Pequot War (1636–1638): The Mystic Massacre and Its Aftermath

The Pequot War was a conflict fought between 1636 and 1638 in southern New England, in which the English colonies of Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth and Connecticut, allied with the Mohegan and Narragansett, defeated the Pequot nation. Its most notorious event was the burning of a fortified Pequot village at Mystic in May 1637, where hundreds of people died. The war established English dominance in the region and was later remembered by Native communities as a massacre and an attempted erasure of a people.

Background: trade, disease and rivalry

In the early seventeenth century the Pequot were one of the most powerful peoples in southern New England. They lived along the Pequot (now Thames) and Mystic rivers in what is now south-eastern Connecticut and controlled much of the trade in wampum, shell beads that served as currency in the fur trade with the Dutch.

The balance of power began to shift in the 1630s. A smallpox epidemic in 1633–1634 killed many Native people across the region. The Dutch built a trading post at what is now Hartford in 1633, and English settlers from Massachusetts founded Windsor, Wethersfield and Hartford on the Connecticut River between 1633 and 1636. At the same time a Pequot sachem, Uncas, broke away to lead the Mohegan, who became rivals of the Pequot and allies of the English. The Narragansett to the east were long-standing Pequot enemies. When the Pequot sought a Narragansett alliance against the English in 1636, Roger Williams, recently exiled to Providence, helped persuade the Narragansett sachems to side with the colonists instead.

The road to war

Two killings gave the colonists their pretext. In 1634 the English trader John Stone, a man of poor reputation, and his crew were killed on the Connecticut River, probably by Western Niantic allied to the Pequot. In July 1636 the trader John Oldham was killed off Block Island, most likely by Manisses people, who were tributaries of the Narragansett rather than the Pequot.

In August 1636 the Massachusetts Bay Colony sent about 90 men under John Endecott to Block Island and then into Pequot country, demanding the killers and compensation. They burned villages and crops but killed few people. The Pequot retaliated against the English outpost of Fort Saybrook at the mouth of the Connecticut River, which they besieged through the winter of 1636–1637. In April 1637 Pequot warriors attacked Wethersfield, killing nine colonists and capturing two girls.

The Mystic massacre

On 1 May 1637 the Connecticut General Court declared war. Captain John Mason led about 90 English soldiers, joined by around 70 Mohegan under Uncas, and sailed to Narragansett Bay, where several hundred Narragansett warriors joined them. With 20 more men under Captain John Underhill from Massachusetts, they marched west overland to approach the Pequot from an unexpected direction.

Before dawn on 26 May 1637, they surrounded a fortified Pequot village on the Mystic River. Its palisade enclosed dozens of wigwams, and most of the Pequot fighting men were at another fort under the sachem Sassacus. After an initial assault met fierce resistance, Mason ordered the wigwams set on fire. The English formed an inner ring around the burning fort and their Native allies an outer one, killing those who tried to escape.

Estimates of the dead range from about 400 to 700 Pequot, most of them women, children and older men. Only a handful survived. The English lost two killed and about 20 wounded. Underhill’s own account records that some Narragansett allies objected that this way of fighting killed too many people, and Mason and other writers presented the outcome as an act of divine judgement.

Almost everything known about the attack comes from English participants, chiefly Underhill’s Newes from America, published in London in 1638 with an engraved plan of the fort, and Mason’s account, written decades later and printed in 1736. No Pequot account was written down at the time, so the numbers and the motives of each side rest heavily on the victors’ testimony.

The pursuit of the Pequot

The destruction of Mystic broke Pequot resistance. Sassacus and many survivors abandoned their homeland and fled west along the coast. Colonial troops, now including fresh forces from Massachusetts under Israel Stoughton, pursued them, killing or capturing many.

In July 1637 a large group of Pequot was trapped in a swamp near modern Fairfield, Connecticut, and after a fight about 180 surrendered, mostly women and children. Sassacus escaped to the Mohawk, who killed him and sent his head to the English in Hartford in August 1637, probably to show that they would not shelter the colonists’ enemies.

Captured men were often executed. Women and children were distributed among the colonists and their Native allies as servants, and some were shipped as slaves to the West Indies; in 1638 the ship Desire carried Pequot captives to the Puritan colony on Providence Island, off the coast of Central America, returning with enslaved Africans.

The Treaty of Hartford

On 21 September 1638 the colonists, the Mohegan and the Narragansett signed the Treaty of Hartford. Around 200 surviving Pequot were divided among the Mohegan, the Narragansett and the Eastern Niantic. Pequot people were forbidden to live in their former lands or to call themselves Pequot, and the Pequot River was later renamed the Thames, in 1658.

The English took control of the Pequot territory and the wampum trade. Connecticut and Massachusetts Bay disputed the spoils, and new settlements such as New London were later founded on former Pequot land.

Legacy

The war removed the strongest Native power in southern New England and opened the region to rapid English expansion. Its alliances soon shifted: Uncas and the Mohegan rose in influence, while the Narragansett sachem Miantonomi was captured by Uncas and, with the approval of the colonial authorities, executed in 1643. Tensions over land culminated in King Philip’s War of 1675–1676.

The Pequot survived despite the treaty. Two communities, the Mashantucket (Western) Pequot and the Paucatuck (Eastern) Pequot, received reservations from the Connecticut colony in 1666 and 1683 respectively. The Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation was federally recognised in 1983 and later opened the Foxwoods Resort Casino and the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center, which has supported archaeological surveys of the war’s battlefields.

The war’s memory is still debated. A statue of John Mason stood near the Mystic fort site from 1889; after Native objections it was moved to Windsor, Connecticut, in the 1990s. Historians such as Alfred Cave have stressed the role of English fears and ambitions in starting the war, while others place more weight on Native rivalries.

Timeline

• 1633–1634: Smallpox ravages Native communities; English and Dutch posts appear on the Connecticut River.
• 1634: The trader John Stone and his crew are killed.
• 1636, July: John Oldham is killed off Block Island.
• 1636, August: John Endecott’s expedition raids Block Island and Pequot country.
• 1637, April: Pequot warriors attack Wethersfield.
• 1637, 1 May: Connecticut declares war on the Pequot.
• 1637, 26 May: English and allied forces burn the Pequot fort at Mystic.
• 1637, July: Surviving Pequot are defeated near Fairfield.
• 1637, August: Sassacus is killed by the Mohawk.
• 1638, 21 September: The Treaty of Hartford ends the war.

Why it matters

The Pequot War was the first major war between English colonists and Native peoples in New England, and the Mystic attack showed how devastating colonial warfare could be for civilians. It reshaped power in the region for decades and set patterns of alliance, captivity and land seizure that recurred in later conflicts.