2 NY scholars claim Indian treaty document is fake - NEWS10 ABC: Albany, New York News, Weather, Sports

2 NY scholars claim Indian treaty document is fake

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) - The Onondaga people and other Iroquois nations plan numerous events this year to mark the 400th anniversary of the first treaty between the Iroquois and Europeans.
    
But two upstate scholars say the document being used to support the "Two Row Wampum" renewal campaign is a fake.
    
Onondaga Chief Irving Powless tells the Albany Times Union the document was the actual treaty signed in 1613 and described in an Iroquois wampum belt.
    
But scholars Charles Gehring, William Starna and State Museum director William Fenton published a paper in 1987 debunking the document. They said it was one of many bogus documents produced by a doctor named L.G. Van Loon.
    
Andrew Mager, a planner of the anniversary events, says the important thing isn't the document but the principle of peoples living in parallel and in friendship.