Pequot War

Origin

The Pequot and Mohegan people were originally a single sociopolitical entity that split into competing groups before contact with Puritan English colonists. Some early historians speculated that the Pequot migrated from the upper Hudson River Valley toward central and eastern Connecticut around 1500, but modern archaeology and anthropology dispute these claims.

By the 1630s, the Connecticut River Valley was in turmoil as the Pequot aggressively expanded their control over neighboring nations, including the Wampanoag, Narragansett, Connecticut River Valley Algonquian nations, Mohegan, and Lenape Algonquian people of Long Island. A series of epidemics over the previous three decades had severely reduced American Indian populations, creating a power vacuum. Dutch and English colonists were also striving to extend their trade into the region, with the English establishing river towns such as Windsor, Wethersfield, Hartford, and Springfield in the early 1630s.

Causes for war

Beginning in the early 1630s, efforts to control fur trade access led to escalating incidents between English colonists and southeastern New England nations. Political divisions widened as the Mohegans aligned with English colonists and the Pequots with the Dutch. The peace between the Dutch and Pequots ended when the Pequots assaulted a tribe that had tried to trade near Hartford. Tensions grew as the Massachusetts Bay Colony became a stronghold for wampum production, which the Narragansetts and Pequots had previously controlled.

In 1634, John Stone and seven crew members were murdered by the Western Niantics, tributary clients of the Pequots. Stone had been banished from Boston for malfeasance and had abducted two Western Niantic men. The Pequots later explained that Stone was killed in reprisal for the Dutch murder of Pequot sachem Tatobem, claiming they were unaware Stone was English. Colonial officials did not accept this excuse, and Pequot sachem Sassacus sent wampum as atonement but refused to turn over the warriors responsible.

Battles

In August, Governor Vane sent John Endecott with about 90 men to Block Island to exact revenge for the death of Oldham. Endecott's party attacked two apparently abandoned Niantic villages, burning them and carrying away stored crops. The English claimed to have killed 14, but later Narragansett reports said only one Indian was killed.

Endecott then sailed to Fort Saybrook and proceeded to a Pequot village, where he repeated demands for those responsible for the deaths of Stone and Oldham. After concluding the Pequots were stalling, Endecott attacked, burning the village and crops while most Pequots escaped. The Pequots then attempted to rally allies but were only partly effective; the Western Niantic joined them, while the Eastern Niantic remained neutral.

The Mohegan and Narragansett openly sided with the English. Through autumn and winter, Fort Saybrook was effectively besieged. In spring 1637, Pequot raids intensified: on April 23, Wangunk chief Sequin attacked Wethersfield with Pequot help, killing six men, three women, and taking two girls captive.

Aftermath

In September, the Mohegans and Narragansetts met at the General Court of Connecticut and agreed on the disposition of Pequot survivors, formalized in the first Treaty of Hartford on September 21, 1638. About 200 Pequots survived and submitted to the authority of Mohegan or Narragansett sachems. Other Pequots were enslaved and shipped to Bermuda or the West Indies, or forced into household slavery in Connecticut and Massachusetts Bay.

The colonies declared the Pequots extinct by prohibiting use of the name. No significant battles occurred between Indians and southern New England colonists for about 38 years, until King Philip's War in 1675. The Pequot War introduced the practice of colonists and Indians taking body parts as trophies of battle.