The Pequot War was a conflict that took place in 1636 and ended in 1638 in New England, between the Pequot nation and a joint effort of the English colonists from the Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, and Saybrook Thirteen colonies and their allies from the Narragansett and Mohegan nations. The war concluded with the decisive defeat of the Pequot. In an event called the Mystic massacre, English colonists of the Connecticut Colony and their allies set the village of Pequot Fort ablaze, blocked the exits, and shot anyone trying to escape. By the end of the war, about 700 Pequots had been killed or taken into captivity.John Winthrop, Journal of John Winthrop. ed. Dunn, Savage, Yeandle (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1996), 228.
Hundreds of Pequot prisoners were enslaved. While some of the enslaved persons were kept in the colonies of the region, they were generally deemed unfit as slaves and less desirable than enslaved people of African origin. Because of this, most of the enslaved Pequots were eventually sold to colonists in Bermuda or the West Indies, while a minority of the original numbers remained in the region. Other survivors were dispersed as captives to the Narragansett and Mohegan nations.Lion Gardiner, "Relation of the Pequot Warres", in History of the Pequot War: The Contemporary Accounts of Mason, Underhill, Vincent, and Gardiner (Cleveland, 1897), p. 138; Ethel Boissevain, "Whatever Became of the New England Indians Shipped to Bermuda to be Sold as Slaves", Man in the Northwest 11 (Spring 1981), pp. 103–114; Karen O. Kupperman, Providence Island, 1630–1641: The Other Puritan Colony (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1993), p. 172
The Treaty of Hartford of 1638 sought to eradicate the Pequot cultural identity by prohibiting the Pequots from returning to their lands, speaking their tribal language, or referring to themselves as Pequots.Piecuch, Jim. "Hartford, Treaty of." The Encyclopedia of North American Colonial Conflicts to 1775: A Political, Social, and Military History, edited by Spencer C. Tucker, et al., vol. 1, ABC-CLIO, 2008, p. 375. Gale eBooks. Accessed 17 Aug. 2023. The result was the elimination of the Pequot nation as a viable polity in southern New England, and the English colonial authorities classified them as extinct. Survivors who remained in the area were absorbed into other local nations; however, a western band retained sovereignty in Connecticut and are today a Federally recognized tribal nation.
Origin The Pequot and the Mohegan people were at one time a single sociopolitical entity. Anthropologists and historians contend that they split into the two competing groups sometime before contact with the Puritan English colonists.See Carrol Alton Means, "Mohegan-Pequot Relationships, as Indicated by the Events Leading to the Pequot Massacre of 1637 and Subsequent Claims in the Mohegan Land Controversy", Archaeological Society of Connecticut Bulletin 21 (1947): 26–33. The earliest historians of the Pequot War speculated that the Pequot people migrated from the upper Hudson River Valley toward central and eastern Connecticut sometime around 1500. These claims are disputed by the evidence of modern archaeology and anthropology finds.For archaeological investigations disproving Hubbard's theory of origin, see Irving Rouse, "Ceramic Traditions and Sequences in Connecticut", Archaeological Society of Connecticut Bulletin 21 (1947): 25; Kevin McBride, "Prehistory of the Lower Connecticut Valley" (Ph.D. diss., University of Connecticut, 1984), pp. 126–28, 199–269; and the overall evidence on the question of Pequot origin in Means, "Mohegan-Pequot Relationships", 26–33. For historical research, refer to Alfred A. Cave, "The Pequot Invasion of Southern New England: A Reassessment of the Evidence", New England Quarterly 62 (1989): 27–44; and for linguistic research, see Truman D. Michelson, "Notes on Algonquian Language", International Journal of American Linguistics 1 (1917): 56–57.
In the 1630s, the Connecticut River Valley was in turmoil. The Pequot aggressively extended their area of control at the expense of the Wampanoag to the north, the Narragansett to the east, the Connecticut River Valley Algonquian nations and the Mohegan to the west, and the Lenape Algonquian people of Long Island to the south. The nations contended for political dominance and control of the European fur trade. A series of epidemics over the course of the previous three decades had severely reduced the American Indian populations,See Alfred W. Crosby, "Virgin Soil Epidemics as a Factor in the Aboriginal Depopulation in America", William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., vol. 33, no. 2 (April 1976), pp. 289–299; Arthur E. Spiero and Bruce E. Speiss, "New England Pandemic of 1616–1622: Cause and Archaeological Implication", Man in the Northeast 35 (1987): 71–83; and Dean R. Snow and Kim M. Lamphear, "European Contact and Indian Depopulation in the Northeast: The Timing of the First Epidemics", Ethnohistory 35 (1988): 16–38. and there was a power vacuum in the area as a result.
The Dutch and the English from Western Europe were also striving to extend the reach of their trade into the North American interior to achieve dominance in the lush, fertile region. The European colonies of the two were new at the time, as the original settlements had been founded in the 1620s. By 1636, the Dutch had fortified their trading post, and the English had built a trading fort at Saybrook. English Puritans from the Massachusetts Bay, along with the Pilgrims from Plymouth Colony, settled at the recently established river towns of Windsor (1632), Wethersfield (1633), Hartford (1635), and Springfield (1636). The Pilgrims had been allied with the Wampanoag since 1621.
Causes for war
Beginning in the early 1630s, a series of contributing factors increased the tensions between English colonists and the nations of southeastern New England. Efforts to control fur trade access resulted in a series of escalating incidents and attacks that increased tensions on both sides. Political divisions widened between the Pequots and Mohegans as they aligned with different trade sources, the Mohegans with the English colonists and the Pequots with the Dutch colonists. The peace ended between the Dutch and Pequots when the Pequots assaulted a tribe of Indians who had tried to trade in the area of Hartford. Tensions grew as the Massachusetts Bay Colony became a stronghold for wampum production, which the Narragansetts and Pequots had controlled until the mid-1630s.
Adding to the tensions, John Stone and seven of his crew were murdered in 1634 by the Niantics, western tributary clients of the Pequots. Stone was from the West Indies and had been banished from Boston for malfeasance, including drunkenness, adultery, and piracy. He had abducted two Western Niantic men, forcing them to show him the way up the Connecticut River. Soon after, he and his crew were attacked and killed by a larger group of Western Niantics.Cave, The Pequot War, pp. 59–60. The initial reactions in Boston varied from indifference to outright joy at Stone's death,Cave, The Pequot War, pp. 72, 74. but the colonial officials still felt compelled to protest the killing. According to the Pequots' later explanations, he was killed in reprisal for the Dutch murdering the principal Pequot sachem Tatobem, and they claimed to be unaware that Stone was English and not Dutch.Alfred Cave, The Pequot War (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1996), pp. 58–60. (Contemporaneous accounts claim that the Pequots knew Stone to be English. p. 565) In the earlier incident, Tatobem had boarded a Dutch vessel to trade. Instead of conducting trade, the Dutch abducted him and demanded a substantial amount of ransom for his safe return. The Pequots quickly sent bushels of wampum to the Dutch, but received only Tatobem's dead body in return. But the colonial officials in Boston did not accept the Pequots' excuses that they had been unaware of Stone's nationality. Pequot sachem Sassacus sent the colonists some wampum to atone for the killing, but he refused the colonists' demands that the warriors responsible for Stone's death be turned over to them for trial and punishment.Cave, The Pequot War, p. 76.
The Great Colonial Hurricane of 1635 also placed a great deal of pressure on the harvests of that year, according to historian Katherine Grandjean, increasing competition for winter food supplies for several years afterwards throughout much of coastal Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts. This, in turn, precipitated even greater tensions between the Pequots and English colonists, who were ill-prepared to face periods of famine.Grandjean, Katherine A. (2011). New World Tempests: Environment, Scarcity, and the Coming of the Pequot War. The William and Mary Quarterly 68(1):75–100.
A more proximate cause of the war was the killing of a trader named John Oldham, who was attacked on a voyage to Block Island on July 20, 1636. Several of his crew and he were killed and his ship was looted by Narragansett-allied Indians, who sought to discourage settlers from trading with their Pequot rivals. Oldham had a reputation as a troublemaker and had been exiled from Plymouth Colony shortly before the incident on Block Island. In the weeks that followed, officials from Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island, and Connecticut assumed that the Narragansetts were the likely culprits. They knew that the Indians of Block Island were allies of the Eastern Niantics, who were allied with the Narragansetts, and they became suspicious of the Narragansetts.Cave, The Pequot War, pp. 104–105. The murderers, meanwhile, escaped and were given sanctuary with the Pequots. p. 491
Battles There were several battles that collectively make up the Pequot War.
Massachusetts Bay Punitive Expedition (Endecott Expedition)
News of Oldham's death became the subject of sermons in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. In August, Governor Vane sent John Endecott to exact revenge on the Indians of Block Island. Endecott's party of roughly 90 men sailed to Block Island and attacked two apparently abandoned Niantic villages. Most of the Niantic escaped, while two of Endecott's men were injured. The English claimed to have killed 14, but later Narragansett reports claimed that only one Indian was killed on the island. The Massachusetts Bay militia burned the villages to the ground. They carried away crops that the Niantic had stored for winter and destroyed what they could not carry. Endecott went on to Fort Saybrook.
The English at Saybrook were unhappy about the raid, but agreed that some of them would accompany Endecott as guides. Endecott sailed along the coast to a Pequot village, where he repeated the previous year's demand for those responsible for the death of Stone, and now also for those who murdered Oldham. After some discussion, Endecott concluded that the Pequots were stalling and attacked, but most escaped into the woods. Endecott had his forces burn down the village and crops before sailing home.
Pequot raids In the aftermath, the English of Connecticut Colony had to deal with the anger of the Pequots. The Pequots attempted to get their allies to join their cause, some 36 tributary villages, but were only partly effective. The Western Niantic (Nehantic) joined them, but the Eastern Niantic remained neutral. The traditional enemies of the Pequot, the Mohegan and the Narragansett, openly sided with the English. The Narragansetts had warred with and lost territory to the Pequots in 1622. Now, their friend Roger Williams urged the Narragansetts to side with the English against the Pequots.