The Iroquois Confederacy's shifting alliances and influence on colonial America

Iroquois Confederacy

Following a peace treaty with France in 1701, The Iroquois Confederacy, which had been allied with the British through much of the 17th century, took a newly neutral role. As the controllers of the passable territory between English Seaboard settlements and French Settlements further inland near the St. Lawrence Valley, the Iroquois were geographically positioned as a natural diplomatic entity between the two dominant European powers in North America. During Queen Anne's War (1702-1713), the Confederacy sent a delegation to London to negotiate a peace between England and France. The delegation was received by Queen Anne in 1710, who was so moved by the visitors that she commissioned their portraits from John Verelst. Verlest's portraits are among the first paintings of indigenous people.

The fur trade was one of the most significant reasons for the colonization of the northern seaboard and Great Lakes region of North America. Once the trade had been well established and was itself a reason for a growing population of Europeans in North America, land became the next most significant commodity. Both fur and land were at the heart of many of the conflicts between the French, British and Iroquois Confederacy leading up to the American Revolution. On their side, the Six Nations needed guns and steel weapons to defend against attacks from European settlers. Dutch and British settlers were willing to trade these items for fur, the trade of which was predominantly controlled by the French.

The Covenant Chain was treaty between the Haudenosaunee and the British Colonies, which was in place between them from 1676 until it was broken by the British in 1753. This alliance served to protect both the British and Iroquois from the French, and helped to establish the regional authority of the League of Six Nations among its own member tribes. Despite the British having broken the treaty, the Iroquois Confederacy still sided with the British during the French and Indian War (1754-1763). The Confederacy believed that a British victory would help reaffirm old treaties regarding colonial expansion and the land rights of the Confederacy. At the conclusion of the war, however, there existed no political buffer (ie: French trading interests) to British expansion. In essence, siding with the British only ensured the ultimate displacement of the Iroquois Confederacy by way of a renewed influx of British settlers.

During the years of the French Indian Wars, Benjamin Franklin saw the Colonies as needing to be united under one government, particularly for the purposes of defense. His Albany Plan of 1754 was directly influenced by the makeup of the Iroquois Confederacy. It was a commonly held view by American Patriots at the time that the functioning of the Confederacy most closely resembled that of ancient Rome, and offered a unique living insight into the Colonists' own deep past. The Albany Plan was Franklin's first plan for uniting the colonies under one peaceful government. The Plan was not ratified, but several ideas therein moved forward into the Articles of Confederation and laid the platform for Franklin's position in drafting the Constitution. The Albany Plan is the blueprint for modern American government: the proposal included a President (appointed by the British monarchy) who would lead with the support of a Grand Council, to be chosen by representatives of colonial assemblies.

With the onset of the American Revolution, the Six Nations signed a treaty of Neutrality at Albany in 1775. Joseph Brant a Mohawk leader with longstanding ties to the British, violated this treaty when he formed parties of Mohawks and Loyalist volunteers and lead attacks on Patriot settlements. Brant, who was regarded as highly cultured by the British, was received as a delegate to King George III in London in 1775. He hoped that by siding with the British he would eventually help evict settlers from Mohawk Territory.