The Covenant Chain was a series of alliances and treaties involving the Iroquois Confederacy (Haudenosaunee), the British colonies

British North America

British North America is a historical term. It consisted of the colonies and territories of the British Empire in continental North America after the end of the American Revolutionary War and the recognition of American independence in 1783.At the start of the Revolutionary War in 1775 the British...

 of North America

North America

North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...

, and a number of other Indian tribes. Their councils and subsequent treaties concerned colonial settlement, trade, and acts of violence between the colonists and Indian tribes from the Colony of Virginia to New England

New England

New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...

.

History

The Covenant Chain is embodied in the Two Row Wampum, and has its earliest roots in agreements negotiated between Dutch settlers

Dutch colonization of the Americas

Dutch trading posts and plantations in the Americas precede the much wider known colonization activities of the Dutch in Asia. Whereas the first Dutch fort in Asia was built in 1600 , the first forts and settlements on the Essequibo river in Guyana and on the Amazon date from the 1590s...

 in New Netherland

New Netherland

New Netherland, or Nieuw-Nederland in Dutch, was the 17th-century colonial province of the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands on the East Coast of North America. The claimed territories were the lands from the Delmarva Peninsula to extreme southwestern Cape Cod...

 and the Iroquois early in the 17th century. When the English took over New Netherland and established the Province of New York

Province of New York

The Province of New York was an English and later British crown territory that originally included all of the present U.S. states of New York, New Jersey, Delaware and Vermont, along with inland portions of Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Maine, as well as eastern Pennsylvania...

, they renewed these agreements. In the mid 1670s New York's Governor Sir Edmund Andros

Edmund Andros

Sir Edmund Andros was an English colonial administrator in North America. Andros was known most notably for his governorship of the Dominion of New England during most of its three-year existence. He also governed at various times the provinces of New York, East and West Jersey, Virginia, and...

 negotiated the signing of several treaties that expanded the number of tribes and colonies involved:

1. A 1676 treaty between the Mohawk nation
   Mohawk nation
   Mohawk are the most easterly tribe of the Iroquois confederation. They call themselves Kanien'gehaga, people of the place of the flint...
   
    and the colonies of Massachusetts Bay
   Massachusetts Bay Colony
   The Massachusetts Bay Colony was an English settlement on the east coast of North America in the 17th century, in New England, situated around the present-day cities of Salem and Boston. The territory administered by the colony included much of present-day central New England, including portions...
   
    and Connecticut
   Connecticut Colony
   The Connecticut Colony or Colony of Connecticut was an English colony located in British America that became the U.S. state of Connecticut. Originally known as the River Colony, it was organized on March 3, 1636 as a haven for Puritan noblemen. After early struggles with the Dutch, the English...
   
    which ended King Philip's War
   King Philip's War
   King Philip's War, sometimes called Metacom's War, Metacomet's War, or Metacom's Rebellion, was an armed conflict between Native American inhabitants of present-day southern New England and English colonists and their Native American allies in 1675–76. The war is named after the main leader of the...
   
    in New England
   New England
   New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...
   
   ; it also governed relations between the Iroquois and a number of other tribes, including the Mahican
   Mahican
   The Mahican are an Eastern Algonquian Native American tribe, originally settling in the Hudson River Valley . After 1680, many moved to Stockbridge, Massachusetts. During the early 1820s and 1830s, most of the Mahican descendants migrated westward to northeastern Wisconsin...
   
   s of the Hudson River
   Hudson River
   The Hudson is a river that flows from north to south through eastern New York. The highest official source is at Lake Tear of the Clouds, on the slopes of Mount Marcy in the Adirondack Mountains. The river itself officially begins in Henderson Lake in Newcomb, New York...
   
   , and the Nipmuc, Mohegan, and Massachusett of New England.
2. A 1677 treaty between the Five Nations of the Iroquois and Delawares (Lenape
   Lenape
   The Lenape are an Algonquian group of Native Americans of the Northeastern Woodlands. They are also called Delaware Indians. As a result of the American Revolutionary War and later Indian removals from the eastern United States, today the main groups live in Canada, where they are enrolled in the...
   
   ), on one side, and the colonies of Virginia and Maryland
   Province of Maryland
   The Province of Maryland was an English and later British colony in North America that existed from 1632 until 1776, when it joined the other twelve of the Thirteen Colonies in rebellion against Great Britain and became the U.S...
   
    on the other, to obtain peace between those colonies and the Susquehannock
   Susquehannock
   The Susquehannock people were Iroquoian-speaking Native Americans who lived in areas adjacent to the Susquehanna River and its tributaries from the southern part of what is now New York, through Pennsylvania, to the mouth of the Susquehanna in Maryland at the north end of the Chesapeake Bay...
   
   s and Iroquois.

In these agreements the colonies agreed that negotiations would generally be held at Albany, New York

Albany, New York

Albany is the capital city of the U.S. state of New York, the seat of Albany County, and the central city of New York's Capital District. Roughly north of New York City, Albany sits on the west bank of the Hudson River, about south of its confluence with the Mohawk River...

 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

Francis Howard, 5th Baron Howard of Effingham

-External links:* from the Executive Journals of the Council of Colonial Virginia, Vol. I, June 11, 1680 - June 22, 1699....

 used the phrase "convenant 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

Mohawk nation

Mohawk are the most easterly tribe of the Iroquois confederation. They call themselves Kanien'gehaga, people of the place of the flint...

, claiming to have been cheated out of lands rightfully theirs, declared that the chain was broken.

Howard Zinn

Howard Zinn

Howard Zinn was an American historian, academic, author, playwright, and social activist. Before and during his tenure as a political science professor at Boston University from 1964-88 he wrote more than 20 books, which included his best-selling and influential A People's History of the United...

, in his "A People's History of the United States

A People's History of the United States

Chapter 7, "As Long As Grass Grows or Water Runs" discusses 19th century conflicts between the U.S. government and Native Americans and Indian removal, especially during the administrations of Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren....

" notes:
The Albany Congress

Albany Congress

The Albany Congress, also known as the Albany Conference and "The Conference of Albany" or "The Conference in Albany", was a meeting of representatives from seven of the thirteen British North American colonies in 1754...

 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

French and Indian War

The French and Indian War is the common American name for the war between Great Britain and France in North America from 1754 to 1763. In 1756, the war erupted into the world-wide conflict known as the Seven Years' War and thus came to be regarded as the North American theater of that 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

Sir William Johnson, 1st Baronet

Sir William Johnson, 1st Baronet was an Anglo-Irish official of the British Empire. As a young man, Johnson came to the Province of New York to manage an estate purchased by his uncle, Admiral Peter Warren, which was located amidst the Mohawk, one of the Six Nations of the Iroquois League...

, 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

Metaphor

A metaphor is a literary figure of speech that uses an image, story or tangible thing to represent a less tangible thing or some intangible quality or idea; e.g., "Her eyes were glistening jewels." Metaphor may also be used for any rhetorical figures of speech that achieve their effects via...

 of a silver chain holding the English sailing ship to the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Tree of Peace

Tree of Peace

The Tree of Peace is a symbol of peace in the Iroquois culture. Tree are important symbols of peace in Iroquois tradition and in the historical record of diplomacy between the Iroquois and Westerners. Weapons would be buried under a tree to seal a peace agreement. A tree might even be uprooted to...

 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.