Native American Indians And Native Americans : The Pequot War

May 26, 1637 was a fateful day in the history of America. The actions of Major John Mason and his Puritan men set a precedent for the next two hundred years of European and Indian relations. On that clear May night near the Mystic River of New England, hundreds of Pequot Indians were killed by the Europeans and their allies, most of the victims being the elderly, women, and children. This massacre was a massive turning point in the Pequot War, effectively ruining the tribe. Already weakened by disease and by competing native tribes, the Pequot were quickly routed and by September 21, 1638 the war ended with the Treaty of Hartford. The treaty

In exchange, the encomendero could force the Native Americans to pay tribute in forms of bullion and labor. Eventually, the native people began to die off from the harsh labor and foreign diseases that the Spanish brought from Spain. The Native Americans rejected Spanish control and returned to their customs. Angered by this, the Spanish captured 46 Pueblo leaders, which started the Pueblo Revolt. After years of fighting, the Spanish regained control. In New England, relationships with local Native Americans started out peaceful. The Native Americans and settlers of New England began to trade with each other. Native Americans, who were used to their elementary weapons, acquired better weapons from the Europeans. This once beneficiary exchange between the two cultures eventually grew tense. As years went on and more settlers came to America, conflicts arose. An agreement formed between Dutch settlers of New York and the English settlers of New England about the division of the Pequot lands. When no immediate decisions were reached of who would gain the land, New Englanders started to settle in the area without notice. The Pequot took this unplanned invasion as a form of attack, and fought back. After a series of attacks, New England called for reinforcements from allies. By joining forces with Plymouth and the Narragansett people, the English gained control

When the English arrived in Jamestown, they landed in an area with 15,000 to 25,000 Indians living in small villages. Wahunsonacock ruled these Indians. He had authority over the region and collected tribute from many tribes and called this Powhatan (Foner, 59). The Indians and the Chesapeake decided to be peaceful and started to trade. John Smith was then captured by the Indians and threatened with execution by Powhatan, but then later on rescued by Pocahontas. Smith’s return to England raised tension between them and the Indians. This began the conflict with the Powhatan Confederacy for the settlers of Chesapeake. English were massacring villagers and destroying Indian crops. New England faced the conflict of the Pequot War. In 1637, a fur trader was killed by Pequots, a powerful tribe who controlled southern New England’s fur trade (Foner, 76). Connecticut and Massachusetts soldiers surrounded the Pequot village. The soldiers set it ablaze killing those who tried to escape. Over 500 men, women and children lost their lives in the massacre and by the end of the war most Pequot had been exterminated or sold to the Caribbean slavery.

Praying towns were towns created to convert Natives and make them live by a Puritan Code. In exchange for converting they were promised security and eternal life. John Eliot, a puritan minister, established the first Praying town in 1651. By the 1650’s the Native people were weakened by disease and saw how Pilgrims were now powerful enough to no longer need the Native people’s help. The Pequot war proved how vicious the pilgrims could be in expanding their colonization. With disease and the growing population of the English. Many Native people saw no other choice but to go to these praying towns and convert and survive. The Wompanoag had lost much of their land and Massasoit did not want missionaries in their territory. The protection promised

Indians were already settled and peaceful in the Connecticut region, but things got rough when the New England colonists began to look for land in the rising Connecticut, Massachusetts Bay, and Plymouth colonies lands. The Pequot Indians were not welcoming of the white settlers at all. Colonists approached and began to establish their policies. The Indians attempted their best to maintain their control of the land. This help lead to the Pequot War of 1637 (Richards, “Pequot War of 1637”). The main spark for the war was when eight Europeans were killed because a tribe was not paid proper ransom. The Pequot started to attack towns in the colonies. Colonists were killed, kidnapped, and their lands were destroyed. Later on, the Connecticut colonists attacked the Pequot village of Misistuck, and it ended with a massacre. The war ended when the Treaty of Hartford was signed. The Pequots were distributed to the Naragansett, Mohegan, and Metoac tribes as slaves or shipped by colonists to Bermuda as slaves. Colonists declared ownership of the lands (Copper, “13 Things About the Pequot War”). Not only did The New England colonists fight, but The Chesapeake colonists fought Native Americans too. Much of the conflict is

The massacre at Mystic greatly influenced the relationship between English settlers and the Indians would have for many years to come. By demolishing the Pequot, a clear image was set that the Indians and whites would never “live with themselves, each other and the land” said one historian. King Phillips war, an extension of the Pequot war, ended all violent resistance by Indians to English colonization, eventually leading to the continued growth of the Puritan population and expansion of land. As the Puritans spread out, they not only took the natives land, but took the very freedom they had come from England to attain; freedom from religious persecution. Indians were taught to reject their Indian identities and become “civilized” in “praying

They welcomed the natives, and willingly started trading with them. They wanted to turn these uncivilized people into civilized Christians. While some Native tribes embraced the English culture, some resisted the colonists’ attempts to change them. Their refusal to conform to European culture, made Europeans angry. Consequently, hostilities soon broke out between the two groups such as the Massacre at Pequot village (Doc 3). This violence of these confrontations with the Native Americans caused a shift in English attitudes towards different races. While, their failure to make the Native Americans part of their culture, caused them to associate all people of color with negative characteristics, some, such as Nathaniel Bacon, who led a rebellion against the Native Americans as he felt that they had to suppressed, felt a sense of .guilt, as they realized that many times they had held innocent Native Americans accountable for the deeds of another (Doc

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

In about the 1500s the Pequot and Mohegan people migrated down the Hudson River. () the Pequot and Mohegan people originally occupied the lands of today, from the Neshanic River eastward to the border of Rhode Island. () Though after smallpox spread through the reservation, the Mohegan’s and Pequot’s split into two different tribes, and the Pequot war broke out, the Pequot people lost about seventy-five percent of their population. () The Pequot people, “with the assistance of the Native American Rights Fund and the Indian Rights Association, the Tribe filed suit in 1976 against neighboring landowners to recover land that had been sold by the State of Connecticut in 1856.”() Although it was

The Pequot War was battled in 1637. It included the Pequot Indians and the Pilgrim's pioneers Colony and the Massachusetts Bay Colony. This war was the climax of various clashes between the pilgrims and the Indians. There were arguments about property, domesticated animals harming Indian harvests, chasing, the offering of liquor to Indians, and deceptive dealers. Other than these, the Colonists trusted that they had a God offered right to settle this New World. They saw the Indian as savages who should have been be changed over to their method for God. Tragically, the settlers felt better than all Indians even the individuals who got to be Christian. The Indian was in a troublesome circumstance. He

Although white European settlers and the native Indians had existed moderately peaceful for around 40 years pressures rose in the mid-seventh century. Conflict arose due to decline in Indian territories, population, and their cultural integrity. These differences ultimately lead to conflicts in which collectively became known as King Philip’s War. What types of complaints did the Indians have against the settlers? How were the Indians expected to survive if the settlers kept taking their land? The primary sources in this collection of source documents touch upon on what each group (Indian or white settlers) did to survive: an excerpt from a narrative written by John Easton, a second hand account written by Thomas Church, a report written to the English leaders by Edward Randolph, a petition written by an Indian named William Nahton, and an excerpt of an account from a book written by Mary Rowlandson. These documents illustrate the main causes that sparked the war between the Native Indians and the white English settlers, narratives written by both sides to find peaceful solutions, and actual accounts of people who survived the conflict. The second hand account written about Benjamin Church’s meeting with the Indian group known as the Sakonnet Indians displays that the Indians knew their only chance of survival was to fight while the report written to English leaders by Randolph suggest that the settlers who viewed the Indians as uncivilized had ultimately forced the Indians

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

What is the Pequot war? How did it begin and what was the aftermath? The Pequot War could have also been known as a massacre. The Pequot war was on May 26, 1637. The Pequot war was a war between the Europeans and the Pequot Indians. The English Puritan settlements had begun expanding into the Connecticut River Valley. The only major problem with expanding the settlement was the Pequot Indians. Though, the feud had also involved other Indian tribes including the Mohegans; the Mohegans, however, shared close relation to the Pequot Indians because they were once apart of their tribe and had later split off. The Pequots and the Indians had disputes involving property, livestock damaging Indian crops, hunting, the selling of alcohol to Indians,

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.

This pressure was not just between the newly founded English settlements and the Native American tribes, but within the Native Americans groups. Much of this tension was able to be vanquished, but what was able to remain in times resulted in devastating actions. One of these actions occurred in 1637 which is known as the Pequot War. The barbarism of this event caused every side to attempt to reach a compromise instead of further conflict. The demand of land was a huge concern for the English and Native American communities, and this created tension between the two. Massasoit however was able to keep the peace and gain power by granting the Pilgrims land in a numerous amount of deals in which he gained a fortune and a legacy. As a new generation of Wampanoag, one without Massasoit’s