Pequots

Pequot is an Algonquian word whose meaning is disputed among language specialists. Considerable scholarship pertaining to the Pequots claims that the name came from Pequttôog, meaning "the destroyers" or "the men of the swamp". Frank Speck was a leading specialist of the Mohegan-Pequot language in the early twentieth century, and he believed that another term was more plausible meaning "the shallowness of a body of water", given the Pequots' territory along the coast of Long Island Sound.[6][7]

Historians have debated whether the Pequots migrated about 1500 from the upper Hudson River Valley toward central and eastern Connecticut. The theory of Pequot migration to the Connecticut River Valley can be traced to Rev. William Hubbard, who claimed in 1677 that the Pequots had invaded the region some time before the establishment of Plymouth Colony, rather than originating in the region. In the aftermath of King Philip's War, Hubbard detailed in his Narrative of the Troubles with the Indians in New-England the ferocity with which some of New England's tribes responded to the English. Hubbard described the Pequots as "foreigners" to the region; not invaders from another shore, but "from the interior of the continent" who "by force seized upon one of the goodliest places near the sea, and became a Terror to all their Neighbors."[8]

Much of the archaeological, linguistic, and documentary evidence now available demonstrates that the Pequots were not invaders to the Connecticut River Valley but were indigenous in that area for thousands of years.[9] By the time of the founding of Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay colonies, the Pequots had already attained a position of political, military, and economic dominance in central and eastern Connecticut. They occupied the coastal area between the Niantic tribe of the Niantic River of Connecticut and the Narragansetts in western Rhode Island. The Pequots numbered some 16,000 persons in the most densely inhabited portion of southern New England.[1]

The smallpox epidemic of 1616–1619 killed many of the Indians of the eastern coast of New England, but it failed to reach the Pequot, Niantic, and Narragansett tribes. In 1633, the Dutch established a trading post called the House of Good Hope at Hartford. They executed the principal Pequot sachem Tatobem because of a violation of an agreement. After the Pequots paid the Dutch a large ransom, they returned Tatobem's body. His successor was Sassacus. In 1633, an epidemic devastated all of the region's tribes, and historians estimate that the Pequots suffered the loss of 80 percent of their population. At the outbreak of the Pequot War, Pequot survivors may have numbered only about 3,000.[10]

Members of the Pequot tribe killed a resident of Connecticut Colony in 1636, and war erupted as a result. The Mohegan and the Narragansett tribes sided with the colonists. Around 1,500 Pequot warriors were killed in battles or hunted down, and others were captured and distributed as slaves or household servants. A few escaped to join the Mohawk and the Niantic tribes on Long Island. Eventually, some returned to their traditional lands, where family groups of friendly Pequots had stayed. Of those enslaved, most were awarded to the allied tribes, but many were also sold as slaves in Bermuda.[11][12] The Mohegans treated their Pequot captives so severely that officials of Connecticut Colony eventually removed them. Connecticut established two reservations for the Pequots in 1683: the Eastern Pequot Reservation in North Stonington, Connecticut and the Western Pequots (or Mashantucket Pequot Reservation) in Ledyard.

The 1910 census numbered the Pequot population at 66,[13] and they reached their lowest number several decades later. Pequot numbers grew significantly during the 1970s and 1980s, especially the Mashantucket Pequot tribe which opened a casino in the same timeframe, and tribal chairman Richard A. Hayward encouraged them to return to their tribal homeland. He worked for Federal recognition and economic development.[14]

In 1976, the Pequots filed suit with the assistance of the Native American Rights Fund (NARF) and the Indian Rights Association against land owners and residents of North Stonington in order to get their land, which the Pequots claimed had been illegally sold in 1856 by the State of Connecticut, and they reached a settlement after seven years. The Connecticut Legislature passed legislation to petition the federal government to grant tribal recognition to the Mashantucket Pequots, and the "Mashantucket Pequot Indian Land Claims Settlement Act" was enacted by Congress and signed by President Ronald Reagan on Oct. 18, 1983.[15] This settlement granted federal recognition to the Mashantucket Pequot tribe, enabling them to buy the land covered in the Settlement Act and place it in trust with the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) for reservation use.[16] In 1986, they opened a bingo operation, followed by the first phase of Foxwoods Resort Casino in 1992. Revenue from the casino has enabled development and construction of a cultural museum which opened on August 11, 1998 on the Mashantucket Pequot Reservation where many members of the tribe continue to live.

The Eastern Pequot Tribal Nation was recognized in 2002. Since the 1930s, both Pequot tribes had serious tension over racial issues, with some people claiming that darker-skinned descendants should not be considered fully Pequot. Two groups of Eastern Pequots filed petitions for recognition with the BIA, and they agreed to unite to achieve recognition. The state immediately challenged the decision, and the Department of the Interior revoked their recognition in 2005. That same year, it revoked recognition for the Schaghticoke tribe who had gained recognition in 2004. The Connecticut state government and Congressional delegation opposed the BIA's recognition because local residents were worried that the newly recognized tribes would establish gaming casinos.

• Gardiner, Lion. Leift Lion Gardener his Relation of the Pequot Warres (Boston: [First Printing] Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, 1833).
• Hubbard, William. The History of the Indian Wars in New England 2 vols. (Boston: Samuel G. Drake, 1845).
• Johnson, Edward. Wonder-Working Providence of Sion's Saviour in New England by Captain Edward Johnson of Woburn, Massachusetts Bay. With an historical introduction and an index by William Frederick Poole (Andover, MA: W. F. Draper, [London: 1654] 1867.
• Mason, John. A Brief History of the Pequot War: Especially of the Memorable taking of their Fort at Mistick in Connecticut in 1637/Written by Major John Mason, a principal actor therein, as then chief captain and commander of Connecticut forces; With an introduction and some explanatory notes by the Reverend Mr. Thomas Prince (Boston: Printed & sold by. S. Kneeland & T. Green in Queen Street, 1736).
• Mather, Increase. A Relation of the Troubles which have Hapned in New-England, by Reason of the Indians There, from the Year 1614 to the Year 1675 (New York: Arno Press, [1676] 1972).
• Orr, Charles ed., History of the Pequot War: The Contemporary Accounts of Mason, Underhill, Vincent, and Gardiner (Cleveland, 1897).
• Underhill, John. Nevves from America; or, A New and Experimentall Discoverie of New England: Containing, a True Relation of their War-like Proceedings these two yeares last past, with a figure of the Indian fort, or Palizado. Also a discovery of these places, that as yet have very few or no inhabitants which would yeeld speciall accommodation to such as will plant there . . . By Captaine Iohn Underhill, a commander in the warres there (London: Printed by I. D[awson] for Peter Cole, and are to be sold at the signe of the Glove in Corne-hill neere the Royall Exchange, 1638).
• Vincent, Philip. A True Relation of the late Battell fought in New England, between the English, and the Salvages: VVith the present state of things there (London: Printed by M[armaduke] P[arsons] for Nathanael Butter, and Iohn Bellamie, 1637).

• Boissevain, Ethel. "Whatever Became of the New England Indians Shipped to Bermuda to be Sold as Slaves," Man in the Northwest 11 (Spring 1981), pp. 103–114.
• Benedict, Jeff. Without Reservation: How a Controversial Indian Tribe Rose to Power and Built the World's Largest Casino. New York: Harper Books, 2001.
• Bradstreet, Howard. The Story of the War with the Pequots, Retold. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1933.
• Cave, Alfred A. "The Pequot Invasion of Southern New England: A Reassessment of the Evidence," New England Quarterly 62 (1989): 27–44.
• ______. The Pequot War (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1996).
• Cook, Sherburne F. "The Significance of Disease in the Extinction of the New England Indians," Human Biology 45 (1973): 485–508.
• Fromson, Brett Duval. Hitting the Jackpot: The Inside Story of the Richest Indian Tribe in History. Grove Press, 2004.
• Hauptman, Laurence M. and James D. Wherry, eds. The Pequots in Southern New England: The Fall and Rise of an American Indian Nation. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993.
• Kupperman, Karen O. Providence Island, 1630-1641: The Other Puritan Colony (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993).
• McBride, Kevin. "The Historical Archaeology of the Mashantucket Pequots, 1637-1900," in Laurence M. Hauptman and James Wherry, eds. Pequots in Southern New England: The Fall and Rise of an American Indian Nation (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993), pp. 96–116.
• ______. Prehistory of the Lower Connecticut Valley. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Connecticut, 1984.
• Means, Carrol Alton. "Mohegan-Pequot Relationships, as Indicated by the Events Leading to the Pequot Massacre of 1637 and Subsequent Claims in the Mohegan Land Controversy," Archaeological Society of Connecticut Bulletin 21 (1947): 26–33.
• Michelson, Truman D. "Notes on Algonquian Language," International Journal of American Linguistics 1 (1917): 56–57.
• Newell, Margaret Ellen. Brethren by Nature: New England Indians, Colonists, and the Origins of American Slavery. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015.
• Richter, Daniel K. Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001.
• Rouse, Irving. "Ceramic Traditions and Sequences in Connecticut," Archaeological Society of Connecticut Bulletin 21 (1947).
• Oberg, Michael. Uncas: First of the Mohegans (Ithaca, NY:Cornell University Press, 2003).
• Simmons, William S. Spirit of the New England Tribes: Indian History and Folklore, 1620-1984. Dartmouth, NH: University Press of New England, 1986.
• Snow, Dean R. and Kim M. Lamphear. "European Contact and Indian Depopulation in the Northeast: The Timing of the First Epidemics," Ethnohistory 35 (1988): 16–38.
• Spiero, Arthur E., and Bruce E. Speiss. "New England Pandemic of 1616-1622: Cause and Archaeological Implication," Man in the Northeast 35 (1987): 71–83.
• Vaughan, Alden T. "Pequots and Puritans: The Causes of the War of 1637," William and Mary Quarterly 3rd Ser., Vol. 21, No. 2 (Apr., 1964), pp. 256–269; also republished in Roots of American Racism: Essays on the Colonial Experience (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).
• _______. New England Frontier: Puritans and Indians 1620-1675. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1980.