John Abeel III (born between 1732 and 1746–February 18, 1836), known as Gaiänt'wakê (Gyantwachia - ″the planter″) or Kaiiontwa'kon (Kaintwakon - "By What One Plants") in the Seneca language and thus generally known as Cornplanter, is a Seneca war chief and diplomat of the Wolf cla.
As a chief warrior, Cornplanter fights in the French and Indian War and the American Revolutionary War.
In both wars, the Seneca and three other Iroquois nations are allied with the British.
After the war Cornplanter leads negotiations with the United States and is a signatory of the Treaty of Fort Stanwix (1784).
He helps gain Iroquois neutrality during the Northwest Indian War.
In the postwar years, Cornplanter works to learn more about European-American ways and invites Quakers to establish schools in Seneca territory.
Disillusioned by his people's poor reaction to European-American society, he has the schools closed and follows his half-brother Handsome Lake's movement returning to the traditional Seneca way and religion.
The United States government grants him about fifteen hundred acres of former Seneca territory in Pennsylvania in 1796 for "him and his heirs forever", which became known as the Cornplanter Tract.
Still occupied by his descendants and holding his and many of their graves, the tract is planned by the federal government to be flooded as the site of a man-made reservoir after 1965 by completion of the Kinzua Dam on the Allegheny River.
The remains of Cornplanter, his descendants, and an 1866 monument to him are relocated.
Most of the remaining residents are forced to relocate to the Allegany Reservation of the federally recognized Seneca Nation of New York; they lose much of their fertile farmland.
