During the winter of 1737, beginning February 27, Weiser was commissioned by Virginia Governor William Gooch to attempt to broker a peace between southern tribes and the Iroquois. Some of the latter tribes had been hunting in the Shenandoah Valley. Weiser and his German companion, Stoffel Stump, had to survive high snow, freezing temperatures, and starvation rations to make the six-week journey in winter to what was considered the Iroquois capital at Onondaga, in upstate New York near present-day Syracuse. Weiser persuaded the Iroquois not to send any war parties south in the spring, but failed to convince them to send emissaries to parlay with the southern tribes. Impressed with his fortitude, the Iroquois named Weiser "Tarachiawagon" (Holder of the Heavens). The colonists feared that spill-over violence from conflicts between the Iroquois and southern tribes, such as the Catawba, would have drawn first Virginia, and then Pennsylvania, into conflict with the Iroquois. Therefore, this peace-brokering had a profound effect on Native American/colonial relations.