Mystic Massacre and the Puritans genocidal war

Hi, this is Our Bloody History, your go-to source for the dark things people prefer to forget.

In the spotlight today:

The near annihilation of a powerful and prosperous Native American tribe, which happened this week, 385 years ago, on 26 May 1637.

Here we go.

It's the early 1630's and we're smack bang in the middle of the great Puritan migration to the United States. The Puritans are English Protestants who are hell-bent (or heaven-bent?) on purifying the Church of England of Roman Catholic practices. It's simply not pure enough for them. So they leave the motherland and sail west across the Atlantic seeking religious freedom.

Between 1620-1640 some 20,000 Puritans make the voyage to New England. The Massachusetts Bay Colony, located on the east coast of the United States, is where many of these migrants settle, where they call home.

But this is already someone else's home (only for the last thousands of years).

Meet the Pequot.

This powerful Native American people controls much of the region surrounding the Puritan colony. They number about 16,000 and hold a position of political, military, and economic dominance in central and eastern Connecticut. The Pequot aren't the only tribe on the east coast, but they're the strongest.

Like many stories of colonisation, the relationship between settlers and natives starts off chill. Everyone, to a certain degree, is mates. They're curious about each other and both have something to offer. Trade is the common language of understanding. The Puritans want wampum, traditional shell beads used as currency to trade with other tribes further inland, and the Pequot want foreign wares and supplies.

What the Pequot don't want is disease, but that's what they get.

In 1633 they're completely ravaged by an epidemic. About 80% of their population is wiped out by foreign sickness that they have no immunity against. Only an estimated 3,000 survive, grossly tipping the number balance in favour of the settlers. The Puritans see this as an act of providence. The Lord is preparing a way for them to inhabit the fertile Pequot lands. God is good.

Over time, genuine curiosity turns to mistrust as both cultures contend for space and control over critical resources. The settlers ramp up their own wampum production and the Great Colonial Hurricane of 1635 puts extreme pressure on supply lines. Everyone is ill-prepared for famine and tension dangerously builds as both sides poke, prod and test each other.

In July 1636, a trader named John Oldham, a reputed trouble maker who has been exiled from another colony, is killed with several of his crew by the natives of Block Island, allies of the Eastern Niantic.

Everything then very quickly spirals out of control.

The Massachusetts Bay militia burns two Niantic villages to the ground and steals their entire winter food storage. Anything they can't carry is destroyed. Next up is the Pequot, who have supposedly given refuge to Oldham's attackers. The English demand that the murderers be given up, but the dialogue goes nowhere and the militia sets fire to the village and all its crops.

The Pequot are furious and respond with raids throughout autumn, winter and spring. In April 1637, the colonial village of Wethersfield is attacked and six men and three women, all noncombatants, are killed. This is a major turning point in the conflict and the settlers respond with even greater aggression.

Oh boy.

In the pre-dawn hours of 26 May 1637, our day in history this week, a Puritan militia led by Captains John Mason and John Underhill, sets out to settle the score. They're joined by warriors from various allied tribes including Mohegan, Narragansett and Niantic. Their target is Misistuck, a fortified Pequot village on a low hill near the Mystic River. Inside the palisade is mostly women, children and elderly; many of the Pequot men are off on a raid elsewhere.

After commending themselves to God, the Puritans divide into two small groups and approach the sleeping palisade undetected. So far so good. The English rush into the fort, hacking and stabbing everything. The Pequot respond ferociously. In a desperate attempt to retreat, Captain John Mason orders the palisade to be torched and both entrances blocked. Burn them all.

As Misistuck burns, the Puritans form an outer ring around the palisade to stop any who would escape by climbing over. Many try. And those who manage to break through the Puritan line are despatched by a second, exterior ring formed by the allied Narragansett.

Within an hour, one freakn hour, an estimated 500-700 Pequot are slain. We're talking women, children and elderly, killed by the sword or burned alive. It's reported that only five Pequot escape and seven taken prisoner.

Over the next year, the Pequot are systemically hunted down. Their chief makes a desperate last stand during the Fairfield Swamp Fight, marking the last official engagement of the Pequot War. In the aftermath, some 500-1,000 women and children are shipped into slavery to Bermuda and Barbados and others to colonial households.

Only about 200 Pequot still remain.

It gets worse.

On 21 September 1638, a year and a bit after the Mystic Massacre, the Treaty of Hartford is signed between the colonists, the Mohegan and Narragansett, outlawing the Pequot name and dividing the survivors among the other tribes. And the Pequot nation ceases to exist. Legally erased. Gone. The Puritans get their wish.

But identity is a hard thing to permanently destroy. Those absorbed by other tribes and sold into colonial homes never forget who they are. In 1666, through strategic alliances and friendships with the right people, the Western Pequot (those who leave the Mohegan) win an important battle, the first of many to come – the State of Connecticut gives them back land.

Over the next 200+ years, this "gifted" land is slowly taken back and numbers on the Mashantucket Reservation dwindle to just three elderly women. But three women with a burning mission are enough. They spark a revival and inspire their kin to come back home. Finally, in 1983, the state grants federal recognition to the Mashantucket Pequot tribe, undoing what the early colonists sought to achieve more than three hundred years earlier – the extinction of a name, of a people.

The Pequot survive "the Puritans genocidal Indian War."

What happened to the Pequot is an ugly story that some would prefer to ignore or forget.

But they haven't forgotten. The destruction faced by them and countless indigenous peoples around the world is still being felt generations later. So we shouldn't be allowed to forget either.

In 2020, a statue of Captain John Mason in Windsor, Connecticut was subject to calls for its removal but the Pequot's tribal chairman Skip Hayward opposed, saying "If you take it down, no one will remember what happened here."

Remembering can be scary. It causes us to come face to face with the suffering of others, and requires us to dig deep and question how we fit into the bigger picture.

When it comes to colonisation, it's easy to think "Well I didn't do anything. I wasn't there." And the chances are your great great grandparents didn't lift a sword either. But if you trace your privilege, and remember, you might discover that hope for a better life in a new land was possible because that same hope was brutally ripped from others.

Building a better, more equitable future has to start with remembering.

3 quick facts:

• The Mystic Massacre was the first time the concept of Total War (treating all civilian-associated resources and infrastructure as legitimate military targets) was introduced in North America. It was shocking to the Native Americans "...because it is too furious, and slays too many men." Unfortunately, Mystic became a blue print for how the colonists would deal with other tribes for years to come. Mystic was just the first of many.

• The Eastern Pequot, who escaped the Narragansett, are still fighting for federal recognition today. It was granted to them in 2002, but the government later revoked it in 2005, and has since issued new rules that a tribe cannot re-petition for recognition once it has been denied them.

• In the novel Moby Dick, Captain Ahab's whaling ship is called the Pequod, memorialising the "extinct" Native American nation as a symbol of doom.

Other conflicts that happened this week:

• 23 May 1430: Joan of Arc is captured by the Burgundians while leading an army to relieve Compiègne.

• 24 May 1798: The Irish republican rebellion against British rule begins.

• 25 May 1938: The Spanish city Alicante is bombed during the Spanish Civil War, killing more than 300 people in one of the conflict's deadliest aerial attacks.

• 26 May 946: King Edmund I of England is murdered by a thief whom he personally attacks while celebrating St Augustine's Mass Day.

• 27 May 1905: The Battle of Tsushima begins during the Russo-Japanese War.

• 28 May 585 BC: A solar eclipse occurs while Alyattes is battling Cyaxares in the Battle of the Eclipse, leading to a truce.

• 29 May 1453: Constantinople falls to the Ottomans, ending the Byzantine Empire.

A historical quote about historical things:

That's it. Until next week!

DisclaimerYou are reading my abstractions based on the abstractions of others. History is not always an accurate map of what really happened. The map is not the territory. Reality can be very different. We are like blind people groping an elephant, describing what we feel. It always pays to do your own research and ask questions.