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90-798: The Mystic massacre  – also known as the Pequot massacre and the Battle of Mystic Fort  – took place on May 26, 1637 during the Pequot War , when a force from the Connecticut Colony under Captain John Mason and their Narragansett and Mohegan allies set fire to the Pequot Fort near the Mystic River . They shot anyone who tried to escape the wooden palisade fortress and killed most of

180-596: A Mare of Edward Pomroye's killed by his Men. The Pequots were then bound by Covenant, That none should inhabit their native Country, nor should any of them be called PEQUOTS any more, but Moheags and Narragansatts for ever. Other Pequots were enslaved and shipped to Bermuda or the West Indies, or were forced to become household slaves in English households in Connecticut and Massachusetts Bay. The Colonies essentially declared

270-760: A great number of them . Sassacus was able to escape to the Mohawks , who immediately killed him and his party, sending his scalp to Boston. With the Pequots vanquished the Treaty of Hartford was signed between Connecticut, the Mohegans, and the Narragansett, granting the Connecticut settlers the exclusive right to the former Pequot land and dissolving the Pequot as both a political and cultural entity, with surviving Pequots made to assimilate into

360-517: A militia commanded by Captain John Mason consisting of 90 men, plus 70 Mohegans under sachems Uncas and Wequash . Twenty more men under Captain John Underhill joined him from Fort Saybrook. At the same time, Pequot sachem Sassacus took a few hundred warriors and set out to attack Hartford, Connecticut . Captain Mason recruited more than 200 Narragansett and Niantic Indians to join his force. On

450-420: A militia, and placed Captain John Mason in command. Mason set out with 90 militia and 70 Mohegan warriors under Uncas; their orders were to directly attack the Pequot at their fort. At Fort Saybrook, Captain Mason was joined by John Underhill with another 20 men. Underhill and Mason then sailed from Fort Saybrook to Narragansett Bay, a tactic intended to mislead Pequot spies along the shoreline into thinking that

540-577: 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 colonies 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

630-428: A ring around the stockades to kill anyone attempting to escape. The Indian allies formed a second ring to catch anyone who managed to escape the first. Hundreds of Pequots died, many of the women and children. Their spirits broken, many of the Pequot attempted to flee west. Mason, accompanied by Israel Stoughton pursued a group of three hundred Pequots to a swamp near modern Fairfield , where they killed and captured

720-429: 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

810-575: A significant donation to the college, it was renamed Yale College in his honor. The Connecticut Courant , the oldest continuously published newspaper in the United States, was founded in Hartford in 1764. Connecticut was a staunch supporter of the American Revolution, with a fifth of the state's male population serving in the war. Jonathan Trumbull was the only colonial governor to support

900-440: A swamp near a Mattabesset village called Sasqua . The battle which followed is known as the " Fairfield Swamp Fight ", in which nearly 180 warriors were killed, wounded, or captured. Sassacus escaped with about 80 of his men, but he was killed by the Mohawks , who sent his scalp to the colonists as a symbol of friendship. The Pequot numbers were so diminished that they ceased to be a tribe in most senses. The treaty mandated that

990-460: A trading post on the Connecticut. Besides the English settlers, they took some of the original sachems of the area to prove the validity of their claim. As they passed Fort Good Hope they were threatened by the Dutch, a threat ignored by Holmes. Holmes proceeded a few miles up river and constructed a trading post on the modern site of Windsor . Hearing of the English activities, New Netherland governor Wouter Van Twiller dispatched 70 men to dislodge

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1080-403: The Connecticut Colony . Estimates of Pequot deaths range from 400 to 700, including women, children, and the elderly. The colonists suffered between 22 and 26 casualties with two confirmed dead. Approximately 40 Narragansett warriors were wounded as the colonists mistook many of them for Pequots. The massacre effectively broke the Pequots, and Sassacus and many of his followers were surrounded in

1170-554: The Connecticut General Assembly would be permitted to debate its future. The Mystic massacre was featured in the History Channel series 10 Days That Unexpectedly Changed America . 41°21′35″N 71°58′36″W  /  41.35972°N 71.97667°W  / 41.35972; -71.97667 Pequot War The result was the elimination of the Pequot tribe as a viable polity in southern New England , and

1260-584: The Connecticut River Colony , was an English colony in New England which later became the state of Connecticut . It was organized on March 3, 1636, as a settlement for a Puritan congregation of settlers from the Massachusetts Bay Colony led by Thomas Hooker . The English would secure their control of the region in the Pequot War . Over the course of the colony's history it would absorb

1350-572: The First Anglo-Dutch War . The war's outbreak enabled Connecticut to seize Fort Good Hope in 1653. After the restoration of the Stuart monarchy , many in Connecticut feared their colony's Puritanism and lack of a royal charter would lead to Charles II curtailing the colony's self government. Governor John Winthrop Jr. was sent to England in 1662 where he successfully obtained a charter. The charter granted Connecticut extensive liberties, with

1440-639: 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. Beginning in the early 1630s, a series of contributing factors increased the tensions between English colonists and the tribes of southeastern New England. Efforts to control fur trade access resulted in

1530-650: The New England Confederation to mutually defend the colonies against the Dutch, French, and Indians. Before leaving for England, Fenwick, along with Hopkins, would serve as Connecticut's first commissioners to the Confederation. Connecticut's membership in the Confederation also meant it sent troops to fight in King Philip's War , though Connecticut itself was minimally impacted. Like its fellow Puritan colonies, Connecticut would welcome Cromwell's victory in

1620-648: The Wappinger Confederacy along the western coast and the Niantics on the eastern coast. Further inland were the Pequot , who pushed the Niantic to the coast and would become the most important tribe in relations with colonists. Also present were the Nipmunks and Mohicans , though these two tribes largely lived in the neighboring states of Massachusetts and New York respectively. The first European to visit Connecticut

1710-636: The patriots . Nathan Hale , the first American spy, also hailed from the colony. The original colonies along the Connecticut River and in New Haven were established by separatist Puritans who were connected with the Massachusetts and Plymouth colonies. They held Calvinist religious beliefs similar to the English Puritans, but they maintained that their congregations needed to be separated from

1800-500: The 17th century and developed with greater diversity and an increased focus on production for distant markets, especially the British colonies in the Caribbean . The American Revolution cut off imports from Britain and stimulated a manufacturing sector that made heavy use of the entrepreneurship and mechanical skills of the people. In the second half of the 18th century, difficulties arose from

1890-493: The 1990s, the Pequot's tribal chairman Skip Hayward was against its removal because "If you take it down," he said, "no one will remember what happened here." In early 2021, some people called for the removal of another statue depicting John Mason that stands outside the Connecticut State Capitol in Hartford. After a year of deliberations, a state commission decided that the statue should be removed but lawmakers from

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1980-465: The Dutch colonists, while the Mohegans and others allied with the New England colonists. A trader named John Oldham was murdered and his trading ship looted by Pequots, and retaliation raids ensued by Colonists and their Indian allies. On April 23, 1637, 200 Pequot warriors attacked the village of Wethersfield killing six men and three women, all unarmed noncombatants. This was a major turning point in

2070-414: The Dutch. Connecticut sent a force of ninety men, led by John Mason . The force was joined by sixty Mohegans led by Uncas and came to Saybrook where a group of Massachusetts men led by Underhill joined them. On May 26, 1637, the group, encamped outside a fortified Pequot village on the Mystic River , launched a surprise attack at dawn. The English charged into the village, set it on fire, and formed

2160-628: 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. Through the autumn and winter, Fort Saybrook was effectively besieged. People who ventured outside were killed. As spring arrived in 1637,

2250-543: The English state church. They had immigrated to New England during the Great Migration . In the middle of the 18th century, the government restricted voting rights with a property qualification and a church membership requirement. Congregationalism was the established church in the colony by the time of the American War of Independence until it was disestablished in 1818. The economy began with subsistence farming in

2340-565: The English were not intending an attack. After gaining the support of 200 Narragansetts, Mason and Underhill marched their forces with Uncas and Wequash Cooke about 20 miles towards Mistick Fort (present-day Mystic ). They briefly camped at Porter's Rocks near the head of the Mystic River before mounting a surprise attack just before dawn. The Mystic Massacre started in the predawn hours of May 26, 1637, when colonial forces led by Captains John Mason and John Underhill, along with their allies from

2430-516: The English. The Dutch would find the English well prepared to defend themselves and left, seeking to avoid bloodshed. Meanwhile, John Oldham led a group of men from the Bay Colony to the river to see Connecticut for themselves. They returned with accounts of plentiful beaver, hemp, and graphite. A year later, Oldham would lead a group of settlers to found the town of Wethersfield . By 1635, Massachusetts' English population had grown immensely and it

2520-588: The Fort, both men, women, and children, others forced out, and came in troopes to the Indians, twentie, and thirtie at a time, which our souldiers received and entertained with the point of the sword; downe fell men, women, and children, those that scaped us, fell into the hands of the Indians, that were in the reere of us; it is reported by themselves, that there were about foure hundred soules in this Fort, and not above five of them escaped out of our hands." Mohegans would collect

2610-655: 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

2700-531: The Mohawk in present-day New York. However, the Mohawk instead murdered his bodyguard and him, afterwards sending his head and hands to Hartford (for reasons which were never made clear). This essentially ended the Pequot War; colonial officials continued to call for hunting down what remained of the Pequots after war's end, but they granted asylum to any who went to live with the Narragansetts or Mohegans. In September,

2790-415: The Mohegan and Narragansett tribes, surrounded one of two main fortified Pequot villages at Mistick. Only 20 soldiers breached the palisade's gate and they were quickly overwhelmed, to the point that they used fire to create chaos and facilitate their escape. The ensuing conflagration trapped the majority of the Pequots; those who managed to escape the fire were slain by the soldiers and warriors who surrounded

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2880-592: The Mohegans and Narragansetts met at the General Court of Connecticut and agreed on the disposition of the Pequot survivors. The agreement, known as the first Treaty of Hartford , was signed on September 21, 1638. About 200 Pequots survived the war; they finally gave up and submitted themselves under the authority of the sachem of the Mohegans or Narragansetts. There were then given to Onkos, Sachem of Monheag , Eighty; to Myan Tonimo, Sachem of Narragansett , Eighty; and to Nynigrett, Twenty, when he should satisfy for

2970-569: The Mystic massacre should be considered an act of genocide. Rebecca Joyce Frey lists the incident as genocide in her 2009 book Genocide and International Justice . Steven M. Wise from Harvard Law School called the Mystic Massacre "the Puritans genocidal Indian War" where "one thousand Indians" were killed. Wise notes that Captain John Underhill justified the killing of the elderly, women, children, and

3060-429: The Pequot War were written within one year of the war. Later histories recounted events from a similar perspective, restating arguments first used by military leaders such as John Underhill and John Mason, as well as Puritans Increase Mather and his son Cotton Mather . Recent historians and others have reviewed these accounts. In 2004, an artist and archaeologist (Jack Dempsey and David R. Wagner) teamed up to evaluate

3150-463: The Pequot War, no significant battles occurred between Indians and southern New England colonists for about 38 years. This long period of peace came to an end in 1675 with King Philip's War . According to historian Andrew Lipman, the Pequot War introduced the practice of colonists and Indians taking body parts as trophies of battle. Honor and monetary reimbursement was given to those who brought back heads and scalps of Pequots. The earliest accounts of

3240-572: 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. 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

3330-569: The Pequot war as it enraged the settlers that the warriors would kill civilians and led to increased support for the Pequot War among colonists. According to Katherine Grandjean, the Great Colonial Hurricane of 1635 damaged the corn and other crop harvests of that year, making food supplies scarce and creating competition for winter food supplies. This in turn increased the tensions between the Pequots and Colonists who were ill-prepared to face periods of famine. The Connecticut towns raised

3420-417: The Pequot. The Pequot also claimed to be unable to distinguish the Dutch from the English. Disbelieving these claims and seeing there were no women or children among the Pequot, Endecott attacked, beginning the war. The Pequot responded by besieging Saybrook and attacking Wethersfield, where they would kill nine and take two women hostage. The women were daughters of William Swaine and would later be rescued by

3510-500: The Pequots extinct by prohibiting them from using the name any longer. The colonists attributed their victory over the hostile Pequot tribe to an act of God: Let the whole Earth be filled with his glory! Thus the lord was pleased to smite our Enemies in the hinder Parts, and to give us their Land for an Inheritance. This was the first instance wherein Algonquian peoples of southern New England encountered European-style warfare. After

3600-433: The Pequots stepped up their raids on Connecticut towns. On April 23, Wangunk chief Sequin attacked Wethersfield with Pequot help. They killed six men and three women and a number of cattle and horses, and took two young girls captive. (They were daughters of William Swaine and were later ransomed by Dutch traders.) In all, the towns lost about 30 settlers. In May, leaders of Connecticut River towns met in Hartford, raised

3690-641: The South end with a traine of Powder, the fires of both meeting in the center of the Fort blazed most terribly, and burnt all in the space of halfe an houre; many couragious fellowes were unwilling to come out, and fought most desperately through the Palisadoes, so as they were scorched and burnt with the very flame, and were deprived of their armes, in regard the fire burnt their very bowstrings, and so perished valiantly: mercy they did deserve for their valour, could we have had opportunitie to have bestowed it; many were burnt in

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3780-470: The actions and "manner of the Englishmen's fight… because it is too furious, and slays too many men." The Narragansetts attempted to leave and return home, but were cut off by the Pequots from the other village of Weinshauks and had to be rescued by Underhill's men—after which they reluctantly rejoined the colonists for protection and were used to carry the wounded, thereby freeing up more soldiers to fend off

3870-560: The charter had vanished, safely hidden away in a nearby oak tree. The tree, which became known as the Charter Oak would endure as a symbol of Connecticut for generations. Andros replaced Puritan officials with Anglicans and imposed heavy taxes. His salary of £1,200 exceeded the entire annual expenditure of Massachusetts' former government. When James II was overthrown in the Glorious Revolution , Andros initially attempted to suppress

3960-525: The civil war. The new English government, however, would soon cause issues for Connecticut. The Confederation negotiated the Treaty of Hartford defining the border between New Netherland and the English colonies, but the government in England refused to ratify it. Tensions with the Dutch would be inflamed by the Navigation Act 1651 , restricting foreign trade with the colonies. These tensions would culminate in

4050-526: The colonial authorities classified them as extinct. Survivors who remained in the area were absorbed into other local tribes. 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. The earliest historians of the Pequot War speculated that

4140-467: 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. The Great Colonial Hurricane of 1635 also placed a great deal of pressure on

4230-404: The contemporaneous histories of Mather and Hubbard, were more "polemical than substantive." Alden T. Vaughan writes that the Pequots were not "solely or even primarily responsible" for the war. "The Bay colony's gross escalation of violence… made all-out war unavoidable; until then, negotiation was at least conceivable." Connecticut Colony The Connecticut Colony , originally known as

4320-638: The east, the Connecticut River Valley Algonquian tribes and the Mohegan to the west, and the Lenape Algonquian people of Long Island to the south. The tribes 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 Indian populations, and there was a power vacuum in the area as

4410-537: The fire raged, many trapped Pequots were shot as they attempted to escape by climbing over the palisade; those men, women, and children who did get out were killed by Narragansett fighters. Captain Underhill described the scene and his participation: "Captaine Mason entring into a Wigwam, brought out a fire-brand, after hee had wounded many in the house, then hee set fire on the West-side where he entred, my selfe set fire on

4500-500: The first legislative session in New Haven to create a college for the colony, with Saybrook as the site and Abraham Pierson as the first rector. Pierson would run the college from his home in Killingworth until his death in 1707, when it was finally moved to Saybrook. Saybrook would soon prove to be too remote and New Haven was able to beat out other communities for the site of the college in 1716. Two years later, when Elihu Yale made

4590-598: The fort. Mason later declared that the attack against the Pequots was the act of a God who "laughed his Enemies and the Enemies of his People to scorn", making the Pequot fort "as a fiery Oven", and "thus did the Lord judge among the Heathen." Of the estimated 500 Pequots in the fort, seven were taken prisoner and another seven escaped to the woods. The Narragansetts and Mohegans with Mason and Underhill's colonial militia were horrified by

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4680-495: The future sites of Saybrook and Hartford respectively. In 1631, a group of sachems from the Connecticut valley led by Wahquimacut visited Plymouth Colony and Boston, asking both colonies to send settlers to Connecticut to fight the Pequot. Massachusetts governor John Winthrop rejected the proposal but Edward Winslow , governor of Plymouth was more open, traveling to Connecticut in person in 1632. Winslow, along with William Bradford would later travel to Boston to convince

4770-400: 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. A more proximate cause of the war

4860-462: The heads of fallen Pequots, taking scalps as war trophies. Hundreds of Pequots were killed; the colonists reported that only five village occupants escaped while seven were taken prisoner. Returning Pequot warriors chased after the Colonial forces after discovering the massacre, but the Connecticut forces avoided any Pequot counterattack despite getting lost for a brief period during their retreat back to

4950-558: The infirm by stating that "sometimes the Scripture declareth women and children must perish with their parents [...] We had sufficient light from the Word of God for our proceedings." In 2020, some people called for the removal of a statue of John Mason at Palisado Green in Windsor, Connecticut following national civil rights protests about Removal of Confederate monuments and memorials . The statue

5040-453: The island he claimed it not for Connecticut but for himself. The Duke of York would ascend to the throne as King James II and VII. As one of his first acts, he would consolidate the English colonies from West Jersey to Maine into the Dominion of New England . Sir Edmund Andros would be appointed governor of the new united colony. Andros demanded that Connecticut hand over its charter as it

5130-528: The latter dispute, but the resentment of Winthrop remained. After Dudley replaced Winthrop as governor in May 1634, the issue of Hooker's congregation's desire for removal to Connecticut was raised in the General Court . Opponents of the removal countered with a proposal that settlers instead settle Agawam and Merrimack . Both sites proved unsatisfactory, but removal was nonetheless delayed for two years. Despite

5220-463: The leaders of Massachusetts Bay to join Plymouth in constructing a trading post on the Connecticut River before the Dutch could. Winthrop rejected the offer, calling Connecticut "not fit to meddle with" citing hostile Indians and the difficulty of moving large ships into the Connecticut River. Despite the Bay Colony's refusal to join the venture, Plymouth sent a bark led by William Holmes to establish

5310-485: The mistaken identity of the ship. When asked to turn over the killers, the envoy claimed all but two of the killers had died of a recent smallpox epidemic and they lacked the authority to turn over the two survivors. The Pequot further claimed the killing was justified as Stone had captured two Pequots and mistreated them. When John Gallup was sailing to Long Island he spotted a pinnace belonging to John Oldham, its deck covered with Indians. When Gallup attempted to board

5400-410: The neighboring New Haven and Saybrook colonies. The colony was part of the briefly-lived Dominion of New England . The colony's founding document, the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut has been called the first written constitution of a democratic government, earning Connecticut the nickname "The Constitution State." Prior to European settlement, the land that would become Connecticut was home to

5490-437: The news. Word did get out, and the colonists overthrew the dominion casting its government as crypto-Catholic supports of James II and themselves as loyal to the new Protestant monarchs of William III and Mary II . The dominion's short-lived experiment in centralized government ended and Connecticut, along with all the other colonies, had its charter restored. In 1701 New Haven was designated co-capital with Hartford. At

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5580-432: The night of May 26, 1637, the Colonial and Indian forces arrived at the fortified Pequot village, which was on a low hill near the Mystic River . The large village was surrounded by a palisade with only two exits. The Colonial forces first attempted a surprise attack but they withdrew after stiff resistance from the Pequots. In response, Mason ordered that the village should be set ablaze and its two exits blocked off. As

5670-572: The numerous attacks along the withdrawal route. The destruction of people and the village at Mistick Fort and losing even more warriors during the withdrawal pursuit broke the Pequot spirit, and they decided to abandon their villages and flee westward to seek refuge with the Mohawk tribe. Sassacus led roughly 400 warriors along the coast; when they crossed the Connecticut River, the Pequots killed three men whom they encountered near Fort Saybrook. In mid-June, John Mason set out from Saybrook with 160 men and 40 Mohegan scouts led by Uncas. They caught up with

5760-430: The office of governor with Edward Hopkins every year until 1655. Shortly after the Fundamental Orders were established, the nearby New Haven colony organized its own government. When Fort Good Hope was constructed, the Dutch specified in their treaty with the Pequot that the trading post was to be open to all tribes. Ignoring this, the Pequot attacked a rival tribe attempting to trade. The Dutch retaliated by kidnapping

5850-426: The only trained lawyer in the colonies. The document was adopted in January 1639 and formally united the settlements of Hartford, Windsor, and Wetherfield together and has been called the first written democratic constitution. Under the new constitution, John Haynes was elected governor with Ludlow as deputy governor. Owing to a restriction against governors seeking office in consecutive years, Haynes would alternate

5940-446: The other tribes. With the outbreak of the English Civil War , English support for the Saybrook Colony dried up. The colony's governor, George Fenwick negotiated a deal to sell the colony to Connecticut in 1644. Fenwick would return to England and serve with distinction under Oliver Cromwell . Inspired by the successes of colonial cooperation during the Pequot War, Connecticut, along with Massachusetts, Plymouth, and New Haven formed

6030-581: 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. 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

6120-481: The refugees at Sasqua, a Mattabesic village near present-day Fairfield, Connecticut . The colonists memorialized this event as the Fairfield Swamp Fight (not to be confused with the Great Swamp Fight during King Philip's War ). The English surrounded the swamp and allowed several hundred to surrender, mostly women and children, but Sassacus slipped out before dawn with perhaps 80 warriors, and continued west. Sassacus and his followers had hoped to gain refuge among

6210-403: The refusal of Thomas Hooker's request for removal, settlers continued to pour into the valley. In May 1635 the Saybrook Colony was established at the mouth of the Connecticut River. Considerable amounts of emigrants from Massachusetts also settled in the recently established town of Wethersfield. Plymouth's settlement of Windsor also found itself swamped by settlers from Dorchester who took over

6300-448: The remaining Pequots were to be absorbed into the Mohegan and Narragansett tribes, nor were they allowed to refer to themselves as Pequots. In the latter half of the 20th century, Pequot descendants revived the tribe, achieving federal recognition in 1983 and settlement of some land claims. During the emergence of the modern Pequot tribe in the 1990s, an article in The New England Quarterly considered arguments for and against whether

6390-520: The removal of references to royalty being the only change required in the aftermath of the American Revolution . The charter also granted Connecticut extensive land claims, defining its borders as the Narragansett Bay , the Pacific Ocean , the southern border of Massachusetts and the 40th parallel north . When representatives of Connecticut traveled to New Haven to show them that they were to be annexed into Connecticut, they initially met strong opposition. This opposition faded in 1664 when New Netherland

6480-400: The sachem of the Pequot, Tatobem and holding him for ransom. After the Pequot paid the ransom, the Dutch gave them Tatobem's corpse. The Pequot retaliated for this by attacking an English ship, believing it to be Dutch. The ship's captain, John Stone, and his crew were killed by the Pequot. A Pequot envoy was sent to Massachusetts to explain the misunderstanding. The envoy told the English about

6570-572: The sequence of events in the Pequot War. Their popular history took issue with events and whether John Mason and John Underhill wrote the accounts that appeared under their names. The authors have been adopted as honorary members of the Lenape Pequots. Most modern historians do not debate questions of the outcome of the battle or its chronology, such as Alfred A. Cave , a specialist in the ethnohistory of colonial America. However, Cave contends that Mason and Underhill's eyewitness accounts, as well as

6660-466: The settlement. The issue was resolved when the Dorchester settlers agreed to pay the Plymouth settlers for the land appropriated. Finally in 1636 the arrival of a new group of settlers allowed Hooker's congregation to sell their homes and set off on the journey to Connecticut on the May 31. Hooker's group of around a hundred settlers and as many cattle soon arrived at the Connecticut River and established

6750-442: The ship to investigate, a fight ensued with Gallup victorious. The colonists blamed the Narragansett for the killing, warning Roger Williams to be careful. The Narragansett leaders Canonicus and Miantonomoh were able to reassure the colonist, claiming that the culprits not killed by Gallup were hiding among the Pequot. After this a group of ninety men led by John Endecott and his captains John Underhill and Nathaniel Turner

6840-443: The shortage of good farmland, periodic money problems, and downward price pressures in the export market. In agriculture, there was a shift from grain to animal products. The colonial government attempted to promote various commodities as export items from time to time, such as hemp , potash , and lumber, in order to bolster its economy and improve its balance of trade with Great Britain. Connecticut's domestic architecture included

6930-436: 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

7020-485: The town of Newtown near the Dutch fort. This name would not last however, as it was soon renamed Hartford after Hertford , the hometown of settler Samuel Stone . In May 1638 Thomas Hooker delivered a sermon on civil government. Inspired by this sermon the settlers sought to create a constitution for the colony. The resulting document, the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, was likely mostly drafted by Roger Ludlow ,

7110-519: The village. There were between 400 and 700 Pequots killed during the attack; the only Pequot survivors were warriors who were away in a raiding party with their sachem Sassacus . The Pequots were the dominant Indian tribe in the southeastern portion of the Connecticut Colony , and they had long been enemies of the neighboring Mohegan and Narragansett tribes. The New England colonists established trade with all three tribes, exchanging European goods for wampum and furs. The Pequots eventually allied with

7200-467: The way up the Connecticut River. Soon after, his crew and he were attacked and killed by a larger group of Western Niantics. The initial reactions in Boston varied from indifference to outright joy at Stone's death, 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

7290-489: 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. The murderers, meanwhile, escaped and were given sanctuary with the Pequots. News of Oldham's death became

7380-486: Was Dutch explorer Adriaen Block , who sailed up the Connecticut River with his yacht Onrust . Accordingly, as the first Europeans to explore Connecticut, the Dutch claimed the land as part of New Netherland and negotiated a land purchase of 20 acres along the river from Wopigwooit, the Grand Sachem of the Pequot in 1633. The Dutch would establish a trading post named Kivett's Point and a redoubt named Fort Good Hope ,

7470-402: Was English and not Dutch. (Contemporaneous accounts claim that the Pequots knew Stone to be English. ) 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

7560-410: Was clear there was not enough land for the settlers. Particularly eager to leave the crowded Bay colony were the residents of Netwown . The founder of Newtown, Thomas Dudley was frequently at odds with Winthrop, including anger at the choice of Boston as the colony's capital and refusal to support the construction of a fort in Boston. Dudley sent one Thomas Hooker, Newtown's pastor to Boston to resolve

7650-422: 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 not happy 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

7740-409: Was no longer a separate colony. Governor Robert Treat attempted to delay handing over the charter for several months, but on October 31, 1687, Andros came to Hartford to retrieve the charter in person. Treat proceeded to give a speech well into the evening on the importance of the charter. Suddenly, a strong gust of wind came through the door, blowing out the candles. By the time the candles were relit,

7830-514: Was originally erected on the site of the Mystic Massacre in 1889, but it was moved to Windsor in 1996 because it was the location of Mason's home. In September 2020, the town council voted 5-4 to remove the statue and give it to Windsor Historical Society. But Dr. Kevin McBride, Director of Research at the Pequot Museum, noted that, when it was removed from its original location of the Mystic Massacre in

7920-573: Was seized and renamed New York after its proprietor, the Roman Catholic Duke of York . New York's eastern boundary was defined as the Connecticut River, making New Haven within the claims of both New York and Connecticut. Unwilling to be ruled by a Catholic royalist, New Haven relented and agreed to join Connecticut. The aforementioned seizure of New Netherland would also end Connecticut's claims on Long Island , as when Captain John Scott took

8010-448: Was sent from Massachusetts to the Pequot's territory to demand the return of the murderers of both Stone and Oldham. The force first sailed to Block Island, but the Indians evaded them there and the force left with the only casualty inflicted on the villagers being the burning of the island's empty villages. When the forced arrived in Pequot territory, they were told that the murder was committed by none other than Sassacus , grand sachem of

8100-415: 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

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