Wednesday, May 25, 2022

Pequot Massacre, 385 Years Ago

Terrible history, but it's what we need to learn and remember and teach. I've been researching this topic because some of my white relatives participated in other 1600s New England conflicts against the Native tribes, if not this one.

The Pequot War was a conflict in 1636-1637 between English settlers and their allies--including the Narragansett and Mohegan on one aside, and the Pequot tribe and their allies on the other. The Pequot had opposed English settlement in southern Connecticut. Remember that permanent English colonization had begun just 16 years before with the Mayflower..

385 years ago tonight, in the early morning of May 26, 1637, the English and their Native allies attacked the Pequot fort at Mystic. Perhaps 400 Pequot men, women, children, and elderly were shot or burned alive in about an hour. Survivors were sent into slavery in different parts of New England. ... Reflecting the Puritan belief in divine providence, English commander John Mason wrote, “Thus, the Lord was pleased to smite our Enemies in the hinder Parts and to give us their Land for an Inheritance." 

Britannia.com has this: "In the end, the Pequot War forever changed the political and social landscape of southern New England, and it influenced colonial and U.S. policies toward Native Americans for centuries... the English ability and will to wage total war against their Indian enemies." You can certainly draw a historical line between the Mystic massacre and Wounded Knee, over 250 years later.

Here are two other pieces: https://www.voanews.com/.../usa_did-english.../6201084.html

http://pequotwar.org/about/





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