The Covenant Chain was an alliance between the Iroquois Confederacy and the British colonies of North America. Their councils and subsequent treaties concerned colonial settlement, trade, and acts of violence between the Iroquois and the colonists.

The Covenant Chain got its start in 1677 and 1678 when New York's governor Sir Edmund Andros negotiated the signing of two treaties in which the Iroquois spoke on behalf of the other tribes involved:

1. A treaty between the Iroquois Five Nations and the colonies of Massachusetts Bay and Connecticut which ended King Philip's War in New England;
2. A treaty between 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 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."

Most of these discussions took place in the Mohawk Valley, with local New York colonial leaders acting as the primary representatives of the colonies.

The Covenant Chain continued until 1753, when disgruntled Mohawks declared that the chain was broken. The Albany Congress was called to help repair the chain, but the colonial delegates failed to work together in improving 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, establishing the Indian department in 1755.

In a 1755 council with the Iroquois, Sir William Johnson, Superintendent of the Northern Department, renewed and restated the chain, calling 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 both the English sailing ship and the Iroquois canoe to the Tree of Peace. A three-link silver chain was made to symbolize their first agreement. The links represented "peace and friendship forever". It was also the first written treaty to use such typical Iroquois 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."

References

• Francis Jennings, The Ambiguous Iroquois Empire: The Covenant Chain Confederation of Indian Tribes with English Colonies; W. W. Norton & Company, New York, 1984.

• Alan Taylor, American Colonies: The Settling of North America; Viking/Penguin, New York, 2001.

Native American history | Iroquois