The Causes Of The Pequot War

The event contradicts both the American ideology and creed in terms of equality and freedom. The massacre was a result of treating Pequot Indians as inferiors, not equals. In terms of freedom, although got freedom by escaping religious persecution in England, they persecuted those who did not move to prayer towns.

Between 1492-1776, although many people moved to the “New World”, North America lost population due to the amount of Indians dying from war and diseases and the inability of colonists to replace them. John Murrin states, “losers far outnumbered winners” in “ a tragedy of such huge proportions that no one’s imagination can easily encompass it all.” This thought of a decreasing population broadens one’s perspective of history from that of an excluded American tale full of positivity to that of a more unbiased, all-encompassing analysis. The Indians and slaves have recently been noted as a more crucial part of history than previously accredited with.

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

The Pequot War is a classic example of the tension that existed between the Indians and the colonists in early America. Zinn chooses to illustrate the Indians as completely innocent and harmless, placing the blame on the Europeans, while Foner illustrates the Pequots as Indians capable of holding their own. According to Howard Zinn, the Pequot War was caused by the “murder of a white trader, Indian-kidnapper, and troublemaker became an excuse to make war” (Zinn 14). Zinn’s bias is clear when he claims that this murder was an excuse, which makes it seem as though the Puritans couldn’t wait to murder a bunch of Pequots. This contributes towards making the Puritans look greedy and selfish. Foner, on the other hand, claims that “the turning point came in 1637 when a fur trader was killed by Pequots- a powerful tribe who controlled southern New England’s fur trade and exacted tribute from other Indians” (Foner 78).

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,

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 relationship between the English and the Native Americans in 1600 to 1700 is one of the most fluctuating and the most profound relationships in American history. On the one side of the picture, the harmony between Wampanoag and Puritans even inspires them to celebrate “first Thanksgiving”; while, by contrast, the conflicts between the Pequots and the English urge them to antagonize each other, and even wage a war. In addition, the mystery of why the European settlers, including English, become the dominant power in American world, instead of the indigenous people, or Indians, can be solved from the examination of the relationship. In a variety of ways, the relationship drastically alters how people think about and relate to the aborigines. Politically, the relationship changes to establish the supremacy of the English; the English intends to obtain the land and rules over it. Socially, the relationship changes to present the majority of the English settlers; the dominating population is mostly the English settlers. Economically, the relationship changes to obtain the benefit of the English settlers; they gain profit from the massive resource in America. Therefore, the relationship does, in fact, change to foreshadow the discordance of the two groups of people.

This very interesting and well written book is a successful effort to recover an unanachronistic view of interactions between native peoples and Europeans in the American Great Lakes region between the mid-17th century and the end of the War of 1812. White deals extensively with events usually described in terms of European conquest of native peoples or French-British imperial rivalry but White's perspective is both novel and insightful. The Middle Ground that White describes in not a geographic locale but a metaphor for an interesting type of cultural interaction and accommodation. In the mid-17th century, the powerful Iroquois confederation had fragemented many other tribal groupings and driven their remnants westwards. Some of these groups

The migration of European settlers and culture to North America is an often examined area. One aspect of this, however, is worthy of deeper analysis. The conquest of North America by Europeans and American settlers from the 16th to 19th centuries had a profound effect on the indigenous political landscape by defining a new relationship dynamic between natives and settlers, by upsetting existing native political, economic and military structures, and by establishing a paradigm where the indigenous peoples felt they had to resist the European and American incursions. The engaging and brilliant works of Andres Rensendez and Steve Inskeep, entitled respectively “A Land So Strange” and “Jacksonland”, provide excellent insights and aide to this analysis.

During the time of 1763-1775, one of the occurrences that happened to affect the colonists’ perception of the British was the French and Indian War. The war itself was not the main reason the colonists’ had trouble with the British, but the time after the war was the actual cause of eventual trouble. During the war, the British fought with France around the Ohio valley for the control of land. The Ohio valley was very important to both of the empires, because of the land value and the strategic location it held in the years to come. Both had their struggles especially with the Native Americans that called this area their home. Most of the Native Americans sided with either the British or the French because they thought that if they had sided with

Peter Silver’s thesis in Our Savage Neighbors explains that The French and Indian War was the primary cause of the change in social and political standings in the Mid-Atlantic colonies. Silver argues that Europe’s disunity in times of war further influenced the split within the American people and the American natives both culturally and politically. Silver claims that the shift in competitive governmental and economic attitude between the French and the British forced the existing native peoples to become casualties in Europe’s battle for territory. Since the Native American people were not considered a say in their land being taken out from under them, they retaliated from a place of self-defense and fear of their conquerors; consequently,

The French and Indian Wars were a series of conflicts between Spanish, Dutch, Britain, the thirteen colonies and Native American allies against France, its colonies in Canada, and its Native American allies. The wars took place from 1689-1763. The United States was not involved in the war until 1754-1763. The major cause of these conflicts was the need for other countries to control the territories of the North American, mainly the area around the Hudson Bay. The Hudson Bay area was essential to the fur trade. Whoever controlled that area would dominate the fur trade in North America. The French and Indian war could have been lost in the colonies but the military advantage shifted to Great Britain as a result of a bigger population and productivity compared to the French colonies. Also the British had a better ability to resupply the

To better understand the conflict between the Europeans and the Native Americans, one must closely examine the state of Europe’s economy at the time. Europe struggled with difficult conditions. This included poverty, violence and diseases like typhus, smallpox, influenza and measles. There were widespread famines which caused the prices of products to vary and made life very difficult in Europe. Street crimes and violence were prevalent in cities: “Other eruption of bizarre torture, murder, and ritual cannibalism were not uncommon”.2 Europeans

After reviewing numerous sources discussing the Pequot War, each side has similarities and differences. However, Flynn’s case study of the war resembled the research that was read. Flynn looks at the Pequot war as one that the colonists did not instigate, and that the Pequot Indians were the ones to blame. Flynn states, “The Pequots not only waged war on whites, but on their fellow native Americans as well. They were belligerent people feared by weaker tribes” (Flynn 11). This is similar to the article that states “These [The Pequot Indians and the English] tensions escalated when Pequots killed English colonists and traders in 1633 and 1636” (Dutcher). This was the first act that the Pequots committed showing the similarities in their stories. On the other hand, one could state that Zinn summary of the Pequot war was closer to the article because the article does show key points about how the English attacked and killed numerous Indians very gruesomely. For example, Zinn states that “The English landed and killed some Indians, but the rest hid in the thick forests of the island and the English went from one deserted village to the next, destroying crops” (Zinn 15). The English unconsciously ravaged the Pequot Indian way of life, leading the Indians to have negative thought. This is similar to the article that states “Under English and Mohegan command, white and Indian troops allied against the Pequot and courted support from the Narragansett Indians. After a two-day march, the party surprised and burned the Pequot fort near present-day Mystic. Only seven Indians escaped the slaughter. English forces attacked a second Pequot stronghold two miles away the same night” (Dutcher). Zinn summarizes the war in the eyes of the Pequot Indians while Flynn views it from the colonists. Flynn tries

The French and Indian War, a colonial manifestation of the same forces and tensions that erupted in the European Seven Years' War, was, quite simply, a war about imperialism. The French and the English were competing for land and trading rights in North America; these strivings resulted in a great deal of disputed land, particularly that of the rich Ohio Valley. Each nation saw this territory as vital in its effort to increase its own power and wealth while simultaneously limiting the strength of its rival. Although the war itself therefore stemmed from a fairly simple motivation, its consequences were far- reaching. The English victory in the war decided the colonial fate of North America, and yet at the same time sowed the seeds of the eventual colonial revolution. After the war, the British ended their century-long policy of salutary neglect, attempting to keep the colonials under a more watchful eye. The British also raised taxes in an effort to pay for the war. Both of these postwar policies resulted in massive colonial discontent and added to the budding nationalism that eventually exploded in the Revolutionary War.