction. Particularly active were the Quakers who assisted the Senecas and Cornplanters with planning, dealing with government agencies, obtaining technical and legal information, and distributing information to the general public.
Those opposed to the dam organized a national campaign to exert pressure on the President and Congress to stop its construction and to consider an alternative engineering study by Arthur E. Morgan.
When their efforts failed, they shifted the thrust of their activities to persuade Congress to appropriate sufficient funds to compensate the Senecas for flooding reservation land. After considering various recommendations, the 88th Congress appropriated $15 million for the Senecas as reparations for their relocation, rehabilitation, and social and economic development. Although the Senecas still owned the land, the government had purchased the right to flood portions of it. The Cornplanter Indians had been dealt with separately; the government purchased their land outright at $200 an acre.
The Seneca Nation established its own priorities for using the money. The plans included building two new towns in New York, Jimerstown and Steamburg Quaker Bridge, for the relocation of 145 families displaced by the Kinzua Dam, a project which involved the construction of access roads, water supplies, and housing; establishing an educational scholarship fund for their young people; and creating a public recreation project which would include motels, restaurants, and recreational facilities on an artificial lake plus the construction of a Williamsburg-type pre-Columbian Indian village. In August, 1964, the Forest Service was chosen to develop a master recreational plan and to administer the project with the aid of a special advisory council which included members of the Seneca Nation.
