8. The British recognition of Iroquois power led to the Treaty of Albany in 1722
Alexander Spotswood recognized the growing threat to Britain from France in the early 18th century. He also recognized the power of the Iroquois Confederation, both militarily speaking and in its unified form of governance. To Spotswood, the lands occupied by the Iroquois presented a natural defensive border between French Canada and their Native allies and the British colonies of New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, which then stretched to the Ohio River. The Virginia governor recognized the Iroquois possessed something the British colonies did not, unity of purpose among five seemingly separate entities. The Albany Conference brought together, for the first time, four British colonies unilaterally seeking one shared goal, a peace treaty with the Five Tribes, mutually beneficial to all. In doing so it recognized the power of the Five Tribes to negotiate and reach a decision as one.
That ability of the Iroquois was not lost on several Americans in the ensuing decades, including one man who later had the opportunity to deal with the Iroquois, Benjamin Franklin. It was the ability of the five separate nations to operate as one which impressed Franklin, not the notions of individual liberty or democratic government. The 1722 Treaty of Albany, ratified and signed by the Great Council’s representatives as well as the four colonies involved, remained a facet in Franklin’s thinking for the remainder of his long life. The image of separate nations, self-governed, uniting as a more powerful whole in some matters, led to his famed drawings of a snake representing the colonies, chopped into individual pieces and thus destroyed. Franklin’s later dealings with the Iroquois also gave him an appreciation of their considerable military and diplomatic power.