Alaina Smith
Professor Lamarre
HIS 121 – 8:00 am class
Fall 2015
Mystic Massacre With the sun rising on a morning in May of 1636, roughly 500 Pequot men, women, and children lay slaughtered on the ground. This was the outcome of the Mystic Fort Battle. The Puritans in New England thought they were entitled to the land and resources that the Native Americans had. With the smallpox epidemic killing thousands of Native Americans who were not prepared for the disease, the Puritans; especially John Winthrop thought that this was God's way of telling the Puritans that this land was meant for them and not the Native Americans (Edwards).
The massacre at Mystic was the first "total war" act used against the Indians (United States). The Puritan
Unlike their Spanish and French counterparts, the New England colonists did not interact with or form good relations with their Native neighbors. They refused to intermarry, and regarded the American Indians as devil worshipping heathens. William Bradford wrote “(God) Who had wrought so wonderfully for them, thus to enclose their enemies into their hands, and give them so speedy a victory over so proud, insulting, and blasphemous an enemy.” (Doc D). Written just after the colonists attack on the Praying town of Mystic, Bradford glorifies the murder of the Pequot Natives, despite the fact that they were trying to convert to Christianity. His words reflect the Puritan belief that the Natives were inherently enemies of god, and could have no standing within their society. This common and bigoted belief created a wedge between the New England colonists and the Natives that lead to additional conflicts, such as Powhatans war. Ultimately, Puritan faith and the value placed on education greatly impacted the social structure of the New England
Protests in the streets against the British soldiers for this Townshend Tea Tax led to the first bloodshed early in the Revolution. The “Boston Massacre” was the killing of eleven citizens on the streets of Boston when a group of sixty colonists led by Crispus Attucks were protesting the new act. The news of this slaughter was spread throughout the colonies by the Committees of Correspondence set up by a rich politician named Samuel Adams. These committees made it possible for information on everything resistance-related to reach all of the colonies in due time. In this way was news of the Boston Massacre spread across the United States which created outrage across the country. As tea was shipped to America under the new tea tax, rebellion stirred in Boston. Colonists disguised themselves and pillaged the trade ships, ruining millions of dollars worth of tea. In response to this, Parliament passed the ‘Intolerable Acts’ which outraged the colonists even further by closing the Boston ports, placing Massachusetts under royal authority, and allowing the Catholic French to settle along the Ohio River Valley under the new policies. Thus continued Parliament to colonist battle as the First Continental Congress met to discuss their rights as subjects under the king and announce the changes they wanted made in the Declaration of Rights which argued that the natural rights of
The Boston Massacre took place on March 5th, 1770. This historic event was caused because of an ongoing conflict between the British soldiers and the people of Boston. According to George Hewes account, “Crowds of artisans and laborers joined the elite in protesting British policies, although their differing points of view revealed the divisions within colonial society.” People were upset over the British passing the Towsend Act, which was a surplus of unpopular taxes. The people of Boston also resented the British troops, who were also looking for jobs.
In New England, John Winthrop began conflicts early when he declared that the Indians had only a natural right to their land and no legal right. The Puritans and Pequot Indians lived side by side with relative peace until an attack was launched upon the Narraganset Indians. Not many people were killed and the Narragansets did not fight back, but when the Puritans attacked the Pequot Indians, they fought back. The Pequot War was one of large massacres, rather than battles, from both sides and had many deaths. "Mason proposed to avoid attacking Pequot warriors, which would have overtaxed his unseasoned, unreliable troops. Battle, as such, was not his purpose. Battle is only one of the ways to destroy an enemy's will to fight. Massacre can accomplish the same end with less risk, and Mason had determined that massacre would be his objective" (Jennings). The Europeans raided the Pequot village and burned all of
The Mystic Massacre, May 26, 1637, started the first of the days. The Mystic Massacre took place during the Pequot War. The Pequot war was an ongoing conflict between the indigenous Pequot (Native American Tribe) and an alliance consisting of English colonist, Narragansett Indians, and the Mohegan tribe. They were
In June of 1675, King Philip, called Metacom by the Indians, led the Wampanoag, Algonquin, Nipmunk, and Narragansett Indians in massive attacks against the English in Plymouth, Massachusetts. The English colonists allied with the Mohegan, Pequot, Mohawk, and Christian Indians and fought back. There were organized raids back and forth which resulted in thousands of murders. On both sides, women and children were killed, tortured, and the survivors sold to slavery.
The Pequot War was the first brutal war on the North American continent, and the first war fought between the Native Americans and the English settlers. The whole war began, because the Englishmen, like always, became greedy and wanted more land and more profitable trade. The homeland of the Pequot tribe, was modern day Connecticut. The tribe had an estimated population of 2,200 members, and they based their everyday lives off of maize, hunting, and even fishing (Pequot, 2012). For a period of time, the English settlers and the Native American tribe lived peacefully with a fair-trading system and they helped each other, but that did not last long. One reason for the Englishmen coming to the North American continent, was to spread the faith of Christianity. Believing that God had given the English settlers the right to settle in the new-found land, they saw great opportunities to convert the “savages” to their Christian ways (Pequot, 2012). The English settlers began invading the Pequot’s territory, and almost completely pushed them off of their land. “There were disputes over property, livestock damaging Indian crops, hunting, the selling of alcohol to Indians, and dishonest traders” (1636- The Pequot War, n.d.). Not only did the Pequot’s have issues with the English settlers, they were always on bad terms with the Narragansett tribe as well. The tribe separated into two parts, the “pro-English and pro-Dutch” (Colonialwarsct.org). This event made the Indians very weak,
King Philip’s War is seen as one of the main sparks which has ignited the hysteria of puritans. This war occurred between 1675-1676 and originated from the land confliction between the Natives and Plymouth colony; after Massasoit, the chief of
In September of 1857, roughly 120 members of the “Baker-Fancher” party - a California bound wagon-train from Arkansas – decided to set up camp in Mountain Meadows, Utah Territory. The newly-arrived settlers were denied water access and grazing land by the LDS throughout Utah, and thus welcomed the lush pastures and pristine streams of Mountain Meadows. However, unbeknownst to them, an increasingly malevolent Mormon presence planned on retributive bloodshed.
In 1675, the Algonquian Indians rose up in fury against the Puritan Colonists, sparking a violent conflict that engulfed all of Southern New England. From this conflict ensued the most merciless and blood stricken war in American history, tearing flesh from the Puritan doctrine, revealing deep down the bright and incisive fact that anger and violence brings man to a Godless level when faced with the threat of pain and total destruction. In the summer of 1676, as the violence dispersed and a clearing between the hatred and torment was visible, thousands were dead.(Lepore xxi) Indian and English men, women, and children, along with many of the young villages of New England were no more; casualties of a conflict that
The resulting white, indian conflicts often took a particularly brutal turn and ultimately resulted in the near -de- struction of the indigenous peoples.Warfare between Europeans and Indians was common in the seventeenth century.In 1622 the Powhatan confederacy nearly wiped out the struggling Jamestown colony.In New England Puritan forces annihilated the Pequot’s in 1636-1637, a campaign whose intensity seemed to foreshadowing the future.
The Indian Massacre of 1622 took place in the English Colony of Virginia on Friday, March 22nd, 1622. Statements claim that the Indians walked into town unarmed, or even stayed the night at their intended victim’s houses. No weapons meant that they were coming in peace and showed good faith. Later on that morning, the Powhatans had grabbed whatever weapons or tools were lying nearby to slaughter the settlers. Many of the English settlers were found and killed, this included men, women, and children of all ages. Chief Opechancanough had compiled a serious of attacks that were to be sent to different settlements; nearly 350 people were reported dead. Equaling around a quarter of Jamestown population. Thankfully, Jamestown was spared due to an early warning was given to them by an Indian informant. However, the other settlements were not as lucky as they were practically torn apart. In addition to killing the settlers, the Powhatan returned to burn down houses and crops. Those that survived the onslaught abandoned many of the smaller settlements along the James River after the attacks.
The Ludlow Massacre of 1914 is one of the bloodiest strike in the American labor history. Historians have debated whether the event was a massacre of innocent lives caused by the Colorado Fuel & Iron (CF&I) or as a battle between the company workers and the company militiamen. The CF&I stated that the event was an act of its workers to demilitarize the company and to prevent importation of “strikebreakers”. However, Thomas Andrews’ Killing for Coal: America’s Deadliest Labor War introduces the concept of workscape in which gives an understanding of the event internally, above the surface and underground the mines of Colorado. Within the book, the operation of Colorado coal companies in capitalizing the coal industry lead to the formation of the mine workscape in which united coal miners underground the mines and above the surface to fight for industrial and political rights. This paper would define the concept of workscape in the definition given by Andrews, and provide evidence of the responsibility of the exploitation of capitalism in forming the mine workscape in the Colorado coal fields between the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. Furthermore, the closer inspection of several events that occurred within and outside the grounds of the Colorado coal fields related to labor unrest with the knowledge of the concept of workscape will help understand the culmination of the Ludlow massacre within the larger history of capitalism. A careful investigation of the book and other
The Pequot War was a very bloody war during the early colonial period of the Americas and had a great effect on the Americas. However, it is what happened before the Pequot War that truly gives light to why it happened. Before the war, the New England colonies were expanding greatly, and this thusly caused the colonists to come into conflict with the indigenous people of the Americas (Meuwese, 2011). Preparing for a battle with the indigenous peoples, John Winthrop had prepared the New Englanders for conflict by, according to Schultz (2010), "agreeing to train all male colonists to use fire arms, forbidding Indians' entering Puritan towns, and forbidding Puritans' selling firearms to Indians" (p. 41). There were minor
The worst mass murder suicide was the Jonestown Massacre which happened on November 18th, 1978. Have you ever head the saying “Don’t drink the Kool-Aid?” this originates for the Jonestown Massacre, which killed over 900 members of the Peoples Temple. James Jones made a concoction of a powered drink, like Kool-Aid mixed laced with cyanide and prescription drugs. James Jones used psychological manipulation instead of physical force with the members of Peoples Temple.