Hooker addressing the Soldiers.
This necessity of warfare they would gladly have avoided, for the condition of the settlement required all their energies and efforts at home. They could neither hunt, fish, nor cultivate their fields, nor travel the shortest distance, while an insidious and cruel foe was hovering around them. They felt that he must be crippled or destroyed, or that their entire settlement would be cut off by piecemeal. The natives embraced every opportunity of committing depredations on the lives and property of the whites. A picture of the kind of life which was passed in those times of savage treachery and English daring, is given in the following detail of incidents, which occurred on the water immediately previous to the Pequot war:
Gallop finds Oldham murdered.
"John Oldham, who had been fairly trading at Connecticut, was murdered near Block island. He had with him only two boys and two Narraganset Indians. These were taken and carried off. One John Gallop, as he was going from Connecticut to Boston, discovered Mr. Oldham's vessel full of Indians, and he saw a canoe full of Indians on board, go from her laden with goods. Suspecting that they had murdered Mr. Oldham, he hailed them, but received no answer. Gallop was a bold man, and though he had with him but one man and two boys, he immediately bore down upon them, and fired duck-shot so thick among them, that he soon cleared the deck. The Indians all got under the hatches. He then stood off; and, running down upon her quarter with a brisk gale, nearly overset them, and so frighted the Indians, that six of them leaped into the sea, and were drowned. He then steered off again; and, running down upon her a second time, bored her with his anchor, and raked her fore and aft with his shot. But the Indians kept themselves so close, he got loose from her; and, running down a third time upon the vessel, he gave her such a shock, that five more leaped overboard, and perished, as the former had done. He then boarded the vessel, and took two of the Indians, and bound them. Two or three others, armed with swords, in a little room below, could not be driven from their retreat. Mr. Oldham's corse was found on board, the head split and the body mangled in a barbarous manner. He was a Dorchester man, one of Mr. Warham's congregation. In these circumstances, Gallop, fearing that the Indians whom he had taken might get loose, especially if they were kept together, and having no place where he could keep them apart, threw one of them overboard. Gallop and his company then, as decently as circumstances would permit, put the corse into the sea. They stripped the vessel, and took the rigging and the goods which had not been carried off on board their own. She was taken in tow, with a view to carry her in; but the night coming on and the wind rising, Gallop was obliged to let her go adrift, and she was lost."
At the termination of the Pequot war, there was a great scarcity of provisions in Connecticut, and fearful apprehensions were felt on the part of the settlers. With all their efforts, they had not been able to raise a sufficiency of provisions, and these became at length very costly. Corn rose to the extraordinary price of twelve shillings by the bushel. The debt contracted by the war was paid with difficulty. Nothing saved the colony from a famine but a providential supply of corn, which they were enabled to purchase from the natives, at an Indian settlement called Pocomptock (Deerfield).
The first constitution of Connecticut was adopted January 15, 1639, by the free planters of the three towns of Windsor, Hartford, and Wethersfield, who convened at Hartford for the purpose. It was an admirably contrived instrument, providing for the freedom and liberties of themselves and their posterity. Some fifty years ago, Doctor Trumbull remarked, respecting it, that it was "one of the most free and happy institutions of civil government which has ever been formed. The formation of it at so early a period, when the light of liberty was wholly darkened in most parts of the earth, and the rights of men so little understood in others, does great honor to their ability, integrity, and love to mankind. To posterity, indeed, it exhibited a most benevolent regard. It has continued with little alteration to the present time."