The Covenant Chain

Treaties between Colonial powers, Colonies, States or the federal government and Native tribes came and went as whims and circumstances dictated.  The most enduring set of treaties, though, were those referred to as the Great Covenant Chain, binding first the Dutch and later the British to trade and mutual aid agreements with the Iroquois/Haudenosaunee and later extending to other tribes and governmental entities. 

History often teaches that many colonists came to this country seeking freedom of some kind.  While that may be true for individuals, the companies and governments that backed these colonies were looking for something else, profit.  One of the more lucrative items of trade in the seventeenth century was beaver.  People in Europe and America valued beaver pelts for their beauty, durability and water resistance, which was useful for hats.  They also realized that it was better to let the Natives, who knew how to hunt and trap beaver do the working end while trading for items they found useful.  Natives were more willing to allow some settlement on their land if they were realizing something from the arrangement and trade goods were that benefit.  This was particularly true of guns and lead to make ammunition, which allowed them greater efficiency in hunting.

The first in the series of treaties that became known as the covenant chain was the Two Row Wampum Treaty, entered into in 1613 between the Dutch and the most powerful of the Iroquois tribes, the Mohawk.  This treaty gave the Dutch exclusive rights to the beaver trade and made the Mohawk and other Iroquois tribes their main suppliers.  This strained relations with other tribes in the area, leading to the Beaver Wars.  During these wars, the Iroquois gained advantage over other tribes who had been decimated by warfare and disease, eventually controlling an area from Maritime Canada to the Mississippi Valley, to the Canadian Shield and Ohio Valley.  As Dutch influence in North America waned, the British stepped into the vacuum, becoming the new trade partner and supplier of the Natives.  They renewed the Two Row Wampum terms in 1664.

During King Phillip's War in New England in 1675, and a smaller rebellion in Virginia which we'll get to in future posts, the Iroquois and primarily the Mohawk allied with the British against uprising tribes.  The Royal Governor at the time worked closely with Onondaga leader Daniel Karakontie to forge a closer alliance between the Iroquois and the British.  Meanwhile, leaders in Massachusetts and Connecticut, grateful to the Mohawk for their help in putting down King Phillip's rebellion, entered

into a treaty which also addressed relations between the Iroquois and neighboring tribes as well as relations between the British and (then) Five Nations.  This treaty was another one of the early treaties which contained standard phraseology such as "as long as the sun shines on the earth", "as long as the water flows", and "as long as the green grass grows,", etc., that became almost boilerplate in Native treaties.

A further treaty in 1677 bound the Five Nations and the Lenape on one side, in a trade, settlement and peace accord with the people of Virginia and Maryland.  Council meetings between all sides were frequently held in Albany, New York and during once such council in 1684, the Governor of New York used the phrase Covenant Chain to describe the agreement.  A Seneca speaker carried the thought, stating, "let the chain be kept clean and bright as silver so that a great tree cannot break it to pieces if it falls on it."  Later, a silver chain of three large links, representing Peace, Respect and Friendship was made and presented to tribal leaders. 

The Covenant Chain treaties continued in force until 1753 when Iroquois leaders, fed up with encroaching settlement on their land, confronted Colonial officials in Albany.  They indicated that the Covenant Chain was broken and had very concrete demands to mend it.  Not only were the British to take a hand in removing squatters off Native land, but they were to appoint a man the Natives trusted, Sir William Johnson, to represent their interests.  The British responded by removing the power of the individual Colonies to negotiate Indian affairs and by appointing Johnson as the first superintendent of the new British Indian Department.  Johnson worked to reform the Chain in a series of treaties, particularly that of Fort Stanwix in 1768.  The United States became heir to the Covenant Chain relationship in 1794 with the Treaty of Canandaiga, which guaranteed the rights of the Iroquois to the land they then possessed in New York and free access to their relatives in Canada.