The Covenant Chain was a series of alliances and treaties developed during the seventeenth century, primarily between the Iroquois Confederacy (Haudenosaunee) and the British colonies of North America, with other Native American tribes added. First developed in the New York area at a time of violence and social instability for the colonies and Native Americans, the English and Iroquois councils and subsequent treaties were based on supporting peace and stability to preserve trade. They addressed issues of colonial settlement, and tried to suppress violence between the colonists and Indian tribes, as well as among the tribes, from New England to the Colony of Virginia.
History
The Covenant Chain is embodied in the Two Row Wampum of the Iroquois, known as the people of the longhouse - Haudenosaunee. It was based in agreements negotiated between Dutch settlers in New Netherland (present-day New York) and the Five Nations of the Iroquois (or Haudenosaunee) early in the 17th century. Their emphasis was on trade with the Native Americans. As the historian Bernard Bailyn has noted, all the colonies, Dutch and English, were first established to create profits.
Through the Beaver Wars in the seventeenth century, the Iroquois conquered other tribes and territories for new hunting grounds and to take captives to add to their populations depleted from warfare and new European infectious diseases. The tribes in New England suffered even more depletion. The Iroquois expanded their influence, conquering or displacing other tribes from Maritime Canada west to the Mississippi Valley, and from the Canadian Shield south to the Ohio Valley.
When the English took over New Netherland in 1664 and established the Province of New York, they renewed these agreements. Conflicts erupted in New England in King Philip's War in 1675, "the most destructive war" in seventeenth-century North America, in which more than 600 colonists and 3,000 Indians died. Nearly at the same time was Bacon's Rebellion in Virginia. Both resulted in widespread suffering and loss among Native Americans and colonists.
Because of the standing relationship with the Iroquois and the extensive influence of the Haudenosaunee, in August 1675, New York's Governor Sir Edmund Andros asked them for help in ending regional conflicts of the time in New England and the Chesapeake. He worked with the Onondaga leader Daniel Garacontié.
The term "Covenant Chain" was derived from the metaphor of a silver chain holding the English sailing ship to the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Tree of Peace in the Onondaga Nation. A three-link silver chain was made to symbolize their first agreement. The links represent "Peace, Friendship and Respect" between the Haudenosaunee and the Crown. It was also the first written treaty to use such phrases as:
...as long as the sun shines upon the earth; as long as the waters flow; as long as the grass grows green, peace will last.
Treaties
They negotiated the signing of several treaties that expanded the number of tribes and colonies involved: A 1676 treaty between the Mohawk nation and the colonies of Massachusetts Bay and Connecticut which ended King Philip's War in New England, as the Mohawk denied Metacom gunpowder and attacked his winter camp. It also addressed relations between the Iroquois and a number of other tribes, including the Mahican of the Hudson River, and the Nipmuc, Mohegan, and Massachusett of New England. A 1677 treaty between the Five Nations of the Iroquois and the Delaware (Lenape), on one side, and the colonies of Virginia and Maryland, allied with the Susquehannock on the other, to obtain peace.
Many of the Susquehannock migrated north into western New York, re-settling with the Seneca and Onondaga of the Iroquois.
The treaties marked a new era in colonial history, in which the Chesapeake had nearly eighty years of peace. New York and the Haudenosaunee became the focus of English Indian policy. In the mid-eighteenth century, Sir William Johnson, Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Northern Department and based in central New York, had great influence and was knighted for his service. Through the early decades of the eighteenth century, New England continued to have conflicts with New France and its Abenaki allies, leading to years of raiding by both sides and ransoming of captives.
In these agreements, the colonies agreed to hold negotiations generally at Albany, New York, under the auspices of the New York governor, as the covenant had first been established there. As a result, according to the historian Daniel Richter, "Iroquois and New Yorkers played dominant but seldom dictatorial roles" in the maintenance of these treaties.