Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898

by Edwin G. Burrows

Andros’s shrewdest stroke was to open talks with the Five Nations of the Iroquois, ancient enemies of the Algonkian peoples who were embarked on a course of imperial expansion not unlike that of the English. Armed with Dutch weapons, they had previously attacked and all but annihilated their Huron rivals to the north; by the early 1660s their power stretched from the Carolinas to Hudson’s Bay. Between 1675 and 1677 Andros and the Iroquois forged the so-called Covenant Chain, an alliance of English and Iroquois ambitions that would decisively influence the future of New York City. Its terms were simple. Andros agreed to support Iroquois domination of the coastal Algonkians, while the Iroquois agreed to attack Algonkian insurgents in New England; both agreed to make common cause against the French in Canada, and both agreed to respect what would later be called spheres of influence, English to the east, Iroquois to the west.