For two years white settlers moved into Connecticut, and took up farms in the most fertile places. But the Indians were soon unfriendly. An Englishman named Oldham, who had been trading in Connecticut, was murdered by a party of Block Island braves, several of whom were said—by the frontier settlers—to have taken refuge among the Pequots, who gave them ample protection. When the Governor of Massachusetts heard of this, he was exceedingly wroth, for Oldham was a resident of Dorchester and was a friend of his. So, ordering Captain Endicott of the State Militia to appear before him, he said:
"I commission you, good sir, to put to death the redskins of Block Island, with ninety of our soldiers. Spare the women and children, but bring them away and take possession of the Island. Then go to the Pequots and demand the murderers of Captain Stone, Oldham, and other Englishmen who have been killed, and one thousand fathom of wampum for damages. Also get some of their children as hostages, which, if they refuse, you must take by force."
Endicott was not long in starting upon his mission, and soon had captured Block Island and burned the villages of the natives. He then sailed for Pequot Harbor, where a warrior of the army under Sassacus came out in a canoe to demand who the intruders were. The River Thames, where now the rival crews of Yale and Harvard struggle for supremacy on the water, emptied into this harbor, and upon either bank were the homes of the Indians.
"I wish to see Sassacus, your Chief," said Endicott.
"He has gone to Long Island," the Indian replied.
"Then I wish to speak with the next in authority," continued the leader of the Massachusetts troops, "and I wish to have the murderers of Oldham given up to my care."
The Pequot brave did not reply and paddled to the shore, followed by the English troops, who landed and stood—fully armed—a short distance from the beach. The Indians in numbers gathered around them, but the head Sachem did not put in an appearance. "He will come," said the fellow who had been in the canoe, "if you English will lay down your arms. We will, at the same time, leave our bows and arrows at a distance."
But Endicott grew angry at this, as he believed it to be a pretext for gaining time. "Begone, you Pequots," he thundered. "You have dared the English to come and fight you, and we are ready." The Indians withdrew to a short distance, and then the leader of the whites ordered his men to advance. A shower of arrows poured upon them, as they did so, but the English discharged a hot volley which killed several and wounded fully twenty of the redskins. At this they fled, while the troops pressed on to their village and burned it to the ground.
At night the little army returned to the five ships which had brought them, and next day they went ashore upon the west side of the river and burned all the wigwams and smashed all the canoes of the Pequots' families who lived upon the bank of the Thames. The Indians shot at them from behind rocks and trees, but their arrows did little damage, and so, with the loss of not a single man, the troops set sail for Boston. "They came home all safe," says a historian, "which was a marvelous providence of God, that not a hair fell from the head of any of them, nor were there any sick or wounded in the little army."
Sassacus was now infuriated with the whites. In retaliation for this attack upon his people, he ordered war upon the white settlers of Connecticut. The forts and settlements of the English were assaulted in every direction. No boat could pass up and down the Connecticut River in safety. The hard-working farmers could neither hunt, fish, nor cultivate their lands. People went armed to their work in the fields and to church on Sunday, while a guard was stationed outside the meeting houses during service. At the mouth of the Connecticut River, the English had a fortification, called Fort Saybrook. In October five of the garrison were surprised and killed, as they were carrying in some hay from a field near by. Not long afterwards several vessels were captured, and the sailors were tortured by the Pequots. Saybrook Fort was besieged, the outhouses were burned, and the few cattle that were not killed often came in at night with the arrows of the Pequot warriors sticking in their sides. Early in March four of the garrison were caught outside the walls of the fort and massacred, while a horde of red warriors surrounded the stockade on all sides, challenging the English to come out and fight in the open, mocking them with catcalls, groans, hisses, and imitations of the screams of those whom they had captured, and boasting that the Pequots would soon drive all the English into the sea. They would often rush up to the gate in the endeavor to gain an entrance, but a discharge of grapeshot from a cannon made them retreat into the timber.