FORREST MORGAN

Alexander Johnston

Connecticut Indians

      The aborigines of Connecticut did not differ from other New England Indians so much as to demand any extended notice. They were not numerous; the lowest and most probable estimate of their numbers is six or seven thousand, and the highest twenty thousand. The northeastern section of the territory was inhabited by the Nipmunks. The upper Connecticut separated the Tunxis Indians on its western banks from the Podunks on the eastern. To the south of both were the Wangunks. New Haven is now in the center of the former territory of the Quinnipiacks. To the west of the Quinnipiacks were the Paugaussett, and to the west of them a great numberof scattered tribes, known generally by the names of their respective sachems or of the English towns which in they dwelt. All these tribes were alike unclean in their habits, shiftless in their mode of life, and much addicted to powwowing, devil-worship, and darker immoralities, if we may trust the possibly hasty and prejudice accounts of the early Puritan observers. The Indian rule, that all work is to be done by the women, was enforced in its full rigor; but the correlative virtue of prowess in war was not so prominent in the men, who would rather prone to shout at a distance than to expose their lives to the hazards of battle. They had, however, developed military science so far as to have become acquainted with the rudiments of fortification. It is not easy to say how far their constructions deserved the name of forts, but they were numerous, and were an advance on the ordinary Indian methods of fighting. The Connecticut Indians were indebted for the advance, not to natural genius, but to their chronic terror of their lords or enemies, the Mohawks. The Five Nations of the Iroquois in Central New York had become the leading Indian power of eastern North America. Its original five members, the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senacas, were increased by the addition of the Tuscaroras from North Carolina, in 1712, and the confederacy was thereafter known as the Six Nations; but, at all periods of its history, the Mohawks were so emphatically the leading member that their name was regularly put by synecdoche for the whole. The Connecticut Indians, at any rate, never stopped to discriminate between the various branches of the Six Nations, but, on the appearance of any of them, promptly fled with the panic-stricken cry, �The Mohawks are coming!� There seems to have been hardly the thought of resistance, when every year, two elders of the Mohawks appeared in Connecticut, passing from village to village, collecting tribute, and announcing the edicts of the great council of the Onondaga. To this exercise of supremacy they seem to have made but one exception, the kindred tribe of the Pequots. The Indians of Connecticut, Rhode Island, and probably Massachusetts, were originally of one blood, perhaps divided into a few small tribes. A few years before the arrival of the English, according to tradition, a sept of the Mohegan blood from New York, crossing the Hudson and moving eastward to the Connecticut River, passed southeastward and conquered a permanent home for themselves on the shore of Long Island Sound, in the southeastern part of the present State. This irruption split the Indian population into two parts. To the east of the Pequots were the Narragansetts, the powerful tribe of Miantonomoh and Canonchet, dwelling in Rhode Island, but claiming still some portion of the soil of Connecticut. They were sufficiently intact to make head against the Pequots, and waged continual war with them; but, lacking the ferocity and fervor for war which was a Pequot characteristic, they had difficulty in maintaining their position. To the west of the Pequots, the pressure of the strangers on one side and the Mohawks on the other ground up the Indians into that mass of petty tribes which has been referred to, none of which dared to offer resistance after the power of the Pequots had been once established, all being interested merely to escape the notice of their oppressors as far as possible. Thus the Pequots, with but seven hundred fighting men, were able to overawe all the western tribes, while maintaining equal warfare with the Narragansetts, whose warriors are variously estimated at from one to five thousand. There are no annals of Indian diplomacy from which we may learn how the Six Nations and the Pequots avoided collision in the matter of supremacy over their tributaries; but it is not probable that either power was intent on establishing a right of exclusive extortion. Both were satisfied by the payment of their respective tribute, and the Pequot irruption merely doubled the burden of the aboriginal inhabitants. At the time of the English entrance to Connecticut, the grand sachem of the Pequots was Tatobam, or Sassacus. One of his sagamores was Uncas, whose grandmother was the sister of the grandfather Sassacus. Uncas had connected himself still more closely with the sachem's house by taking the daughter of Sassacus in marriage. He was Sagamore of Mohegan, the most important Pequot district. His courage, strength, and cunning were remarkable even among the Pequots; and the relations between him and Sassacus soon became strained and finally broke. Unable to resist the grand sachem, Uncas fled to the Narragansetts, was allowed to return, rebelled again, and was again defeated and fled. It was inevitable that the coming of the English should act as a wedge on this rift in the conquering tribe, and should make its downfall the surer. The Dutch had first recognized the Pequots aslords paramount of the territory, and had made their purchases of land from them. But the Pequots, unable to restrain the savagery of their matures, had lain in wait for and killed some of their enemies at the Duth trading-house, and had thus interfered very seriously with the course of trade. In retaliation, the Dutch had killed the father of Sassacus. Anxious to get rid of his troublesome neighbors, Sassacus had acquiesced in the invitation of Winthrop to furnish settlers for the Connecticut Valley. But when Holmes at last came, he brought back some of the old sachems, who had been expelled by the Pequots, and made his purchases of land from them. Futhermore, a certain lewd and drunken ship-captain named Stone, from Virginia, having brought his vessel into the Connecticut River during the summer of 1633, was taken for a Dutchman by the Pequots, who murdered him while he lay in a drunken sleep in his cabin. During the following year, Sassacus sent messengers who made a treaty with the government of Massachusetts Bay, by the terms of which many of the difficulties between his tribe and the English were put out of sight. The Pequots were to allow the English to colonize and trade within their borders; were to give up the murderers of Stone; and were to pay a tribute of wampum, a part of which was to be transferred by the English to the Narrangansetts, so as to bring about a peace between these two ancient enemies without subjecting the haughty Pequot chief to the degradation of a personal appeal for cessation of hostilities. The terms were largely nominal. The English made no demand for those who had murdered Stone, and Sassacus paid none of the stipulated tribute and was asked for none. The murder of John Oldham, in 1636, first brought the English into collision with the Pequots. Oldham, with a crew of two boys and two Narragansett Indians, had been trading with a pinnace on the shore of the Pequot country, and had passed on to Block Island. Here he was killed by the Island Indians. The murder had hardly taken place when John Gallop, who was sailing from the Connecticut River to the east end of Long Island, found Oldham's vessel in possession of the Indians. He first fired duck-shot into the naked Indian crew until he had driven them under hatches, and then rammed  Oldham's vessel until all but four of the Indians had jumped overboard and were drowned. Two surrendered, and he made sure of one of them by throwing him overboard. As the sea was rising he took Oldham's body into his vessel, and allowed the derelict to drift ashore with two of the Indians still in her hold. It is difficult to see how the Pequots were considered in all this. But Governor Vane and his council, of Massachusetts Bay, in sending Endicott with an expedition to punish the Block Islanders, assumed that the Pequots had harbored some of the murderers, and must be included in the punishment. No proof was offered to the indictment against the Pequots, who seem to have held the same place in the English mind that Habakkuk held in the Frenchman's, and to be �capable of anything.� But Endicott gathered no laurels in his Pequot expedition. His ferocious antagonists did not wish to fight, and could hardly be persuaded to fight. A few of them, and none of the English, were killed and wounded; and the expedition, having satiated its wrath by burning the Indian wigwams and crops, returned to Boston. Enough had been done to range the Pequots against the English. As a choice of evils, Sassacus proposed to the Narragansetts a treaty of alliance against the foreigners, but this was thwarted by the influence of Roger Williams, who induced the Narragansetts to send ambassadors to Boston and conclude a treaty with the English. The Pequots were thus left to maintain alone their ancient title, by courage, to their territory. They did not hesitate. The fort at Saybrook, whose commander, Lieutenant Gardiner, had strongly disapproved Endicott's expedition, was first attacked. A foraging party was cut off, and several men were captured and put to torture. Other parties were similarly caught in ambuscades, and the fort was beleaguered through the whole winter. In the spring of 1637, the war was opened in the upper Connecticut Valley. The people of Wethersfield had agreed, in buying lands from Sequin, a friendly Indian, to allow him to remain within the town limits. The agreement was violated, and he was expelled. In revenge, he brought the Pequots down upon the little settlement. They almost took it by surprise, killed a number of the people, and inflicted considerable damage before they were driven out. Four days afterward, the successful Pequots sailed past the fort at Saybrook, waving the clothes of their victims and exhibiting two captive girls. The Pequot war had fairly begun, and, in the nature of things, it could be ended only by the extermination of one party or the other. For this severe strain upon an infant colony, the Connecticut colonists were indebted to the stupidity or willfulness of Governor Vane and his council. They must have appreciated Cromwell's subsequent estimate of the Governor.

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