When the French Jesuit missionary Joseph de La Roche Daillon reached this area in 1627, the Oil Springs were held by the now defunct Wenro, an Iroquoian-speaking tribe.

The Wenro abandoned the area in 1639, hoping to retrench with their allies the Huron further northwest, as their eastern neighbors, the Seneca of the Iroquois Confederacy, were attacking these tribes and rapidly conquering territory in order to expand their hunting grounds for the fur trade.

In retaliation, the Sullivan Expedition organized by American rebels swept through Iroquois country in western New York, destroying more than 40 Seneca villages, and their associated crops and winter stores.

In addition, due to the ferocity of the war in New York, most residents wanted the Indians expelled even though two nations had supported the rebels.

In the 1850s, the Seneca began a case to evict squatters (including Stanley Clark, Philonus Pattison, Benjamin Chamberlain, William Gallagher, and future New York governor Horatio Seymour) from the Oil Springs Reservation, in order to restore control and use to the tribe.

Thanks to the efforts of influential Seneca leader Governor Blacksnake, the state appeals court ruled in the tribe's favor.

[7] According to the United States Census Bureau, the Allegany County portion of the Indian reservation has a total area of 0.59 square miles (1.5 km2).

[8] The Cattaraugus County portion of the Indian reservation, in the Town of Ischua, has a total area of 0.37 square miles (0.96 km2), all land.