Lake of Betrayal: The Story of Kinzua Dam

Kinzua Dam on the Allegheny River in Pennsylvania was a flashpoint in history for the Seneca Nation of Indians. Completed in 1965 the dam was to mitigate flooding in Pittsburgh 198 miles downriver but the 27-mile reservoir that formed above it inundated vast tracts of the Seneca Indians' ancestral lands forcing their removal in breach of one of the United States' oldest treaties. Set against a backdrop of a federal Indian termination policy pork-barrel politics and undisclosed plans for private hydropower Lake of Betrayal reveals an untold story from American history-a one-sided battle pitting a small Native American nation against some of the strongest political social and commercial forces in the country. Although the Seneca suffered irreplaceable cultural losses the Kinzua crisis became a turning point to build a stronger Seneca Nation.