USA > Connecticut > A history of Connecticut, its people and institutions, pt 1 > Part 4
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The Indians
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as the relatives could afford, swathe it with skins and mats, and it was buried, and with it dishes of food and implements of war, while the relatives stood by with faces freshly painted in black.
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In buying lands from the Indians there was a curious cere- mony called turf and twig. In February, 1639, Ansantawae, sachem of the Paugussetts, sold to the English a considerable tract near the center of Milford. The purchasers laid down before the sachem six coats, ten blankets, one kettle, and a quantity of hoes, knives, hatchets, and looking-glasses. A twig and a piece of turf were handed to the chief by a fol- lower, he stuck the twig into the turf and gave both to the English, indicating that he had passed over the soil and all it sustained. An instrument of sale was also drawn, and signed by leaders of both parties. The Indians were a trial in the early period, entering houses freely and some- times causing accidents by their eagerness to handle firearms, hence penal laws were passed ordering that for handling weapons an Indian was to pay a fine of half a fathom of wampum. An Indian who came to a settlement by night might be summoned by the watchman, and if he refused to obey, he might be shot down. In times of Indian warfare it was sometimes ordered that no one except a magistrate should receive a native into his house. In 1647, Indians were forbidden to hire lands of the English, because of their corrupting influence on young men. Since the Indians complained of being cheated out of their territories, a law was passed in 1663, forbidding private individuals buying lands of them.
Connecticut was an Indian country, its colonies only two or three days' march on both sides from the most cruel and dangerous tribes in North America, and there were times when braves would lurk in the neighboring forest for three months waiting for the right opportunity to strike. It was stiff discipline: grim and bloody is the story of those bitter years; it was a rough experience for both races in that
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stern age, and at length the English killed, drove out, or enslaved most of the Indians, after more than a century of fear and struggle.
Just how much the settlers owed the Indians, and how far the presence of the aborigines affected the settlements and the history, are questions it is hard to answer. No doubt the fact that there were powerful tribes had a decided influence on the method of procedure of the whites. Had the land been unoccupied by human beings, the English might have swarmed over America in a short time, and the compact settlement on the Connecticut and its neighbor- hood with the resulting government would perhaps never have existed. One of the important contributions of the Indians was the system of trails, camping-places, and trade- routes which they had established. The Bay Path was learned of the Indians by the first pioneers to Connecticut. Indians were an agricultural people and cultivated maize, squashes, pumpkins, beans, and tobacco. It was possibly due to the raising and storing of Indian corn that the occu- pation of the continent at that time was made possible. The general distribution of the plant brought from the south had long before taken place, and this, with wild roots and beans, often eked out the food supplies of the conquering race. The English learned from the Indians to plant corn in hills and to fertilize with fish. Governor Bradford says that in April, 1621, "They began to plant their corne, in which service Squanto stood them in great stead, showing ye manner how to set it and after how to dress and tend it. And he tould them, excepte they got fish and set with it (in these old grounds) it would come to nothing." Thomas Morton in his New England's Canaan says, "You may see in one township a hundred acres together set with fish, every acre taking 1000 of them, & an acre thus dressed will produce and yield as much corn as 3 acres without fish." In the early history of the English settlements there is frequent mention of the "barns" of the Indians. These
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The Indians
were holes made in the ground in which corn and other foods were cached, and these helped out the settlers. The corn-cribs set on posts are an Indian invention, and have been slightly changed by the white settlers. The hominy- mortar and the device of preserving corn on the cob by braiding the husks are mentioned by early chroniclers as Indian devices.
The influence of the Indians on the whites is suggested by the prevalence of such names as "Indian file," "Indian corn," "Indian summer," hickory, chipmunk, mugwump, moccasin, squash, woodchuck, toboggan, Saratoga, skunk, hominy, Tammany, and more than two hundred others. Indian in origin are such expressions as these: "fire-water," "paleface," "medicine-man," "Great Spirit," "happy hunting-grounds," "Great Father," "to bury the hatchet," "to smoke the pipe of peace," and "to take his scalp." The Indians were familiar with valuable febrifuges, pur- gatives, astringents, balsams, and stimulants, and the "In- dian doctor" was sometimes called in by the settlers to stanch wounds and alleviate pain. Upon the Indian repu- tation in medicine many quacks and impostors have ven- tured their claims to cure dozens of diseases. Sweat-baths, corn-poultices, lobelia, witch-hazel, cascara, and scores of other terms suggest the wealth of Indian "folk-medicine." Ropes and strings were made of "Indian hemp." Corn- husk mats are of Indian origin, and the European settlers learned from their neighbors of many durable ways of. staining and dyeing. The white settlers owed much to the Indians.
CHAPTER V
WARS WITH THE INDIANS
REFERENCE was made in the previous chapter to the in- fluence of the Indians upon the English in training them for war, and the discipline came hot and heavy at the very start, for the settlers had barely secured a foothold and a covering when they were met by a sharp challenge and stern defiance from the most dangerous tribe in New Eng- land. During the sixteen years since the settlement of Plymouth the Indians had been in the main friendly, but so numerous were the English becoming that the Pequots from their forts at Groton determined to strike for their hunting-grounds. Outrages opened in 1634, when Captains Stone and Norton were killed by allies of the Pequots, while ascending the Connecticut to trade; the Pequot chiefs Sassacus and Ninigret were in the conspiracy and shared the plunder. In 1636, John Oldham, who had been appointed collector of tribute from the Pequots, was killed by them off Block Island, and his boat seized; the murderers were attacked by John Gallop, another trader, killed or driven off, and the body of Oldham, still warm, was found in the boat. The fugitives fled to the Pequots, where they gained protection. Although the Pequots had nothing to do with the affair, the Massachusetts government sent Captain Endicott with a force to avenge the murder, and after stopping at Block Island and destroying some Indian houses and two hundred acres of corn, he went to the mainland
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and burned some of the Pequot wigwams, which, as Gardener, the commander of the Saybrook fort, told Endicott, was outrageous and would serve only to bring the Indians "like wasps about his ears," a prediction that came true. Sas- sacus tried to draw the Narragansetts into a general war, which might have annihilated the English settlements in Connecticut, but an ancient hostility toward their fierce rivals was too strong, reinforced as it was by the diplomacy of Roger Williams, who, at peril of life, visited the forts, and persuaded the Narragansett chiefs to go to Boston in the autumn, and conclude a treaty of peace and alliance with the English.
The formidable Pequots, left to battle alone, spared no pains to provoke resentment. Early in October, they attacked five haymakers from the Saybrook garrison; seized a man named Butterfield and tortured him to death, and a few days after, they took two men from a boat,-one they killed, the other, Joseph Tilly, was tortured to death by cutting off hands and feet. The Saybrook fort was in a state of siege all winter; outhouses and haystacks burned; cattle killed or wounded. It was worse in the spring as Indi- ans watched roads and river. In March, Gardener, the commander, went out with ten men to work on the land; they were waylaid, three slain, the rest escaped to the fort, which was at once surrounded by a great number of Pequots, who challenged the English to come out and fight; mocking the groans and prayers of tortured men; boasting that they. could kill the English "all one flies," until grape-shot drove them away. Not long after this, three men sailing down the river were overpowered, one man was killed and he fell overboard; the others were cut in two lengthwise and hung up on the river bank. In April, Indians went as far as Wethersfield and waylaid some farmers while going to their fields, killed two men, a woman, and child; they carried away two girls, killed twenty cows, and destroyed much other property.
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In the midst of these calamities, the General Court met at Hartford, May 1, 1637, representing the little republic of eight hundred souls. It was a momentous time for the company of fifteen-six magistrates and nine committee- men, who were to decide the fate of Connecticut, at least for a time. They were surrounded by Indian tribes, scat- tered through the country from Hudson River to Narragan- sett Bay; these tribes united could have fallen upon the whites with a force of four or five thousand warriors. The Pequots had five hundred fighting men and no one could tell how soon fresh allies would join their forces. The Indians already had killed thirty people, and were growing bolder; there seemed to be no alternative. We are not surprised to read on the record the following vote, "It is ordered that there shall be an offensive war against the Pequots, and there shall be ninety men levied out of the three plantations of Hartford, Windsor and Wethersfield." Hartford was to furnish forty-two, Windsor thirty, and Wethersfield eighteen men. There have been longer sessions, and less pointed legislation since then, but none more ef- fective. Busy days followed, and on Wednesday, May 10, the little army of ninety Englishmen and seventy Mohicans embarked in three small vessels, with the queer names of "a pink, a pinnace and a shallop." The commander was Captain John Mason, who had served in the Netherlands under Sir John Fairfax, and the chaplain was Samuel Stone. The vessels ran aground so frequently in the shallow waters of that season that Uncas begged leave to go ashore; when the English reached Saybrook fort on Monday, May 15, they found Captain John Underhill, with twenty men from Massachusetts, with Uncas, happy over a battle with the Pequots, in which seven had been killed and one captured. The last was handed over to the Mohicans, who tortured, roasted and ate him.
It was an anxious time for Captain Mason and his slender army, lying wind-bound from Monday until Friday in front
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of the fort, knowing well that every motion was watched by sharp Pequot scouts, that his passage into the Thames would find the enemy well prepared, that the moment he landed his men on the rocky shore, Pequot warriors would hasten by the hundreds from the woods. His orders were to land near the mouth of the Pequot, now the Thames River, and attack the enemy from the west. The keen officer knew that it would be suicidal to leap into a swarm of arrows with his little band. There was delay, for the other officers and the men were in favor of obeying instruc- tions to assault the Indian fort at once; they shrank from the long march through the woods on the east, and the long exposure of their homes through their absence. In the division of opinion, Chaplain Stone played a valuable part : urged by Captain Mason to pray for guidance, he spent most of Thursday night in prayer; the next morning he reported the harmony of the captain's plan with the divine will. It was decided to send twenty men to Hartford to strengthen the home guard, while Captain Underhill, with nineteen men, took their places.
It was a stiff undertaking, for it was learned from the two Wethersfield girls, captured by the Indians and brought back by the Dutch, who had exchanged for them six Indians, that the Pequots had sixteen muskets, and knew how to use them. Following the good judgment of Captain Mason, backed up by the prayers of the chaplain, the tiny fleet set sail for Narragansett Bay, determined to march through the woods across Rhode Island, and crush the Indians by night. They passed Watch Hill and Point Judith and on Saturday evening reached Narragansett Pier, and came to anchor near Tower Hill, where they spent Sunday on shipboard, a northwest gale preventing the landing before Tuesday at sunset. Then the captain led his army to an Indian village, not far away, where was a Narragansett chief, who approved of the design of the expedition and the program, but thought the force too small
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to deal with an enemy, which was, as he said, "very great captains, and men skilful in war."
During Tuesday night, an Indian runner came from Providence to tell Mason that Captain Patrick was on his way from Massachusetts with a small body of troops, but Mason balanced the value of surprise against the import- ance of additional troops, and decided to push on at once. He set out through the wilderness Wednesday morning, May 24, with "seventy-seven brave Englishmen, sixty frightened Mohicans, and four hundred terrified Narragan- setts and Niantics." They marched twenty miles to Niantic, a village of the Narragansetts, on the borders of the Pequot country. The chief, fearing the enmity of the Pequots, refused admission to the English for the night. On Thursday, Mason advanced fifteen miles to a place five miles northwest of Stonington, near a hill, where stood the principal stronghold of the Pequots, a few miles from the residence of Sassacus. The day was sultry and oppressive, some of the men fainted from heat, and most of the Nar- ragansetts, "being possessed with great fear," fell behind. Evidently the Pequots had not been alarmed, since the sentinels of the English could hear the noisy revels in the fort, celebrating possibly the departure of the English in fear. Had there been a seer among those fierce men in that fort on the hill a mile west of Mystic, he might well have thrilled his companions with a tragic tale, for it was the last night of the Pequot tribe on earth. It was a clear, beautiful evening in spring, and amid the weird shadows cast by the trees in the bright moonlight, the soldiers, exhausted by the march, threw themselves on the ground and slept. "The rocks were our pillows," said Mason, "but rest was pleasant." About an hour before light, the men were roused and bidden make ready for battle. The moon still shone on them as Chaplain Stone prayed softly for the help of God, and soon the little army was in motion for the fort two miles away on Pequot Hill. They feared
The Indians howes
-
Thesr Streets
The Plan of the Pequot Fort
Belt and Strings of Wampum
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at first that they were on the wrong track, but were reas- sured when they saw a field of corn newly planted, and soon Uncas the chief and Wequash the guide came near. "Where is the fort?" asked Mason. "On the top of that hill," was the answer. "Where are the rest of the Indians?" asked the commander. "Tell them not to fly, but to stand off as far as they please, to see whether Englishmen will fight."
The fort was a nearly circular area of several acres, enclosed by trunks of trees set firmly in the ground close together, and rising to the height of twelve feet. Within were seventy wigwams in two rows. There were two en- .
trances, one on the northeast side, the other on the west. Mason led at one, and Underhill at the other. The Pequots had no sentinels, and the garrison was sound asleep. When the storming party was within a rod of the palisade, an Indian dog barked, and a voice of an Indian was heard shouting, "Owanux! Owanux!" (Englishmen, Englishmen). No time was lost. Mason pushed away the brush before the entrance and led sixteen men into the enclosure; a des- perate hand-to-hand struggle began with the Indians who swarmed from the wigwams like bees. Some of the Pequots began to shoot from the doors of their lodges. One of them was on the point of shooting Mason through the head, when a soldier cut the bowstring with his sword. Soon the captain saw two soldiers lowering their swords toward the earth as though the undertaking were hopeless; the attack- ing party was getting out of breath as it swept through the area, killing the braves right and left; some of the whites were wounded, two were dead. "We shall never kill them this way; we must burn them," shouted Mason, touching a firebrand to the mats which covered a hut. The fire, fanned by a rising northeaster, spread through the fort. Underhill set the other side afire with a train of gunpowder, and the English were driven from the furnace. In an hour the fort was in ashes; English muskets shot down a part of
e
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those that escaped, and the native allies brought down nearly all the rest. "It is reported by themselves," said Under- hill, "that there were about four hundred souls in this fort, not above five of them escaped out of our hands." Mason said that seven hundred perished, and seven were captured. Of the English, two were killed and twenty wounded.
There was another Indian fort a few miles farther west, near the path to Pequot harbor, where Mason had arranged to meet the vessels; food and ammunition were almost spent ; the surgeon was on shipboard; the heat was overpowering, and early in the day, the Indians from the other garrison, seeing the smoking ruins of their neighbors, tore their hair, and working themselves into a frenzy, rushed upon the Englishmen to avenge the slaughter, but Mason, hiring his allies to carry away the wounded, drove back the enemy, and at evening the soldiers embarked and returned to . Hartford, after an absence of three weeks.
On the day after the battle, the last council of the Pequot nation was held, at which a program for the future was adopted. It was decided, after a stormy debate, to burn their wigwams and supplies and join the Mohawks on the Hudson. Thirty men, with as many women and children, took refuge in a swamp near their former home. Stoughton of Massachusetts with one hundred and twenty men found them there and killed all the men but two, who were kept for guides to lead the English to Sassacus, the fugitive chief- tain. Thirty-three of the Pequot women were given to the Indian allies; the remainder were sent to Massachusetts and sold as slaves. The captured women reported that thirteen sachems had been slain, and that thirteen survived.
In June, the Connecticut Court met at Hartford and ordered Mason to go with forty men to carry on the war. He joined Stoughton with his Massachusetts men at New London. It was decided to follow Sassacus in his flight to the Hudson. Grim, persistent, relentless attack and pursuit were the program; the conduct of the Indians in their flight
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Wars with the Indians
did not dull the edge of the sword; Sassacus and Monotto with the main body of the tribe, while crossing the Connecti- cut, killed three men in a canoe and hung their bodies on trees; Mason, Stoughton, and Uncas were on their track. Sachem's Head gained its name from the fact that Uncas cut off the head of a Pequot chief and hung it in an oak there. In hot pursuit Mason overtook the foe in a swamp in Fair- field, where the Indians made a stand; a cordon was formed about the Pequots; all who were not red-handed from the murder of whites were offered life; it was specially desired to save local Indians who had fled to the swamp in terror of vengeance, and also the women and children of the Pequots. Some availed themselves of the offer, but not the men. In a thick fog the Indians fell upon the English, but were repulsed; in the hand-to-hand struggle which followed many Pequots were killed, and one hundred and eighty captured. A massive block of granite has been recently placed in the swamp with the inscription:
The Great Swamp-Fight Here Ended The Pequot War July 13, 1637
Sassacus was not present at the swamp fight. Accused by his people of being the author of their misfortunes, he fled westward to the country of the Mohawks, with a few war- riors. The Mohawks, hating the Pequots as cordially as did the English, and wishing to conciliate the latter, be- headed Sassacus, his brother, and five sachems, sending their scalps to Connecticut. In the autumn a black, glossy lock of hair was received in Boston; it was from the head of Sassacus, who was more fortunate than Uncas, who lived to be a degraded, drunken dependent of the English.
This victory benefited Uncas, who with Miantonomo, sachem of the Narragansetts, met the magistrates at Hart-
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ford, September 21, 1737, and a treaty was formed between Connecticut, the Mohicans, and the Narragansetts, according to which there was to be perpetual peace. Connecticut was to have the territory of the Pequots, remnants of whom were to be absorbed by the Mohicans and Narragansetts, and the name Pequot was to cease, save in that sightly elevation, Pequot Hill, on which stands a rude bowlder crowned by a bronze statue of Captain John Mason, and the stately soldier is in the act of drawing his sword. The later years of Uncas were not enviable, though he had the pleasure of giving away or selling for a trifle large tracts of land about Norwich, often with boundaries covering previous grants, until in 1680, becoming alarmed at approaching poverty, he applied to the legislature to take jurisdiction over his remaining property, allowing him compensation for sales; agreeing to keep the peace and to assist the colony in case of attack. The Assembly accepted the trust, prom- ising to give good advice if Uncas were attacked, and furnish ammunition at a fair price. Uncas lived only two or three years to enjoy this one-sided arrangement, dying in 1682, or 1683. His son Owenico was in a still more pitiful state at the end. In 1680, he made over all the lands his father had given him on the Quinnebaug to James Fitch, his loving friend, as he called him, giving as a reason for the deed the fact that some of the English extorted land from him by importunities, and others by inducing him to sign papers while he was under the influence of strong liquors. James Fitch was son of the Norwich minister, but unlike his father was grasping and eager for land. One night Owenico became very drunk, fell out of his canoe, and would have drowned had it not been for two settlers, to one of whom he gave one hundred acres of land. This princely Owenico, the brave warrior in early manhood, fighting gallantly the Pocomtocks, Pocanokets, and Narragansetts, became a vagabond in his old age. With squaw, blanket, gun, and a pack on his back, he wandered about the settle-
GREAT CRAN IST
THE FERUCT INZ JULY W1 1537
The Monument at the Scene of the Swamp Fight, Westport
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ments, presenting to strangers who could not understand his English the following doggerel:
Oneco, king, his queen doth bring, To beg a little food; As they go along his friends among To try how kind, how good.
Some pork, some beef, for their relief, And if you can't spare bread, She'll thank you for a pudding, as they go a-gooding, And carry it on her head.
The question now arises, can we justify this fearful campaign? The war would not have been waged at that time had not the Endicott expedition, carried on in defiance of the judgment and wishes of Connecticut, enraged the Pequots. After thirty murders by the savages, Connecticut was obliged to take the field. It was clear to the wisest and best men in Connecticut that the question was squarely before them, either to slay or to be slain.
The next Indian war was in 1675-76, and the Indians were far more dangerous than the Pequots of thirty-eight years before. Their weapons were no longer confined to the spear, the arrow, the tomahawk, and the scalping-knife; firearms with powder and shot were in their hands. They were also better acquainted with the methods of the English, who in turn had been studying the ways of the Indians. While many armed men went forth from the Con- necticut villages in King Philip's war, the battle scenes were outside the colony, though heavy losses fell within. King Philip, the Indian leader, was sachem of the Wampanoags, and his chief fort was at Mount Hope, in the eastern part of the town of Bristol in Rhode Island. For several years it had been supposed among the colo- nies that the Indians were forming a general conspiracy, with the purpose of ridding their hunting-grounds of people
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