Pequot War

'The Pequot War in 1637 saw the virtual elimination of the Pequot Indians as a tribe. The Massachusetts and Connecticut settlers from England and their allies captured or killed most of the Pequots.

This article uses the term tribe to describe various bands of Indians. The New England Indians were not that formally organized. What we now view as a tribe was a village or collection of villages adhering to a leading sachem. These alignments shifted as leaders arose and populations changed.

Table of contents

1 Background 2 Causes for War 3 Battles 4 Aftermath 5 Controversy about the war 6 External links

Background

In the 1630s, the Connecticut River Valley was in turmoil. The Dutch traders and English settlers were each striving to include the area in within the sphere of influence of their colonies in New Amsterdam and Massachusetts respectively. The Indian tribes were contending with each other for dominance and control of the European trade. The Indian population was severely reduced in 1634 by the latest in a series of smallpox epidemics.

By 1636, the Dutch had fortified their trading post, and the English had built a trading fort at Saybrook. Farmers and crafters from Massachusetts had settled at the new river towns of Windsor, Hartford and Weathersfield.

The very word Pequot is derived from an Algonquian language phrase meaning "the destroyers". They had moved into southeastern Connecticut in the area around the Pequot River and the Mystic River some time before European contact and dominated or eliminated the tribes there. They were aggressively working to extend their area of control in all directions, at the expense of the Wampanoag to the north, the Narragansett to the east, the Connecticut Valley tribes to the west, and the Long Island tribes to the south.

Any single narrative description of the War tends to be confusing because of the number of parties involved. From a distance of several hundred years, many of these are unrecognized, since they have been consolidated into larger states. There were several independent colonies involved, each of which had its own leadership. There were also several tribes of native Americans, sometimes dealt with in summary based on their alliances or tributary status at the time. Participants included:

• Massachusetts Bay Colony, Governors Henry Vane and John Winthrop, Captains John Underhill and John Endicott;
• Plymouth Colony, Governor Edward Winslow and William Bradford;
• Connecticut, Leader Thomas Hooker, Captain John Mason;
• Pequot tribe, Sachem Sassacus;
• Niantic tribe, Sachem Sassious;
• Mohican tribe (sometimes written Mohegan), Sachem Uncas;
• Narragansett tribe;
• Metoac tribe (sometimes referred to as Montauk).

Causes for War

Before the war formally began, efforts to control fur trade access resulted in a series of escalating incidents and attacks and increased tensions on both sides. The split between to Pequot and Mohican widened as they aligned with different trade sources, the Mohican with the English and the Pequot with the Dutch. The Pequots attacked a group of Mattabesic Indians who attempted to trade at Hartford. Tension also increased as Massachusetts began to manufacture wampum, the supply of which the Pequots had formerly controlled.

In 1634 a trader, John Stone. and his crew were killed by a tribe that was a client of the Pequots. Stone had sailed from Boston and they protested his killing but the Pequot sachem, Sassacus, refused any demands. While this increased tensions, there was no other action. Stone was actually from the West Indies and had been banished from Boston for his behavior.

Then on July 20, 1636 a respected trader named John Oldham was attacked on a trading voyage to Block Island. He and several of his crew were killed and his ship looted. The Massachusetts Bay colony's retaliation is viewed as the start of actual war.