After being expelled from the colony of Massachusetts for advocating a separation of church and state, minister Roger Williams heads south and establishes the settlement of Providence on lands he purchases from the Narragansett Indians. Williams promotes the idea that the English should negotiate fairly with Indians tribes for all lands they claim and occupy. (See also entry for 1643.)
August 25
Massachusetts troops attack Block Island Pequot.
On the order of Massachusetts leaders, Captain John Endicott leads an expedition against the Pequot of Block Island, off the coast of present-day Rhode Island. The expedition is supposedly to avenge the murder of a white trader, but the man was most likely killed by Indians of another tribe (see entry for 1634). Endicott is told to kill all Pequot men at the Block Island, but he finds their village nearly deserted, so his soldiers set it ablaze.
After the attack, the Pequot attempt to organize a pan-Indian alliance to drive the whites out of their lands. When they are unable to persuade the Narragansett, Mohegan, and Massachuset to join their cause, the Pequot resolve to battle the English alone (see entry for MAY 25, 1637).
The English destroy the Pequot’s village at Mystic.
In a vicious campaign against the Pequot, whom the English regard as their greatest Indian enemies (see entry for AUGUST 25, 1636), about 250 wellarmed militiamen set ablaze the tribe’s principal village at present-day Mystic, Connecticut. The soldiers slaughter everyone who flees the flames. In the massacre, between 400 and one thousand Indians, mostly women and children, are brutally killed. The English are aided by Mohegan and Narragan-sett warriors, who later express their horror at the ferocity of the white militia.
After the attack, the English hunt down the Pequot who have escaped. Many are slaughtered; others are taken captive. About 50 captives are made slaves to serve the colonists, but those deemed the most hostile are sold into slavery in the West Indies in exchange for Africans, who become the first black slaves in New England.
An engraving of English colonists attacking a fortified Pequot village during their 1636-37 war against the tribe (Library of Congress, Neg. no. USZ62-32055)
The Pequot massacre has enormous ramifications for Indian-white relations in the colonies. In addition to nearly destroying the Pequot as tribe, the slaughter sends a message to other area Indians that resistance to the English is futile. It also helps unite the Massachusetts colonists, who have been struggling with dissension within their leadership. By demonizing the Pequot, the English come to see the massacre as a shared victory in a holy war. Puritan minister Cotton Mather celebrates the killings by writing, “No less than six hundred souls were brought down to hell that day.” (See also entry for 1638.)
“It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fire and the streams of blood quenching the same, and horrible was the stink and scent thereof; but the victory seemed a sweet sacrifice, and they gave the praise thereof to God, who had wrought so wonderfully for them, thus to enclose their enemies in their hands and give them so speedy a victory over so proud and insulting an enemy.”
—Plymouth leader William Bradford on the slaughter of the Pequot Indians
The colonists’ attack on their principal village (see entry for MAY 25, 1637), the now-powerless Pequot are offered nothing in the treaty. It holds that any Pequot who escaped massacre will be forced to live as a slave with an English-allied tribe. It also forbids the Pequot from ever again living in their former lands.
The Swedish buy Indian land in the Delaware Valley.
With the help of Dutch envoy Peter Minuit, Swedish colonists purchase land along what is now Delaware Bay from the Indians of the region. The settlement they establish at the site of present-day Wilmington, Delaware, is the first in New Sweden. Although the Swedish presence in North America remains limited, the Swedes will become important trading partners of the Susquehannock (see entry for 1643), Lenni Lenape (Delaware), and Mingo until the colony is dissolved in the 1650s.
The English establish the first Indian reservation.
The English compel the Wappinger Indians of present-day Connecticut to cede most of their territory. The agreement reserves only 1,200 acres for the tribe’s use. The Indians are forbidden from leaving or selling this land, and their activities are to be monitored by an English agent. The arrangement represents the earliest enforcement of many elements of later reservation policy.
World History
