The Pequot War
In May 1637 the General Court in Connecticut declared an offensive war against the Pequot and raised a militia of ninety men for the war effort: thirty from Windsor, forty-two from Hartford, and eighteen from Wethersfield. They also draw on Mohegan and Narragansett forces who were keen to overthrow the Pequots' domination of the Connecticut River Valley and incorporate the Pequots' tributary network into their own communities.
On May 26, the colonial forces committed an unprecedented massacre by trapping Pequot men, women, and children at their palisaded fort on the Mystic River. The colonists and their Native allies, the Narragansetts and Mohegans, first attempted to overwhelm the fort using swords and muskets. When this proved unsuccessful, Captains John Mason and John Underhill set the village on fire, ordering their troops to surround the fort and kill all who attempted to escape. They murdered at least four hundred Pequots, with some estimates rising as high as seven hundred. Historian Alfred Cave describes the Mystic Massacre as “an act of terrorism intended to break Pequot morale.” English-allied Narragansetts expressed horror at the ferocity of the attack and the decision to murder women and children rather than take them as captives who could be absorbed into Native communities.
Connecticut attempted to cement their status as inheritors of the Pequots' tributary network and control the Pequot Country. In 1638, they used the Treaty of Hartford to end the war and demand that the Mohegans and Narragansetts pay Connecticut an annual tribute of wampum on behalf of the surviving Pequots living under their jurisdiction. These tribute payments of corn and wampum would help the colony survive its early years of hunger and would also act as a symbol of colonial authority over local Native communities. Tribute helped to reconcile Connecticut colonists' reality–their small population, their weakness compared to Massachusetts, and their hunger–with their ambitions for an expansive agricultural settler colony. Throughout the seventeenth century, Connecticut continued to demand Native tribute payments and used the profits to bolster the colonial state by paying soldiers, interpreters, and informants using tribute wampum.
Pequot land reclamation
The community of Pequot refugees who survived the Pequot War wanted to regain their homelands. One of their leaders, Robin Cassacinamon, launched a campaign of petitions and tribute payments to try and win over influential English allies. Many English colonists wanted ownership of the land itself, but some leaders decided that making the Pequot survivors their tributaries was a more strategic move because Native populations had valuable connections, resources, and knowledge that could be used to sustain the fledgling colony of Connecticut.