Covenant Chain - History

History

The Covenant Chain is embodied in the Two Row Wampum, and has its earliest roots in agreements negotiated between Dutch settlers in New Netherland and the Iroquois early in the 17th century. When the English took over New Netherland and established the Province of New York, they renewed these agreements. In the mid 1670s New York's Governor Sir Edmund Andros negotiated the signing of several treaties that expanded the number of tribes and colonies involved:

1. A 1676 treaty between the Mohawk nation and the colonies of Massachusetts Bay and Connecticut which ended King Philip's War in New England; it also governed relations between the Iroquois and a number of other tribes, including the Mahicans of the Hudson River, and the Nipmuc, Mohegan, and Massachusett of New England.
2. A 1677 treaty between the Five Nations of the Iroquois and Delawares (Lenape), on one side, and the colonies of Virginia and Maryland on the other, to obtain peace between those colonies and the Susquehannocks and Iroquois.

In these agreements the colonies agreed that negotiations would generally be held at Albany, New York under the auspices of the New York governor. As a result, according to historian Daniel Richter, "Iroquois and New Yorkers played dominant but seldom dictatorial roles" in the maintenance of these treaties.

At a council meeting in 1684, Virginia Governor Lord Effingham used the phrase "covenant chain" to describe these agreements. The metaphor was continued by a Seneca speaker, who said "Let the Chaine be Kept Cleane and bright as Silver that the great tree that is can not break it a peeces if it should fall upon itt." Later colonial administrators assumed that these treaties granted the English sovereign control over the Iroquois and other tribes involved in the chain.

In a Covenant Chain council that took place in 1692, the Iroquois leaders asserted:

You say that you are our father and I am your son...

...We will not be like Father and Son, but like Brothers.

The Covenant Chain continued until 1753, when Mohawks, claiming to have been cheated out of lands rightfully theirs, declared that the chain was broken.

Howard Zinn, in his "A People's History of the United States" notes:

Before the Revolution, the Indians had been subdued by force in Virginia and in New England. Elsewhere, they had worked out modes of coexistence with the colonies. But around 1750, with the colonial population growing fast, the pressure to move westward onto new land set the stage for conflict with the Indians. Land agents from the East began appearing in the Ohio River valley, on the territory of a confederation of tribes called the Covenant Chain, for which the Iroquois were spokesmen. In New York, through intricate swindling, 800,000 acres of Mohawk land were taken, ending the period of Mohawk-New York friendship. Chief Hendrick of the Mohawks is recorded speaking his bitterness to Governor George Clinton and the provincial council of New York in 1753:

Brother when we came here to relate our Grievances about our Lands, we expected to have something done for us, and we have told you that the Covenant Chain of our Forefathers was like to be broken, and brother you tell us that we shall be redressed at Albany, but we know them so well, we will not trust to them, for they are no people but Devils so ... as soon as we come home we will send up a Belt of Wampum to our Brothers the other 5 Nations to acquaint them the Covenant Chain is broken between you and us. So brother you are not to expect to hear of me any more, and Brother we desire to hear no more of you. Source: Zinn; "A Kind of Revolution," from "A People's History of the United States".

The Albany Congress was called to help repair the chain. Colonial delegates failed to work together to improve the diplomatic relationship with the Iroquois, a serious shortcoming on the eve of the French and Indian War. As a result, the British government took the responsibility of Native American diplomacy out of the hands of the colonies and established the British Indian Department in 1755.

In a 1755 council with the Iroquois, Sir William Johnson, Superintendent of the Northern Department, renewed and restated the chain. He called their agreement the "Covenant Chain of love and friendship", saying that the chain has been attached to the immovable mountains and that every year the British would meet with the Iroquois to "strengthen and brighten" the chain.

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.