In July, 1636, John Oldham, who had been appointed collector of the tribute from the Pequots, was killed off Block Island by some of the Indians of the island who were subject to the Narragansett tribe.[3 ] Although the Pequots had nothing whatever to do with this affair, the Massachusetts government, under Harry Vane, sent a force against them, commanded by John Endicott. After stopping at Block Island and destroying some Indian houses, he proceeded to the main-land to make war on the Pequots, but beyond burning some wigwams and seizing some corn he accomplished very little.
The action of Massachusetts was heartily condemned by the Plymouth colony and the settlers on the Connecticut, and Gardiner, the commander of the Saybrook fort, bluntly told Endicott that the proceedings were outrageous and would serve only to bring the Indians "like wasps about his ears." His prediction came true, and during the winter Gardiner and his few men at the mouth of the river were repeatedly assailed by parties of Indians, who boasted that "Englishmen were as easy to kill as mosquitoes."[4 ]
Danger was now imminent, especially to the infant settlements up the river. For the moment it seemed as if the English had brought upon themselves the united power of all the Indians of the country. The Pequots sent messengers to patch up peace with their enemies, the Narragansetts, and tried to induce them to take up arms against the English. They would have probably succeeded but for the influence of Roger Williams with the Narragansett chiefs. In this crisis the friendship of Governor Vane for the banished champion of religious liberty was used to good effect. To gratify the governor and his council at Boston, Williams, at the risk of his life, sought the wigwams of Canonicus and Miantonomoh, and "broke to pieces the Pequot negotiations and design."[5 ] Instead of accepting the overtures of the Pequots, the Narragansetts sent Miantonomoh and the two sons of Canonicus to Boston to make an alliance with the whites.[6 ]
In the spring of 1637 the war burst with fury. Wethersfield was first attacked at the instance of an Indian who had sold his lands and could not obtain the promised payment. In revenge he secretly instigated the Pequots to attack the place, and they killed a woman, a child, and some men, besides some cattle; and took captive two young women, who were preserved by the squaw of Mononotto, a Pequot sachem, and, through the Dutch, finally restored to their friends.[7 ]
By May, 1637, when the first general court of Connecticut convened at Hartford, upward of thirty persons had fallen beneath the tomahawk. The promptest measures were necessary; and without waiting for the assistance of Massachusetts, whose indiscretion had brought on the war, ninety men (nearly half the effective force of the colony) were raised,[8 ] and placed under the command of Captain John Mason, an officer who had served in the Netherlands under Sir Thomas Fairfax. The force sailed down the river in three small vessels, and were welcomed at Fort Saybrook by Lieutenant Gardiner.
The Indian fort was situated in a swamp to the east of the Connecticut on the Mystic River; but instead of landing at the Pequot River, as he had been ordered, Mason completely deceived the Indian spies by sailing past it away from the intended prey. Near Point Judith, however, in the Narragansett country, Mason disembarked his men; and, accompanied by eighty Mohegans and two hundred Narragansetts, turned on his path and marched by land westward towards the Pequot country. So secretly and swiftly was this movement executed that the Indian fort was surrounded and approached within a few feet before the Indians took alarm.[9 ]
The victory of Mason was a massacre, the most complete in the annals of colonial history. The English threw firebrands among the wigwams, and in the flames men, women, and children were roasted to death. Captain Underhill, who was present, wrote that "there were about four hundred souls in this fort, and not above five of them escaped out of our hands." Only two white men were killed, though a number received arrow wounds.[10 ]
Mason, as he went to the Pequot harbor to meet his vessels, met a party of three hundred Indians half frantic with grief over the destruction of their countrymen, but contented himself with repelling their attack. Finally, he reached the ships, where he found Captain Patrick and forty men come from Massachusetts to reinforce him. Placing his sick men on board to be taken back by water, Mason crossed the Pequot River and marched by land to Fort Saybrook, where they were "nobly entertained by Lieutenant Gardiner with many great guns," and there they rested the Sabbath. The next week they returned home.[11 ]
The remnant of the Pequots collected in another fort to the west of that destroyed by Mason. Attacked by red men and white men alike, most of them formed the desperate resolve of taking refuge with the Mohawks across the Hudson. They were pursued by Mason with forty soldiers, joined by one hundred and twenty from Massachusetts under Captain Israel Stoughton. A party of three hundred Indians were overtaken and attacked in a swamp near New Haven, and many were captured or put to death. Sassacus, the Pequot chief, of whom the Narragansetts had such a dread as to say of him, "Sassacus is all one God; no man can kill him," contrived to reach the Mohawks, but they cut off his head and sent it as a present to the English.[12 ]
The destruction of the Pequots as a nation was complete. All the captive men, women, and children were made slaves, some being kept in New England and others sent to the West Indies,[13 ] and there remained at large in Connecticut not over two hundred Pequots. September 21, 1638, a treaty was negotiated between the Connecticut delegates and the Narragansetts and Mohegans, by the terms of which the Pequot country became the property of the Connecticut towns, while one hundred Pequots were given to Uncas, and one hundred to Miantonomoh and Ninigret, his ally, to be incorporated with their tribes.[14 ]