III
THE CONQUEST OF THE PEQUOTS, 1637

In 1636 the Massachusetts colony, under Vane’s administration, became involved in new troubles—a violent internal controversy and a dangerous Indian war. The most powerful native tribes of New England were concentrated in the neighborhood of Narragansett Bay. The Wampanoags, or Pocanokets, were on the east side of that bay within the limits of the Plymouth patent, and the Narragansets, a more powerful confederacy, on the west side. Still more numerous and more powerful were the Pequots, whose chief seats were on or near Pequot River, now the Thames, but whose authority extended over twenty-six petty tribes, along both shores of the Sound to the Connecticut River, and even beyond it, almost or quite to the Hudson. In what is now the northeast corner of the State of Connecticut dwelt a smaller tribe, the enemies, perhaps the revolted subjects, of the Pequots, known to the colonists as Mohegans—an appropriation of a general name properly including all the Indians along the shores of Long Island Sound as far west as the Hudson, and even the tribes beyond that river, known afterward to the English as the Delawares. The Indians about Massachusetts Bay, supposed to have been formerly quite numerous, had almost died out before the arrival of the colonists, and the smallpox had since proved very fatal among the few that remained. Some tribes of no great consideration—the Nipmucks, the Wachusetts, the Nashaways—dwelt among the interior hills, and others, known collectively to the colonists as the River Indians, fished at the falls of the Connecticut, and cultivated little patches of its rich alluvial meadows. The lower Merrimac, the Piscataqua, and their branches were occupied by the tribes of a considerable confederacy, that of Penacook, or Pawtucket, whose chief sachem, Passaconaway, was reported to be a great magician. The interior of New Hampshire and of what is now Vermont seems to have been an uninhabited wilderness. The tribes eastward of the Piscataqua, known to the English by the general name of Tarenteens, and reputed to be numerous and powerful, were distinguished by the rivers on which they dwelt. They seem to have constituted two principal confederacies, those east of the Kennebec being known to the French of Acadie as the Abenakis. All the New England Indians spoke substantially the same language, the Algonquin, in various dialects. From the nature of the country, they were more stationary than some other tribes, being fixed principally at the falls of the rivers. They seem to have entertained very decided ideas of the hereditary descent of authority, and of personal devotion to their chiefs. What might have been at this time the total Indian population of New England it is not very easy to conjecture; but it was certainly much less than is commonly stated. Fifteen or twenty thousand would seem to be a sufficient allowance for the region south of the Piscataqua, and as many more, perhaps, for the more easterly district. The Pequots, esteemed the most powerful tribe in New England, were totally ruined, as we shall presently see, by the destruction or capture of hardly more than a thousand persons.

The provocation for this exterminating war was extremely small. Previous to the Massachusetts migration to the Connecticut, one Captain Stone, the drunken and dissolute master of a small trading vessel from Virginia, whom the Plymouth people charged with having been engaged at Manhattan in a piratical plot to seize one of their vessels, having been sent away from Boston with orders not to return without leave, under pain of death, on his way homeward to Virginia, in 1634, had entered the Connecticut River, where he was cut off, with his whole company, seven in number, by a band of Pequots. There were various stories, none of them authentic, as to the precise manner of his death, but the Pequots insisted that he had been the aggressor—a thing in itself sufficiently probable. As Stone belonged to Virginia, the magistrates of Massachusetts wrote to Governor Harvey to move him to stir in the matter. Van Cuyler, the Dutch commissary at Fort Good Hope, in fact revenged Stone’s death by the execution of a sachem and several others. This offended the Pequots, who renounced any further traffic with the Dutch, and sent messengers to Boston desiring an intercourse of trade, and assistance to settle their pending difficulties with the Narragansets, who intervened between them and the English settlements. They even promised to give up—at least so the magistrates understood them—the only two survivors, as they alleged, of those concerned in the death of Stone. These offers were accepted; for the convenience of this traffic a peace was negotiated between the Pequots and the Narragansets, and a vessel was presently sent to open a trade. But this traffic disappointed the adventurers; nor were the promised culprits given up. The Pequots, according to the Indian custom, tendered, instead, a present of furs and wampum. But this was refused, the colonists seeming to think themselves under a religious obligation to avenge blood with blood.

Thus matters remained for a year or two, when, in July, 1636, the crew of a small bark, returning from Connecticut, saw close to Block Island a pinnace at anchor, and full of Indians. This pinnace was recognized as belonging to Oldham, the Indian trader, the old settler at Nantasket, and explorer of the Connecticut. Conjecturing that something must be wrong, the bark approached the pinnace and hailed, whereupon the Indians on board slipped the cable and made sail. The bark gave chase, and soon overtook the pinnace; some of the Indians jumped overboard in their fright, and were drowned; several were killed, and one was made prisoner. The dead body of Oldham was found on board, covered with an old seine. This murder, as appeared from the testimony of the prisoner, who was presently sentenced by the Massachusetts magistrates to be a slave for life, was committed at the instigation of some Narraganset chiefs, upon whom Block Island was dependent, in revenge for the trade which Oldham had commenced under the late treaty with the Pequots, their enemies. Indeed, all the Narraganset chiefs, except the head sachem, Canonicus, and his nephew and colleague, Miantonimoh, were believed to have had a hand in this matter, especially the chieftain of the Niantics, a branch of the Narragansets, inhabiting the continent opposite Block Island.

Canonicus, in great alarm, sent to his friend and neighbor, Roger Williams, by whose aid he wrote a letter to the Massachusetts magistrates, expressing his grief at what had happened, and stating that Miantonimoh had sailed already with seventeen canoes and two hundred warriors to punish the Block Islanders. With this letter were sent two Indians, late sailors on board Oldham’s pinnace, and presently after two English boys, the remainder of his crew. In the recapture of Oldham’s pinnace eleven Indians had been killed, several of them chiefs; and that, with the restoration of the crew, seems to have been esteemed by Canonicus a sufficient atonement for Oldham’s death. But the magistrates and ministers of Massachusetts, assembled to take this matter into consideration, thought otherwise. Volunteers were called for in August, 1636; and four companies, ninety men in all, commanded by Endicott, whose submissiveness in Williams’ affair had restored him to favor, were embarked in three pinnaces, with orders to put to death all the men of Block Island, and to make the women and children prisoners. The old affair of the death of Stone was now also called to mind, though the murder of Oldham had no connection with it, except in some distant similarity of circumstances. Endicott was instructed, on his return from Block Island, to go to the Pequots, and to demand of them the murderers of Stone, and a thousand fathoms of wampum for damages—equivalent to from three to five thousand dollars—also, some of their children as hostages; and, if they refused, to employ force.

The Block Islanders fled inland, hid themselves, and escaped; but Endicott burned their wigwams, staved their canoes, and destroyed their standing corn. He then sailed to Fort Saybrook, at the mouth of the Connecticut, and marched thence to Pequot River. After some parley, the Indians refused his demands, when he burned their village and killed one of their warriors. Marching back to the Connecticut River, he inflicted like vengeance on the Pequot village there, whence he returned to Boston, after a three weeks’ absence and without the loss of a man.

The Pequots, enraged at what they esteemed a treacherous and unprovoked attack, lurked about Fort Saybrook, killed or took several persons, and did considerable mischief. They sent, also, to the Narragansets to engage their alliance against the colonists, whom they represented as the common enemy of all the Indians. Williams, informed of this negotiation, sent word of it to the Massachusetts magistrates, and, at their request, he visited Canonicus, to dissuade him from joining the Pequots. This mission was not without danger. In the wigwam of Canonicus, Williams encountered the Pequot messengers, full of rage and fury. He succeeded, however, in his object, and, in October, Miantonimoh was induced to visit Boston, where, being received with much ceremony by the governor and magistrates, he agreed to act with them as a faithful ally. Canonicus thought it would be necessary to attack the Pequots with a very large force; but he recommended, as a thing likely to be agreeable to all the Indians—so Williams informs us—that the women and children should be spared, a humane piece of advice which received in the end but little attention.

The policy of this war, or, at least, the wisdom of Endicott’s conduct, was not universally conceded. A letter from Plymouth reproached the Massachusetts magistrates with the dangers likely to arise from so inefficient an attack upon the Pequots. Gardiner, the commandant at Fort Saybrook, who lost several men during the winter, was equally dissatisfied. The new settlers up the Connecticut complained bitterly of the dangers to which they were exposed. Sequeen, the same Indian chief at whose invitation the Plymouth people had first established a trading-house on the Connecticut River, had granted land to the planters at Wethersfield on condition that he might settle near them, and be protected; but when he came and built his wigwam, they had driven him away. He took this opportunity for revenge by calling in the Pequots, who attacked the town, and killed nine of the inhabitants. The whole number killed by the Pequots during the winter was about thirty.

In December a special session of the General Court of Massachusetts organized the militia into three regiments, the magistrates to appoint the field officers—called sergeant-majors—and to select the captains and lieutenants out of a nomination to be made by the companies respectively. Watches were ordered to be kept, and travellers were to go armed....