Thanks to the efforts of influential Seneca leader Governor Blacksnake, the state appeals court ruled in the tribe's favor. The reservation was returned to the Seneca in 1861, two years after Blacksnake died. Blacksnake, who had attended the negotiations of the Treaty of Big Tree, testified in court that he and Joseph Ellicott had surveyed the Oil Spring lands and that omission of the lands from the treaty was a mistake. He had a map copied by the Holland Land Company in which the Oil Spring reservation was marked similarly to the other lands of the Seneca.