Covenant Chain

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 Indian 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.

The Covenant Chain is embodied in the Two Row Wampum of the Iroquois. 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.

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