Concerns of the Crown.

In 1754 the British Board of Trade worried that disputes between Pennsylvania, New York, and Virginia over the Ohio River valley had nearly destroyed the British relationship with the Iroquois and that these disputes were allowing the French to move into the Ohio country. The Board of Trade encouraged colonists to meet at Albany, New York, to resolve their differences. In June and July 1754 delegates from New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland arrived in Albany, sent by their colonial assemblies. The Albany Conference, the Board of Trade hoped, would foster colonial unity and restore the "Covenant Chain," the relationship between the British colonial government and the Iroquois.

Covenant Chain.

By the beginning of the century the Iroquois, the powerful confederation of Onondaga, Mohawk, Seneca, Oneida, and Cayuga tribes, had established the Covenant Chain with the...