The Covenant Chain

Continued from last week

Maintenance:

The Kayanerekowa provides that the people must meet at regular intervals to reaffirm their commitment to the law and to the peace that it seeks to establish. The same principle holds true for international relations. A chain that is held loosely in the hand or allowed to slip binds no one. A chain that is allowed to rust or become tarnished may break.

To the Iroquois, alliances were dynamic, ongoing relationships, and if they were not kept alive—were not continually improved—friends might turn to enemies over minor differences. Connections, therefore, were constantly being reevaluated, refined, renewed and kept alive in ritual commitment…despite rhetoric, hostilities might arise and alliances were not infrequently broken, but documentary evidence of Iroquois diplomacy is full of efforts to establish, renew, or reestablish peaceful relationships.

(Mary Druke, Linking Arms, in Beyond the Covenant Chain. Pp33) On June 20, 1911, the Secretary of the Confederacy Council at the Grand River Territory, Josiah Hill, wrote to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, asking for an interview that summer “with you and your colleagues that they may further cement and perpetuate the Treaty right granted years ago”. His letter stated:

It is now over one hundred years since a deputation from the Six Nations Indians had the pleasure and privilege of visiting England and conferring with the Imperial authorities, re Treaty Rights of the Covenant of the “Silver Chain, which does not tarnish”, which is emblematic of the relations between the Six Nations and the British Crown,

(National Archives of Canada, RG10, Vol. 3164, F 378.057)

The Secretary of State did not reply. He wrote instead to the Governor General of Canada:

If your Ministers concur I shall be glad if you will inform Chief Hill that I do not consider that the requested interview would serve any useful purpose.

(National Archives of Canada, RG10, Vol. 3164, F. 378,057)

By the twentieth century, the record show that Canadian government authorities had no personal memory or knowledge of the treaties and promises that had been made, and deliberately had no will to find out about them.

It is a matter of some debate whether the British and French of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries understood the reasons behind the forms and procedures of Haudenosaunee councils, or whether they merely understood that “this is the way it is done here”, and complied with the ways of the land. The same debate might surround adherents of any religion: is it essential that they must grasp the theology that surrounds the religion, or that they have simple faith, or just that they understand what is expected of them at each part of the ceremony? Certainly, there exist all three kinds of people in any religion. Equally certainly, the depth of understanding of the European officials who dealt with the Haudenosaunee varied from person to person – but the knowledge of the way to behave and the familiarity with the forms and words, was consistent.

Consistency ---the careful guarding and maintenance of a way of law and knowledge—is a trait of the Confederacy and its people. The same consistency has guided the relations between the Haudenosaunee and the Crown. It is the great strength and perhaps a great weakness of the Haudenosaunee. A strength, because it allows the people and their traditional government to take a stand based on clear principles and well-documented agreements. A weakness, because having a clear and prescribed path to follow prevents “modern” flexibility.

The Covenant Chain relationships provides for direct relations between the Confederacy and the Crown in a specific manner. That is, the path of peace lays directly between the Crown’s representative, the Governor of the colony, the Rotiianeson. For much of the colonial period---from 1664 to 1755---it was the Governor of New York who was the focal point of the British side of the Chain. From 1755 to 1775 it was the Imperial Superintendent-General of Indian Affairs, Sir William Johnson. In the 1780’s and 1790’s, turbulent years, it was often the Governors of Canada, Sir Frederick Haldimand, Lord Simcoe, Lord Dorchester, who personally reaffirmed the relationships. The war of 1812-1814 brought equally high-level involvement by Crown officials.

The nineteenth century saw a gradual diminution of the importance of the Haudenosaunee to the Crown. As the white population of the Canadas increased, and as the threat of invasion from the United States decreased, the Confederacy was increasingly marginalized. The Confederacy continued to seek relations with the more distant Imperial government, recognizing that the interests of the local colonial and provincial governments lay more in acquiring the land than in securing the alliance.

Meanwhile, the Imperial government continued to devolve its powers to Canada, first to provincial governments and then to the federal government. By the 1839’s the focus of the British Indian Department had shifted. Instead of ensuring that potential allies were ready for war, the goal of the Department had become the “civilization” and assimilation of the Indians.

The policy of assimilation, first clearly articulated in the late 1830’s, remained officially in place until about 1970. During that time, the maintenance of the ancient treaty relationships, and the re-polishing of the Covenant Chain, were contrary to Canada’s objectives. By the 1840’s, few Indian Department officers, and no higher officials, could have conducted councils according to Haudenosaunee procedure. By the late 1879’s, with the administration of Indian Affairs in the hands of a company of strangers, there was neither the ability nor the desire.

To be continued