USA > Connecticut > Tercentenary pamphlet series, v. 1 Connecticut and the British Government > Part 8
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Thomas Hooker was a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ. He was a minister of a Congregational Church. He was a firm believer in the Congregational Way. He was first and last, a preacher of the Word.
It is interesting and significant to look at the texts of several of his sermons. So often one hears the casual re- mark that the Puritan preacher took all his texts from the Old Testament. No doubt there was an Old Testament virility in their character, which is not to be deplored; and no doubt they gave their sons such Old Testament names as Zabdiel, which is not a handicap, as Dr. Zabdiel Boylston made manifest. But as a matter of dry fact, all the texts, for example, in Hooker's "Application of Redemption" are from the New Testament:
Book I. I Peter 1:18. "Ye were redeemed by the blood of Christ."
Book II. Matt. 1:21. "He shall save his people from their sins."
Book III. Luke 1:17. "To make ready a people pre- pared for the Lord."
Book IV. II Cor. 6:2. "In an acceptable time have I heard thee, in the day of salvation have I succored thee."
Book V. Matt. 20:5, 6, 7. "He went out about the sixth, ninth, and eleventh hour, and hired laborers."
Book VI. Rev. 3:17. "Thou sayest thou art rich" etc.
Book VII. Rom. 8:7. "The wisdom of the flesh is en- mity against the Lord and is not subject to the Law."
Book VIII. John 6:44. "None can come to me but whom the Father draws."
All these texts are from the New Testament. They show forth the region in which his mind worked. A man is known by the company he keeps, and a preacher's mind is known by the great texts with which he keeps company.
Further, it is interesting and important to note the
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force of this Puritan preacher: direct, forthright, and drawn from the very human experience of the hearts and minds to which he is preaching. There is nothing remote or aloof. His style is close action. Here is a sample which every family in the congregation must have felt forcibly :
If a pot be boiling upon the fire, there will a scum arise, but yet they that are good house-wives and cleanly and neat, they watch it and as the scum riseth up they take it off and throw it away, happily more scum will arise, but still as it riseth they scum it off. Thus it is with the soul, impurity will be in the heart where there is faith and it manifesteth itself and riseth up when the soul is in action, but yet the heart that hath faith eyeth the soul, and as it discovereth any impurity, though it be never so secret, never so small, though it be never so agreeing to his natural disposition, it scummeth it off.
He has left about thirty titles in discourses and ser- mons. All these with one exception, Survey of the Summe of Church Discipline, were oral discourses. He was not a writer of books. He was a preacher, first and last. His published writings are his sermons. They were preached. They were made to be preached. They were not essays in divinity. They were real sermons preached to men, to persuade and convince their hearts and minds. Some of these published sermons were printed from notes made by hearers. Some were printed from his own manuscript. So far as we know, none were revised by him and none were seen by him through the press. They were printed far away from his pen and eye and mind, in England and Holland, or later reprinted in America.
He was a preacher, and by all accounts a real preacher and a great preacher. People came to hear him, and peo- ple were moved by his preaching. Here was one who spoke with authority and not as the scribes. In one of his sermons he describes a powerful minister and that de- scription fits him. Here is the passage:
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The word is compared to a sword; as, if a man should draw a sword and flourish it about, and should not strike a blow with it, it will doe no harm; even so it is with the Ministers, little good will they doe if they doe only explicate; if they doe only draw out the sword of the spirit; for unless they apply it to the people's hearts particularly, little good may the people ex- pect, little good shall the Minister doe. A common kind of teaching when the Minister doth speake only hooveringly, and in the general, and never applies the word of God particularly may be compared to the confused noise that was in the ship wherein Jonah was, when the winds blew, and the sea raged, and a great storm began to arise. The poore Mariners strove with might and main, and they did endeavour by all means possible to bring the ship to the shore; every one cried unto his god and cast their wares into the sea, and all this while Jonah was fast asleep in the ship; but when the Mariners came down and plucked him up, and said, "Arise thou sleeper. ... Who art thou? Call upon thy God," then he was awakened out of his sleepe. The common delivery of the word is like that confused noise: there is matter of heaven, of hell, of grace, of sin spoken of, there is a common noise, and all the while men sit and sleep carelessly, and never look about them, but rest secure; but when particular application comes that shakes a sinner, as the Pilot did Jonah, and asks him, What assurance of God's mercy hast thou? What hope of pardon of sins? of life and happiness hereafter? You are baptized, and so were many that are in hell: you come to church, and so did many that are in hell: but what is your conversation in the meantime? Is that holy in the sight of God and man?
When the Ministers of God shake men and take them up on this fashion then they begin to stirre up themselves, and to consider their estates.
There speaks Thomas Hooker-powerful minister, a real and a great and a good preacher of the Gospel of Jesus Christ: a man among men and a man of God. Em- phatically a man among men, because he was primarily a man of God. He was a powerful minister. He was a minister who knew his people and who knew them by
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name. He was a minister who loved his people and they loved him. He honored and revered his people as the children of God, the sheep of his pasture, and they in re- turn honored and revered him as the servant of God, the good shepherd of the flock. As a powerful minister he was and is a living illustration of the fact that the enduring value of life is character, and character is produced and developed out of man's vision and experience of the Eter- nal God.
This minister was a statesman. He was the statesman of New England and the ambassador of Connecticut in her conferences with Saybrook and the Bay. Head and shoulders he was above most men physically, according to tradition; and head and shoulders above most of his contemporaries he stood in great discretion and sober judgment. To Thomas Hooker they turned for counsel and judicial decision. His sermon preceded and out- lined the Fundamental Orders of 1639. He was nomi- nated as moderator in a Plymouth controversy. He was summoned to Boston and Cambridge for the famous Sy- nod of 1637 which tried Anne Hutchinson, and served as one of the two moderators of that council. He was there again in 1639 in company with Mr. Haynes to confer on the question of the confederation of the colonies. He was one of the moderators of the "synod," as Richard Mather calls it, of 1643. He was again in Cambridge in 1645, where the book he had been asked to write was adopted as the voice and word of New England on the question of her ecclesi- astical polity. As soon as he came here they turned to him for guidance in affairs which seriously concerned their re- lations with England. In 1634 Endecott had cut the cross of St. George from the English ensign-as a papal symbol. This question had embroiled the magistrates of the Bay for two years. The ministers were divided and
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doubtful. It was finally submitted to Hooker for decision. His decision covered thirteen pages and held that the ac- tion of Endecott was indefensible.
The references in Bradford and Winthrop reveal the high respect in which his fellow citizens and colonists held his counsel and decisions. He was a statesman in sympa- thy, understanding, clear judgment, and good common sense. While proving all things, he could hold fast that which is true. He was careful and eager to the very end of his life, to maintain the liberty of the individual and the individual church against "the binding power of syn- ods." His warning was clear as a bell: "he that adventures far in that business will find hot and hard work, or else my perspective may fail, which I confess it may be." But his "perspective" did not fail. He could see men and affairs in a large way. He could see the individual church as free and independent, associated with other churches in a fel- lowship which is simply advisory. He could conserve the inherited good while living in the liberating present. He could keep a level head and a firm foot in the changes and chances of this mortal world. He had independence and vigour in judgment. He had a faculty for living with men. The gospel according to his sincere and devoted and powerful life, was the evangel heard and read and be- loved in his church and in these colonies. The word was made flesh, as it always must be, and dwelt among them in sincerity and devotion, in grace and truth. He was a great minister and a great citizen.
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Printed at the Printing-Office of the Yale University Press
974.6 5054 10.5
Connecticut, History
TERCENTENARY COMMISSION OF THE STATE OF CONNECTICUT
OUI
SUSTINET
TRANSTULIT
COMMITTEE ON
HISTORICAL PUBLICATIONS
The Story of The War with the Pequots Re-Told
PUBLISHED FOR THE TERCENTENARY COMMISSION BY THE YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS
1933
TUNXIS
TFORD
SEQUIN
DUTCH
POINT
PODUNKS
NIPMUKS
LEGANS (UNCAS )
S
T
U
(SASSAGUYS )
NARRAGANSETTS M (MIANTONOMO)
0 )
2
E
P .. JER
INDIAN
FORT
MYSTIC
WEST
INDIAN
NYANTICS
EFORT
NYANTICO
( MINIGET )
FISHERS
BAY
WATCH HILL
ISLWO
+-
- MASON'S ROUTE - - - - -
SACHEN FROMHEAD
HAMMONASSETSNART
FI.MT
SAYBROOK
-
NARRAGANSETT
PAN
THE PEQUOT WAR - 1637
MASON'S ROUTE FROM SAYBROOK TO THE FORT ON THE MYSTIC
TERCENTENARY COMMISSION OF THE STATE OF CONNECTICUT
COMMITTEE ON HISTORICAL PUBLICATIONS 1
The Story of
The War with the Pequots, Re-Told
HOWARD BRADSTREET
N May 1, 1637, the General Court sitting at Hartford ordered an offensive war against the Pequots. It was a remarkable action to take. On the one hand was a small group of peace- loving men who had come into the Connecticut Valley with their wives, children, and all their goods to estab- lish homes. They were without experience in war, and unacquainted with the methods of Indian fighting.
On the other hand were the powerful and numerous Pequots, who were the terror of all the tribes of Connecti- cut. They were warriors who had come into the region, overpowering the native tribes and dominating them im- periously. Each year their agent came to collect tribute from the still proud chiefs along the river, who dared not refuse to pay, knowing the penalty that would be in- flicted.
The Hooker party had been less than a year in the val- ley. Their time had been fully occupied in providing the shelter and food necessary for existence, and in organiz- ing some form of government which might bind together the three struggling plantations. To declare an offensive
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war was an act of desperation, and their action can be understood only by tracing the tangled relationships which had been developing for five or more years prior to their arrival.
The Connecticut Valley was a region of remarkable fertility and natural advantages. Here, near together, were three Indian villages-Matianuck, Saukiog, and Pyquag, where now stand Windsor, Hartford, and Wethersfield. Here was a great river on which the Indi- ans could travel in their canoes. Here were woods filled with game, streams filled with fish, soil good for corn, and hunting regions near at hand. It was an ideal location for Indian life, and here the native river tribes lived on friendly terms with one another.
Through this rich valley the Pequots forced their way. It was a natural location in which to exercise their power. They overcame the river tribes, and pressed on as con- querors to the region of the Thames River where they made their headquarters, stopped in their advance by the powerful Narragansetts just beyond to the east.
In 1614 Adrian Block sailed up the Connecticut. Upon his return to the Netherlands he showed a map on which the "Versche River" was located-now the Connecticut- and with names of Indian tribes living along its banks. It was a suitable place for Dutch trade, and the trade soon began.
News of white men far to the east reached the valley, and, chafed by the humiliating position of the Podunks, Chief Wahginacut in April of 1631, went to the Bay and to Plymouth to invite them to come to the fertile Con- necticut region. He promised friendship, and stated the Indians would give them corn and eighty skins of beaver yearly. He urged that two men be sent back with him to see for themselves the richness of the country.
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Here in 1632 came Edward Winslow from Plymouth to look over the valley, and a year later came John Old- ham and his little party to do the same. They saw a great river by which there was access to the sea and to other colonies. They found streams for mill sites, clay for bricks, wood for homes and fuel, pasture for cattle, stones for building, and soil for crops. It was an appro- priate place for the homes of Englishmen.
Thus the rich region with its lure to diverse elements became a critical center for conflicting tribes and races who were vitally interested in it. Out of these tangled relationships murders were inevitable, and from these murders rose trains of circumstances which led step by step, deviously but certainly, to the action of May first involving in bloody warfare those who had not been re- sponsible for its causes, and who were reluctant to under- take it.
The Dutch had traded on the Connecticut in the early days after its discovery by Block, and when the West India Company began its operations, a trading post was started where Hartford now stands. With the rumors of an increased activity on the part of the English, they bought land up the river from the Pequots and erected the House of Hope in 1633 at the mouth of the Little River.
It had been agreed between Dutch and Pequot that the opportunity for trading there should be open to all Indi- ans alike, and the Pequots even went so far as to allow the return of the river chief, Sequassen, who had been in exile from his domain. However, it was soon found that this liberal agreement could not withstand the jealousies involved in barter and long standing enmities. Quarrels arose, and some Indians who had come to trade were killed by the hostile Pequots.
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The Dutch undertook to punish the offenders, but in so doing no less a person was slain than Wopigwooit him- self, chief of the Pequots. The Indian code demanded re- prisals for a murder in proportion to the dignity and position of the man who had been killed, and the Pequots acted according to the code. Unfortunately their venge- ance was misdirected, for in 1633, they killed eight or nine Englishmen at the mouth of the Connecticut, later claiming they had mistaken them for Dutch. Captain Stone was a rough and ready character from Virginia who had been in his boat to Boston, and on his return journey had stopped to trade and hunt at the river. Conflicting stories were told of the tragedy, but there was no doubt that the entire group had been murdered by a band of Pequots.
The Pequots now found themselves in an embarrassing position. They had lost their trade with the Dutch; their enemies, the Narragansetts, were becoming more active; their leadership at Block Island was questioned; and Un- cas, one of their number, had rebelled and placed himself at the head of the Mohegans as a rival chief to Sassacus. They needed support and they too decided to seek the friendship of the English at the Bay.
In October, 1634, a year after Stone's murder, they sent a chief of second rank to Boston, who made his pro- posals of friendship to the deputy governor stating the amount of skins and wampum the Pequots would grant yearly. Gifts were exchanged but the messenger was told that men of higher rank than he must come, if they wished to discuss so important a proposition with the governor.
Having thus shrewdly assured themselves of a hearing, two others of higher rank came to Boston and a treaty was agreed upon by which they would pay forty beaver
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skins, thirty otter, 400 fathoms of wampum, and would encourage English activities in the valley of the Con- necticut, while the English would send a vessel to trade with them, would be friendly yet not defend them against their enemies. All of which, however, was conditioned upon the Pequots delivering the men who were guilty of Cap- tain Stone's death.
It was at best a half-hearted agreement, inasmuch as the English were friends of the Narragansetts-the Pe- quots' greatest enemy-and action under this treaty of November, 1634, was long delayed.
In the meantime the English had been coming into the Connecticut region. Plymouth had sent Captain Holmes in the fall of 1633 to set up the Windsor trading post; ex- plorers and pioneers had gone up and down the valley making notes of its fine points and selecting sites for fu- ture development; at the mouth of the river Lion Gardi- ner had erected a fort late in 1635 under the orders of John Winthrop, jr. The Pequots knew that their hold on the river tribes had been weakened by the presence of the English, and that Uncas was looking on craftily to fur- ther his own interests by association with the new settlers when opportunity should come.
This was the situation when a second murder occurred which touched the English more keenly than the first. In the summer of 1636-about the time of the arrival of the Hooker party-John Oldham was found slain in his boat on Long Island Sound. Oldham, unlike Captain Stone, was a man who had lived both at Plymouth and the Bay, and was identified with the colonies. He had entered the Connecticut region in 1633 with three friends, had stayed with the Indians on his journey, and had returned with a glowing account of the country. He had received beaver skins from the Indian chiefs, and had brought samples of
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the hemp which grew in abundance and was of better quality than that of the English. He had taken up land at Wethersfield, and was one of the first to plant corn and settle in the valley.
With two boys and two Indians he had gone to trade with the Pequots, and while near Block Island was bru- tally murdered in his boat, which the Indians took pos- session of and tried to steer to shore. Through the shrewdness of John Gallop the murder was detected, and the boat captured by his courage and skill. The story which he brought to Boston produced a profound effect.
Investigations at once were made to determine the perpetrators of the outrage. The guilt finally was ascribed to the Indians of Block Island and to the Pequots along the shore, who had given refuge to the murderers and hence were equally guilty. A relentless expedition was sent out from Boston the last of August, 1636. Its leaders carried instructions to put to death the Indian men of Block Island, to spare the women and children, but to bring them away and take possession of the island. They were ordered then to proceed to the Pequots, making de- mands for the murderers of Captain Stone and of other Englishmen; for the payment of one thousand fathoms of wampum for damages; and for some of their children as hostages, and if refused, to obtain these objects by force. The general command of the expedition was placed in the hands of John Endecott, with Captain John Underhill and other military men acting with him.
At Block Island the Indians fled, hiding so securely that they could not be found, and the English were obliged to content themselves with burning wigwams and destroying corn and canoes. They then sailed to the fort at the mouth of the Connecticut where Lion Gardiner tried in vain to dissuade them from attacking the Pequots. He
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said, "You have come to raise a nest of hornets about our ears, and then you will flee away," but his words were un- heeded. In spite of his protests the expedition proceeded to the Pequot shores. Here also they were unable to meet the Indians face to face in battle, and again were obliged to wreak their vengeance by destroying wigwams, crops, and canoes, but returned feeling that punishment had been inflicted. There could be but one result of such a demonstration of force. The deadly hatred of the Pe- quots was aroused, and their policy became fixed. They determined to make the fort at Saybrook the center of a series of murderous attacks, to establish an alliance with their enemies, the Narragansetts, and at the right mo- ment to exterminate the English from the land.
The winter of 1636-1637 saw Saybrook as dangerous a place as any which later might be found in the far west during uprisings of the Indians. It was perilous to leave the fort for, when least expected, an attack might be made, resulting in torture and death.
The far reaching Pequot plans for an alliance with the Narragansetts would have succeeded had it not been for the intervention of Roger Williams of Rhode Island. For some time he had been informed from the Bay about the Indian difficulties, and had consulted with his friends among the Narragansett chiefs regarding the best methods to subdue the Pequots. When the magistrates of Massachusetts heard of the efforts to form an Indian alli- ance they sent letters to him asking his immediate and utmost efforts to offset them. In his letter to Mason writ- ten in later years, Williams says, "Upon letters received from Governor and Council at Boston, requesting me to use my utmost and speediest endeavors to break and hin- der the league labored for by the Pequots against the Mohegans, and Pequots against the English ... the Lord
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helped me immediately to put my life into my hand, and, scarce acquainting my wife, to ship myself, all alone, in a poor canoe, and to cut through a stormy wind, with great seas, every minute in hazard of life, to the sachem's house. Three days and nights my business forced me to lodge and mix with the bloody Pequot ambassadors whose hands and arms, methought, wreaked with the blood of my countrymen, murdered and massacred by them on Connecticut River, and from whom I could not but nightly look for their bloody knives at my own throat also."
During those troublous times at the Saybrook fort, lived Gardiner's wife-a Dutch woman, who on April 29, 1636, had given birth to a son, David, the first white child born in Connecticut, and whose tomb in the old burying ground at Hartford bears the words, "well, sick, dead in one hour's space, July 10, 1689."
Early in 1637 John Underhill with a squad of twenty men was sent from Boston to help hold the situation, and during their presence the depredations greatly lessened.
In the month of April, 1637, a band of Pequots made a surprise attack at Wethersfield where they killed three women and six men, destroyed cattle, and took with them two girls. Flying the shirts and smocks of their victims on poles in the canoes, they sailed with bravado past the fort at Saybrook. A gun was fired but the distance was great, little damage was done, and the Indians quickly disap- peared towards their headquarters on the Thames.
John Higginson also was at the fort serving as chap- lain. He was son of Francis Higginson, the former clergyman at Salem under Endecott, a young man of twenty years, who later taught for a short time at Hartford. He saw the full import of the situation, in- volving danger to all the whites, and realized the need of
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spurring Boston to further action. He wrote a long letter to John Winthrop, then deputy governor, couched in biblical form, saying that no other occupations were of more importance than the impending war. "Let the Lord raise the public spirit of his servants," he said, "and if there is no spirit, then to create it." He augmented his personal appeal by those of the Hebrew prophets, giving biblical references which were apt and no doubt served his purpose: "Arise for the matter belongeth to thee," "And all the people rose as one man," "Be strong, all ye people of the land, saith Jehovah, and work for I am with you." Massachusetts took action in course of time, and Captain Patrick was sent with forty men, but arrived too late to take part in the main campaign.
On May I the court at Hartford made its declaration of war. It did more than make the declaration. It levied a total of ninety men from the three plantations of Hartford, Wethersfield, and Windsor, and apportioned forty-two from Hartford, thirty from Windsor, and eighteen from Wethersfield.
It placed the command with Captain John Mason, and in case of his sickness or death with Lieutenant Robert Seely, and if both of these should miscarry, then with the oldest sergeant or military officer surviving.
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