INTER-ETHNIC REIATIOM3 ON NEW ENGIAND 1S FRONTIER: 

A SURVEY OF THE FORMATIVE PERIOD 

by 
Robert Andrew Cole 

Thesis submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School 
of the University of Maryland in partial fulfillment 

of the requirements for the degree of 
Master of Arts 

l968 



APPROVAL SHEET 

Title of Thesis: Inter-Ethnic Relations on New Engla nd 
1
s Frontier: 

A Survey of the Formative Period 

Name of Candidate: Robert A. Cole 
Master of Arts , 1969 

Thesis and Abstract Approved: 

1-i 

Date Approved: ' ✓--( ... {. ,,) 

'/ {/ 

J mes S. van Ness 
, ssistant Professor 
Department of History 



ABSTRACT 

Title of Thesis: Inter-Ethnic Relations on Nevr England I s Frontier: 
A Survey of the Formative Period 

Robert A. Cole, Master of Arts, 1968 

Thesis directed by: Professor Aubrey C. land 

In many respects, the form and progression of the New England 

frontier reflects a col]j_sion, of sorts, between two disparate peoples 

and their tv.ro divergent cultures. As the European confronted the native 

American in the wilderness setting, it soon became apparent that the 

demise of the Indian culture was inevitable, the only salient question 

being as to the nature of its decline. 

A close examination of early Seventeenth Century relations shows the 

English as ambitious and militant expansionists who not only rejected the 

idea of cultural coexistence, but, in regarding the Indian solely from a 

European frame of reference, failed to make any substantial progress 

toward a theory of toleration. 

The English were highly organized, strongly motivated, and eminently 

successful in their pursuit of the long range goals of settlement; and 

it is the very cohesiveness of the Puritan frontier which best illwninates 

the fateful dilemma of the indigenous population. 

While fragmented by tribal particularism and internecine warfare, the 

native New Englander s were beset on all sides by enemies, European and 

Indian. Though willing, at first, to contest a permanent European colonial 

effort, their cultural resiliency was undermined by disease, and a multi­

plicity of negative factors which developed as their relationships with 

the English settlements moved toward interdependency. 



As the confrontation moved into the cliJnactic period following the 

Pequot War, the weight of the English presence had already brought about 

irreversible trends in the Indian way of life . With his lands diminishing 

under the pressure of two conver ging lines of frontier settlement, he was 

finally left, with two impractical options, acculturation or resist ance. 

Both charted a course to futility. 



TABIE OF CONTENTS 

Chapter Page 

I. THE NEW ENGIAND WILDERNESS BEFORE EUROIBA.N SETTIEMENT. • . . . . . . 1 

II. Nfil'f ENGIAND AND THE VOYAGES OF EXPLORATION. . . . . . . . . . • . . . . . . . . 10 

III. EUROJEANS AND INDJAN3 - THE FIRST SUBSTANTIAL CONTAC'IS.... • . . 14 

IV. FERMA.NENT ENGLISH SETTIEMENT •••••••••••.•..........•....•.... 22 

V. THE PURITAN VIEW OF NE\II ENGIAND, •• • • , • • • • • . . . • . . . . . . . . . . • . . . . 27 

VI. THE FOUNDATION5 OF THE INDIAN TRADE ••••••••........•..•.•••.• 34 

VII • THE .FEQ UOT 'WAR • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • . . . • • 43 

VIII. THE TONN PLANTERS • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • . • . • . 56 

IX. CON3TRICTION OF THE INDIAN !ANDS •.•.......................... 64 

X. THE FEASIBILITY OF ASSIMIIATION ••••••••••••••........•..•...• 74 

SEIECTED BIBLIOORAPHY, • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • , • • • • • • • . • • . . . . • 83 

. , 
11 



CHA.Pl'ER I 

THE NEW' EIDIAND WILDERNESS BEFORE EUROFEA.N SETTIE:MENT 

Before the white men came to New England the land was both the master 

and servant of an assortment of Indian tribes of the eastern Algonquian 

group, a cultural affiliation of native Americans who ranged from Maline 

to the Chesapeake. In classifying the indigenous New England Indian as 

Algonquian, the foremost consideration is linguistic, but his living 

habits also reflected a definite structure of institutional homogeneity 

manifested in architectural practices, economic patterns, social and 

religious conventions and basic tribal organization. 

Prior to the advent of European settlement, hundreds of Algonquian 

villages dotted the Nelv- England landscape, and it is these quasi-towns 

that y:i.eld the most descriptive tableau of tribal life. The village 

represented a clearly defined economic entity, but it al.so served as an 

expression of the collective will that sustained the norms of an ancient 

culture. It was the guardian of social mores, and, most important, a 

workable venture in a people 1s act of survival. 

While the village was the f Olllldation stone upon which rested the 

principles of tribal solidarity, no Algonquian c~ty thought of itself 

as simply a functioning gear in the political machinery of the tribe at 

large; for within each village there would most probably reside members of 

several~, each with its own council to settle clan disputes. Whereas 

clan authority tended toward a final stage diffusion of local political 

control, nonetheless, political organization was evident on the higher 

policy making levels of tribal life. 

The Algonquian tribes of the New England region were comprised of 



villages, or bands of villages, and presided over by a distinguished 

member of the community, the sachem. The sachem might be elected to his 

position by tribal vote, or, in the case of many larger tribes, chosen 

indirectly by a council of notables and war leaders called sagamores. 1 

Another figure of some importance in the tribal hierarchy was the 

EOWWow, a religious leader who at times might rival the sachem in terms 

2. 

of political authority. It is of some interest to note, however, that his 

position as religious leader did not automatically make him preeminent; 

for, contrary to practices among the tribes of the western regions, the 

Nevr England pomvovr did not usual:cy" possess the fanatical religious zeal 

which often thrust his Iroquoian counterparts into positions of leadership. 

Neither did religious matters move policy within the New England tribes. 

There was little fondness for religious ritual; and again in contrast to 

the people of the Five .Nations, there seemed to be a minimal amount of 

fascination for the complexities of primitive m;ysticism, or the sadistic 

excesses of ceremonial torture. 

It is apparent then, that among the Algonquian tribes of New England, 

the atmosphere of magisterial rigidity was almost total~ absent. The 

political process, such as it was, operated in a manner somewhat responsible 

to popular sentiment. However, the political configuration or the tribe 

became more easily discernible, and indeed more complex, once contacts 

with Europeans began to stimulate a need for organization in the conduct 

of diplomacy and economic intercourse. But before the age of European 

settlement, it can be safely assumed that government, standardized law 

and religious for-.malism were but vague concepts, with tribal polity less 

l cf. Douglas E. LJ33ch, The Northern Colonial Frontier, 1607-1673 
(New York: Holt, Rineharl andWinston, 1966), p. 9. 



3. 

clearly defined in the period before European settlement. 2 The wilderness 

setting, in fact, did not cultivate the need for strictly defined socio­

political institutions in the European sense; nor did the village 

environment demand constant litigation for the settlement of intra-tribal 

disputea.3 

The New England Indian at the turn of the Seventeenth Century was a 

man of few personal possessions, untouched by the acquisitiveness which 

was part and parcel of European society• His village, usually palisaded, 

was a modestly compact affair where utility motivated architectural form. 

Unlike the communal "long houses" of the Iroquois, he made his home in 

a wigwam. Quite suitable to the extremes of the New England climate, the 

wigwam was constructed about an oval floor plan large enough to accomodate 

a family unit. Built of tree bark and reed matting, and reinforced by a 

framework of pliable saplings, it offered ample protection against the 

elements. Both easily and inexpensively constructed, it is but one of 

the mattV expressions of the Algonquian's sense of individual identity. 

Although the New Engl.and Indian is best described as a torm-dweUer, 

the main village site was typically a semi-fixed location, for the tribe, 

or major segments of it, often migrated with the seasons. Several factors 

are noticeable in surveying the reasons for these short-term migrations, 

for with the absence of a technology, the Indian was forced to bend in the 

direction dictated by the wilderness itself. In the swmner it was 

necessary to be near the planting fields which surrounded every major 

village. Here, while the women tended the annual crops, the men scoured 

2Harold E. Driver, Indians of North America (Chicago: University of 
Chicago Press, 1965), P· 370. 

3Douglas E. teach, Flintlock and Tomahawk: New England in King 
Philip's~ (New York: The Maciiill.Tim Company, ~), p. li. -



the nearby forests for game. Anticipating the lean months of cold and 

snovr, the sannup, or warrior, went upon his quest armed with a hardwood 

bovr strung with animal sinew, and a variety of clever traps and snares. 

As Winter fell on the conmunity, the village might move to a more sheltered 

location to await the spring thaw. With the approach of warm weather, the 

village would then retrace its steps to the original site to concern 

itself with the business of planting, perhaps sending out; small elements 

to tribal fishing grounds on the coast, or the banks of a quick mountain 

stream. Village locations might also be changed for a number of other 

reasons relating to the fertility of the soil, the supply of wildlife or 

firewood, war, or in subsequent years, pestilence. Thus, the New England 

Indian was a creature of migration. While not t?'Ul.Jr nomadic as in the 

case of the prairie dwellers, he was liable to change location periodically 

Within the somewhat loosely demarcated con.fines of the tribal region. 

At times the causes of community movement developed out of friction 

between the tribes, but most often such crises were resolved short of open 

warfare. Simply stated, the New England tribes were not by nature warlike, 

and inter-tribal conflict for any reason was less frequent in the years 

before contacts were established with the Europeans.
4 True, there was a 

constant series of ambuscades in the forest, but most of these alterca­

tions were engineered by individuals, or groups of adolescent adventurers, 

rather than by the tribe as a political unit.' 

When the European immigrant disembarked upon the shores of southern 

New England, he brought with him, as a part of his cultural baggage, a new 

concept of land ownership. It didn't make a great deal of sense to the 

½Jriver, p. 370 . 

.S~ach, Northern colonial Frontier ••• , p. 12. 



5. 

native American, for, although the boundaries of tribal lands were 

generally understood, he had no conception of permanent individual title. 

The Indian• s notion of land tenure, like many of his other unwritten 

precepts, was vaguely formulated in terms of practical utility. A family 

might consistently work a given piece of land, but the sUITounding 

territory was generally thought to be held in common by the tribe. A 

fam:i.zy, or a tribe, might transfer part of its land to another party, but 

its new occupancy was considered in the nature of an open end agreement 

to be maintained only as long as both remained satis.fied. In an agree­

ment of' this type it was not the land, but the temporary utilization of 
6 

it that was transferred. 

The eastern Algonquian undoubtedzy felt that in view of the great 

surfeit of land, and all its abundant resources, there was little need to 

bicker over formal property arrangements• And, like maey other peoples 

who have knovm the struggles of a hostile environment, they seemed 

predisposed to sharing what they did possess• For the most part, they 

believed in hospitality as a matter of course. 7 The stranger in their 

country was a matter of curiosity and wonder, a traveller to be welcomed. 

stopping by their village, a stranger could always eXpect to be given 

both food and shelter. 8 This overt friendliness would surprise most of 

their first European visitors, and, all to o.t'ten, the gratitude prompted 

61.each Northern Colonial Frontier • • • , p. 9. Also see: 
Hcmer c. Ho~kef.t, Political!!?;! Social Growth of the American People, 
1492 - 1862 (New York: The Macmillan Compaey, ]]°4'jT, p. 44. 

7 cf. Wilcomb E. Washburn, "The Moral and legal Justifications for 
Dispossessing the Indians, 11 Seventeenth CentYji! America: Essays on 
Colonial Histo!"Y, ed. James M. Smith (Chapel ll, N.C.: University of 
North carolina .Press, 19.59), P• 19. 

SI.each, Flintlock ~ Tomahawk • • • , p. J. 



by the host's uninhibited generosity was extremely short-lived. It is 

cruelly paradoxical that the naive beneficence of the New England Indian 

would carry with it the promise of his eventual subjugation. 

6. 

When the European came to New England, there was a multiplicity of 

tribes in the region. Related culturally, there Vias, however, no sense of 

cohesiveness among them. Unwilling to confederate in the fashion of the 

Five Nations, they were dangerous'.cy weakened in the face of their stronger 

enemies. Had they but shown a willingness to for sake their petty quarrels 

and relinguish a share of their closely guarded tribal sovereignty, Nevr 

England's early history would read quite differently today. 

Among the most northern of the New England tribes were the Mi.emacs, 

living in an area encompassing an area of New Brunswick and northern 

~ine. Belavr them, living east of the White Mountains in the area 

drained by the great rivers of Maine were the Pequawkets, Penobscots, 

Androscoggi.ns and other major bands of the sullen Abenald.s . Belligerent, 

and at times expansive, they held their southern brothers in contempt 

and represented at least a potential threat to their well being. Before 

the end of the Seventeenth Century, the Abenald.s fell under the leadership 

and influence of French Jesuits, and continued to bar the door in the 

north. 

To the west of the tribes of southern New England, in an area south 

and east of Lake Ontario, lived the most dangerous enemy, the Iroquois. 

Possessed of a fraternal solidarity never achieved by the New England 

tribes, they remained a constant source of peril. Joined by language and 

culture the confederation of the Five Nations consisted of the Senecas, 

Oneidas, Onondagas, cayugas and the Mohawks. It was the last of these, 



liVing just beyond the Hudson, that posed the most serious threat. The 

Mohawks were powerful, and were not adverse to displaying that power. 

During this period on the eve of European settlement, no better set 

of circumstances displays the essential weakness of the tribes of southern 

New England than those bearing on the invasion of the Pequots. For reasons 

that are not fully understood, a major element of the Mohican people began 

a migration late in the Sixteenth Century. From their home in the upper 

reaches of the Hudson below Iake George, they began a slow and determined 

trek down into the Connecticut Valley. 9 Moving south and east, they 

eventually carved out their new domain between the Connecticut and 

Pawcatuck Rivers. By force of arms they soon created an hegemony over 

the local tribes, and took upon themselves a new name - Pequot - an 

accurately descriptive Algonquian word meaning "destroyers of men.1110 

Thus, in the first decade of the new century, the tribes of southern 

New England found themselves not only pressured by foes on the periphery, 

but more and more preoccupied with the internecine havoc caused by this 

strong and vigorous ene.rey in their midst• Soon there would be others to 

contend with. 

When the English first came to their New England plantations, there 

were five major tribes in addition to the Pequots. In the region 

surrounding the future sites of Boston and Quincy were the people of the 

Massachusetts tribe. In the area between the Massachusetts and cape Cod 

9Alden T. Vaughan, 11 Pequots and Puritans: The Causes of the War of 
1637," William ~ !!El Quarter;t,y, XXI, No. 2 (April, 1964), p. 257. 

l°'1u1e most historians accept the translation as given above, one 
prominent scholar delivers it simply as a~ Algonquian word meaning "gray 
fox. 11 See: Cyclone covgy, The Gentle Radical: ~~r Williams (New York: 
The Macmillan Compaey, 1966J,p. 1$9. 



were the Wampanoags, i nhabiting a region frcm the Taunton River eastward 

to the Atlantic. Neighboring the Wampanoags to the south were the 

Narragansetts whose tribal territory stretched from the western shore of 

the bay named for them, to the Pequot country of the Pawcatuck River. 

North and west of the future site of Boston, in the area beyond the 

Merrimack dwelled the Penna cooks. The last of the major tribes , the 

Nipmuck:s, were centrally located in the region around the future site o:r 

Worcester, Mass. Weakest of the larger tribes, their territories were 

often encroached upon by the five Indian powers mentioned. 11 

8. 

The remainder of the Indian popul.ation at this time consisted of a 

scattering of subservient, or semi-sovereign tribes. For example, there 

were the Neponsets of the Blue Hills region who were part of the Massachu­

setts tribal complex, but retaining, nonetheless, somewhat of a distinct 

identity of their own. In the areas of Wampanoag authority there were 

similar bands with a comparable relation to the parent tribe. Among 

these were the Cohannets of the Taunton River and the Pockanocketts on the 

coast at the site which would in time become Plymouth. South and east of 

the Wampanoags were small tribes such as the Mashpees and Nausets, usual.cy­

referred to collectively as the Cape Cod Indians. The tribal picture in 

the east is completed with the Wamesits, a minor band living near the 

confluence of the Merrimack and Concord Rivers, and the Ni.antics of Block 

Island Sound. 

The Ni.antics, by themselves, best illustrate the fate of the smaller 

and weaker tribes during the power struggle that developed as a result of 

the Pequot invasion. Having had the misfortune to be located in the area 

contested by both the Pequots and Narragansetts, their lands at first 

llAlden T. Vaughan, Neff !!!gland Frontier: Puri tans and Indians, 
1620-1675 (Boston: Little~romaiil Company, 1965), p. 5'o." 



9. 

assumed the form of a buffer zone. Soon, however, caught in the vise of 

aggression, their tribal identity began to erode. By the time the English 

began to settle the coast, the tribe had been split in two. One half, 

now known as the Eastern Niantics, remained in the soutmrestern corn.er of 

Narragansett country and became subservient to that tribe, while the 

Western Niantics were absorbed into the Pequot hegemo1zy. 

In the west, beyond the Nipnucks, lived a series of relatively small 

tribes holding down the fragile perimeter of Algonquian influence. Though 

exposed to the might of the Five Nations, and living in constant fear of 

the dreaded Mohawks, several Connecticut River communities held to their 

lands, bordered on the south by the Pequots and in the north by the 

Permacooks. In the region where the fringes of the Penna cook territory 

met the Connecticut were the Squakheags, located near the future site of 

Northfield, Mass. Moving southward dawn the Connecticut Valley, there 

were the Nonotucks, and a loose conglomerate of bands known as the 

Pocumtucks whose main village was located on the future site of Deer.field, 

Mass . Farther down the Valley, and directly below the Pocumtucks, chrelled 

the so-called "River Indians.'' Small in nlllllber, and usually referred to 

collective'.cy, they included the Podunks, Wongunks and Siciagogs. The one 

remaining force in the Valley north of Pequot control was the Agawam tribe 

living in the area where the present Massachsetts-Connecticut border 

intersects the Connecticut River. 

And so it can be seen that just prior to the period of European 

colonization, the native peoples of southern New England found themselves 

not only fragmented, but confronted from within and without by hostile 

forces. If, in the face of this danger, their particularism did not 

include the fatal wealmesa, it would soon be aggravated by the threat ot 

a militant and expansive alien civilization. 



CHA.PIER II 

NEVi ENGIAND A.ND THE VOYA.GES OF EXPLORATION 

Without considering obligations to provide substantial evidence, it 

is at least interesting to speculate that the Norsemen might have sighted 

the Nerr England coast sometime in the Eleventh Century . And perhaps in 

later years, long before the voyages of Columbus, their course might have 

been followed by Bristol fishermen. It is with the same reasonable wager 

against credibility that one considers the case of the Portuguese explorer 

Joao Corte Real, who was reported to have sailed to a "New Land of Codfish" 

in lh73.
1 

It is easy to dismiss bis claims, but then the skeptic must also 

consider the careers of his two more famous sons . Both made voyages to 

North American waters in the follOl'fing century, thereby giving r:tse to the 

tenuous suggestion that they sailed in a wake first cut by their father. 

Gaspar Corte Real sailed to Greenland in 1500, and rediscovered that 

island. On bis second voyage in the following year, he reached Newfound­

land, dispatched two companion vessels home, and then set sail southward 

into oblivion. In 1502, his brother Miguel went in search of him, and 

here the family becomes the center of another dispute. Most would have it 

that this second son perished with his crew off Newfoundland. 2 But some 

would say that he suffered the fate of the castaway in New England waters, 

and may have lived for nine years among the Narragansetts. 3 

1:soies Penrose, Travel and Discovery in the Renaissance, 1420-1620 
(New York : Atbeneum, 1962), P· 178. Cf: Frank Knight, The Sea Story: A 
Guide to Nautical Reading (London: Macmllan & Co., Ltd., 1958°), p. a4-:-- -

2 Penrose, p. 180. 

3Henry F. Howe, Earq Explorers 2£. Plymouth Harbor, 1,525-1619 
(Plymouth, Mass.: The Pilgrim Society & Plimotb Plantation, Inc., 1953) , 
p. 4. 

10. 



The European exploration of New England becomes more clearly defined 

following John Cabot's second voyage of 1498. Undoubtedly he did sail 

along the New England coast, tracing a course which might have taken him 

as far south as the Delaware Capes. 

With Verrazano 1s French expedition of 1524 the exploration of the 

New England coast began to accelerate. Verrazano might have spent up to 

two weeks in Narragansett Bay replenishing stores, while in the next year 

Estevan Gomez, a Spaniard who bad sailed with Magellan, spent about two 

months in New England waters. Docwnentation of the Gomez voyage is seen 

in the Diego Rivero map of 1529 which designates a land mass entitled 

"Tierra de Estevan Gomez. 11 Looking quite like Boston Harbor, the map also 

denotes a prominent inlet indicated as "Bay of St. Cbristoval. 114 

With coastal traffic increasing at mid-century, there came to the 

Maine coast fishermen, and the desultory beginnings o.f the fur trade. 

Soon tall tales of the wilderness were circul.ating through the cities and 

seaports of western Europe. One such tells of the Englishman David 

Ingram, a castaway tram .HaWkins' third voyage to the Carribean. Put ashore 

in Florida, in the year 1567, Ingram supposedly made his way overland to 

Nova Scotia.5 A fantastic accomplishment, to say the least, but in 

substance no more impossible than the earlier documented wanderings of 

Cabeza de Vaca in the southwest. 

For the remainder of the Sixteenth Century there was a heightening 

of e.xploratory activity, and now thoughts of eventual colonization began 

4Howe, pp. 4-5 • 

5Penrose, p. 288. 

ll. 



to evolve, In 1,580, Sir Humphrey Gilbert dispatched a voyage of 

reconaissance preparatory to his own subsequent sailing. Commanded by 

Simon Fernandes, a Portuguese, this expedition surveyed the coasts of 

Nova Scotia and Maine.
6 

In that same year, an English sailor named John 

Walker pushed farther down the coast to Penobscot Bay, where he explored 

the so-called 11River of Norumbega. 11 7 

The first attempt at colonization in these latitudes was endeavored 

by the ill-starred Sir Humphrey Gilbert• !anding at Newfoundland, his 

party arrived to find a considerable assortment of fishermen - Spaniards, 

Portuguese, Frenchmen and Englishmen - all busy drying their catch. 8 

12. 

Gilbert I s colonization effort lasted but two weeks, and the unfortun­

ate adventurer was drowned off the Azores soon thereafter. His great 

misfortune, however, was not without gain. In spite of the tragic failure 

here, and the disaster at Roanoke, Englishmen in the 1580 1 s were beginning 

to see the New World in terms of its econanic potential. Prodded by 

propagandists such as Richard Hakluyt, they were coming to believe in the 

new mercantile concepts which alleged that the creation of colonies was 

imperative to the cause of national strength. But already England was 

late to the game, and looking to the new hemisphere she saw that her 

Iatin antagonists were solidly entrenched in its southern sectors. The 

decision then, was all but made for her. It would be in the relative~ 

unknown lands of the northern coastal areas that fortune awaited the 

latecomers to the race for empire• In the last decade of the century the 

6
Ibid. 

7Penrose, p. 296. 

8 
~-, p. 289. 



sentiment was growing that Engl.and must make up for lost time. This she 

would do with characteristic stubborness, with courage and sacrifice, 

and a goodly share of unscrupulous self-assertion. 9 

9w. Nelson Francis, 11 Hakluyt's V fa¥uJ; An Epic of Discovery, n 
William ~~Quarter![, XII, No. (J , 1955), p. Lh7. 

13. 



CHAPl'ER III 

EUROWAM> A.ND I.NDJAI-5 - THE FIRST SUBSTANTIAL CONTACTS 

In 1593, an English captain named Richard Strong made a: lit·tle 

1 known voyage from Nova Scotia southward along the coast. This was, 

perhaps, the last of those cautious surveys characterizing the Sixteenth 

Century explorations of New England. With the new century would cane new 

men; men who were less awe-struck by the wilderness, and thus more likely 

to make their demands upon it. They would come now in ever increasing 

nwnbers - men, who having challenged the sea, would not be intimidated 

by either the land or its people. 

In 1602, a group of English merchants took risk in h:lnd,and cou:un.ission­

ed Captain Bartholomew Gosnold to sail to the western parts for the stated 

purpose of establishing trade, It was hoped that the expedition might 

gather up a quantity of sassafras, an herb thought to be "of sovereigne 

2 
vertue for the French poxe. 11 It is one of the strange ironies of New 

England •s history that this party of Englishmen, who would establish the 

first meaningful habitation north of Roanoke, came seeking a cure for 

disease. 

In a bark named Concord, Gosnold sailed for the Massachusetts shore, 

and in passing that famed prominence, he named it for a fish that later 

generations would honor as the "sacred Cod. 113 Sailing under the Cape 

1Penrose, p. 296. 
2 
quoted in Howe, P • 7 • 

3Bradford credits Gosnold with naming the Gape. See: William 
Bradford, Of pzymouth Plantation, ed. Harvey Wish (New York: Capricorn, 
1962), p. 59. 



15. 

they landed on Cuttyhunk Island in Buzzards Bay, and here they built 

their trading station. Some kind of trouble withe the native population, 

and perhaps a g:rovring sense of discretion in the presence of those alien 

surroundings, persuaded Gosnold to return to England after a stay of onl¥ 

five weeks. But his expedition, far from successful as it was, represents 

a beginning. 

Somewhat encouraged by Gosnold's safe return, a group of Bristol 

merchants organized a second voyage under Captain Martin Pring. Again the 

motive was trade and sassafras, and Pring•s two stout ships, Speedwell and 

Discoverer, set sail with a crew of forty-four men and boys divided between 

the two vessels. Landing at a place known to the Indians as Patwcet (or 

Acco.mack), Pring built a small palisade fort. But like Gosnold, Pring's 

success in matters economic left something to be desired. They returned 

shortly to England, their only lasting accomplishment being that once again 

Englishmen had succeeded in rousing the ire of Indians who had received 

them in .friendship. Pring's men were particularzy thoughtless, for not 

content with allowing the expedition's pair of mastiff dogs to unsettle 

the natives' composure, they also made off with one of the Indian canoes, 
4 

much to the chagrin of its infuriated Offller. 

In 1605, another party was sent to New England, this time by 

Shakespeare, s patron, the Earl of Southampton. Commanded by Sir George 

Weymouth, they sailed to Nantucket by way of the Maine coast. A new and 

serious development in English-Indian relations came about as a result of 

the seizure of five Indians, all of whom were brought back to England. 

Once in England, the natives were given to Sir Ferdinando Gorges, one of 

½iowe, P• 7 • 



J.6. 

the more ambitious of the west-country Gentlemen Adventurers, and soon to 

be one of the original promoters of the Plymouth Compacy. Gorges evident­

ly used the Indians for the purpose of publicizing support for colonial 

ventures in New England.5 

In the same year a French expedition under Samuel de Champlain made 

coastal explorations of New England, and, like his English predecessors, 

the first contacts with the Indians proved to be friendly. Sailing 

southward, Champlain examined both Gloucester and Boston Harbors. In the 

latter place, called Shawmut by the Indians, he was presented with gifts 

of squashes by the local inhabitants• Moving along the coast he had 

further meetings, and in one of these Indians in fifteen large canoes 

paddled out to the French ship as it stood off the coast in the Marshfield­

Green Harbor area. Champlain continued on to the Plymouth region where he 

was again received with kindness. Laying over in Plymouth Harbor he made 

a series of careful soundings, and dreT, a map which indicates that at this 

time the Indian population of the Plymouth-Y..ingston-Duxbury area was quite 

sizable. IA:laving Pzymouth, the Frenchmen sailed around Cape Cod to land 

in the country of the Nausets. Here, following a pattern set by earlier 

European explorers, a fight broke out• Apparently one of the Indians, 

not appreciating the Gallic attachment to things culinary, took a liking 

to one of the crew's kettles. In the brawl that ensued, one of the French 

sailors was killed. 

Champlain sailed away to return in the following year, but in landing 

at Chatham in 1606, the French discovered that the temperament of the 

Indians bad changed. In a da1'fn raid four hundred warriors attacked the 

-'wallace Notestein, The ~2,lish rsEple ~~Eve of Colonization 
( New York: Harper and Rovr ;-I9 , P • • 



17. 

the camp costing the French four fatalities. The bloodshed of this day 

erupted again four days later. This time Champlain's crew murdered six 

Indians, after having discovered that the bodies of their .fallen shipmates 

had been disinterred. Having decided that the coastal Indians could 

frustrate, if not turn back, future European penetrations of their 

territory, Champlain departed New England not to return. His experiences 

had convinced him that Canada would be the better place to satisfy French 

colonial ambitions. 

In the same year that Champlain was repulsed, Martin Pring returned, 

this time to further explore the coast of Maine in preparation of the 

Plymouth Company's first attempt at colonization. Brought to fruition 

with the help of Gorges, and the active support of Lord Chief Justice 

Sir John Popham, a settlement was established near the mouth of the 

Kennebec River in 1607. Here at Sagadahoc George Popham, nephew (or 

perhaps the brother) of Sir John, and Raleigh Gilbert, son of Sir 

Humphrey Gilbert, built an impressive little fort, planted crops, and 

constructed a pinnace for the Indian trade. But misfortune plagued the 

settlers fran the beginning. In an unusually severe winter, the fort 

caught fire and nearly burned down. The leadership of the settlement, 

unsteady at best, was .further undermined with the death of Popham. And 

the Indians, throughout it all, proved to be suspicious and reluctant to 

trade. In the accounts of the failure of the Sagadahoc experinent, it 

has never been definitely determined whether Indian hostility seriously 

contributed to the demise of the settlement . But i n 1611, a French 

Jesuit exploPer was t old by the Indians t hat t he colony had suffered an 

Indian attack because of a series of injustices perpetrated by the English.6 

6Henry F. Howe, Prolo~e !£~England (New York: Farrar and 
Rinehart, Inc., 1943), P· ~-



18. 

The failure of Sagadahoc temporarily curbed English enthusiasm for 

commercial settlement, and it wasn't until 1609 that coastal traders 

returned to New England in aey great numbers. Sir Francis Popham, son of 

the Lord Chief Justice, sent out a.rmual expeditions 'lllltil 1614, yet still 

the memory of Sagadahoc tempered further plans for settlement. 

In 1609, New England had a new visitor, this time .from the south. 

After his explorations of the river which bears his name, Henry Hudson 

landed on Cape Cod, spending a few days there without incident. In the 

following year, Samuel Argall sailed to these waters in search of cod for 

the struggling Jamestown colony. 

In the next several years, English explorations took on a bolder 

attitude, and as the number of their visits became more frequent, 80 

increased the scale of friction between Indian and Europ;3an. A typically 

impudent expedition, one with far-reaching consequences, was comnanded by 

Captain Edward Harlmr. Sent out by the Earl of Southampton in 16ll, 

Harlovr succeeded in stirring up no less than five skirmishes nth the 

Indians on cape Cod. During the process, he captured five and brought 

them back to England on the return voyage. 

Soon it was the Dutch turn to seize the initiative, and in 1614, in 

his ship onrust, Adrien Block set out for the New England coast. Sailing 

up from Long Island Sound, past the island named for him, Block surveyed 

the coast as far as Cape Cod, claiming it all as a part of ~ Nederlant. 

Unknown to the Dutch captain, another explorer was in the vicinity, for 

John Smith had already embarked upon his notable cruise of the area. 

Smith's stay was about three months in duration, and he was met, like 

those who went before him, with friendship which soon turned to acorn. In 

1.anding at Cohasset he wrote: ''We found the people in those parts verie 



19. 

kinde, but in their furie no less valiant." 7 Here, according to Smith, at 

least one Indian was killed in an argument with the crew. Passing on to 
8 

Plymouth, he was also greeted with c~esy, but again the overbearing 

English created a rOII' in which several of the combatants were killed. 

At the conclusion of the donnybrook, Smith's men went on to steal six or 

seven Indian canoes and forced their owners to buy them back with beaver 

pelts. 

If the patience of the Indians was wearing thin at this point, they 

had only to wait for Smith's departure, for no sooner had Smith sailed 

than into the harbor came Captain Thomas Hunt, commanding a companion 

vessel in Smith's expedition. Having made a lucrative catch of fish off 

Maine, s Monhegan Island, Hunt set his course southward, looking for other 

sources of profit. Putting in to Plymouth, he was up to the task of 

capturing twenty Indians, 9 whom he later sold in Malaga "for 20 Pounds 

to a man. 1110 

Again in this busy year of 1614, Sir Ferdinando Gorges sent out a 

party commanded by Captain Nicholas Hobson. Sailing to Martha, s Vineyard, 

Hobson was under instructions to establish a trading station and 

investigate the possibilities of a fur trade• Accompaeying this 

7quoted in Ho.ve, Earl,Y Explorers • • • , P· 23. 

8.Mapping the region as he went, Smith is credited with giving the 
Indian town, Patwcet, its future name, Plymouth. 

9one of these twenty Indians was the celebrated Squanto, who was 
later freed from his bondage by Spanish priests• This astounding'.cy­
durable soul soraehO'K made his way to England where he was taken into 
the household of one John Slaoy, agent of the Newfoundland Compa1zy-. 
Tald.ng leave of Slany, he obtained passage to Newfoundland, from where, 
at last, he returned to the Massachusetts Bay area with Captain Dermer. 

lOquoted in Havre, Early Explorers • • • , p. 24. 



20. 

expedition was an Indian named Epenow, one of the five captured by 

Harlow. Once ashore, Epenow escaped his captors and returned With enough 

of the Vineyard Indians to force Harlow to leave for England, his mission 

a failure. In the skirmish which drove the English to their boats, 

Harlow and several of his crew ·were seriously wounded. 

The last major expedition before the establishment of the Separatist 

coloey at Pzymouth, sailed for New England, by way of Newfoundland, in 

1619. Commanded by Captain Thomas Dermer, this expedition differs in 

maey respects from the preceding ones. 

It is most probable that by this time, Englishmen like Gorges were 

beginning to see that the economic potential of New England could not be 

tapped while the Indians remained hostile. There is little doubt that 

Dermer sailed with specific instructions to reestablish friendly relations. 

Of great help to him on this expedition was the infatigueable Squanto 

(seep. 19n). Joining Dermer's crew in Newfoundland, they sailed south-

ward to the coast of Wampanoag country, disembarked and marched inland 

to Nunnnastaquyt (Middleboro) where initial contacts with the tribe were 

established. Dermer then moved on to Poconoldt, the sachem Massasoit's 

village at the mouth of the Taunton River. Here, through the good 

offices of Squanto, the long-lasting peace between the English and the 

Wampanoags was initiated, thus opening the door for permanent settlement. 

In spite of Dermer' s success with the Wampanoags, not all of the 

Indians of southern NeW England were quite so "illing for a rapprochement 

with the Europeans. Even while the Mayflower was pushing tCMard her 

ultimate destination, Demer himself was .fatally wounded by Epenow' s 
11 

followers on the Vineyard. 

11see Bradford, P· 7$. 



But the English would assmne a new posture of competency. They 

would at last prevail, for at the time Dermer was making his entreaties 

to Massasoit, a new and alanning prediCSJnent had befallen the Indians. 

The English, as they would soon discover, had found the ally wh.i.ch the 

Indians of New England would find irresistible . This ally was 

pestilence. 

21. 



CHA.Pl'ER IV 

PERMANENT ENJLISH SETTLEMENT 

When Henry VII, a sovereign ever watchful of the royal purse, 

commissioned John Cabot to sail to the New World, he gave to him a patent 

saying that he might, "subdue, occupy and possesse au such tOPTnes, cities, 

castles and isles of them found .• • getting unto us the rule, title and 

iurisdiction of the same villages, towns, castles and firme land so found. 11
1 

And now, at last, the English had the opportunity to do just that, for in 

the year 1617, a plague swept through the Indian people of Nevr England. 

Few villages were spared, and thus was the land made ready for the tald.ng. 

Those coastal regions which offered the best agricultural prospects were 

au but cleared of native inhabitants. Planting fields, which the Indians 

.habitually burned out of the forest, simply waited for an English spade. 

Here on the continent's ravaged doorstep only an ailing handful of natives 

could dispute the English landing. But the foreigners came, and they made 

their settlements on the former sites of Indian villages. They planted 

their corn in the Indian fashion, and they survived. In time they would 

prosper, and in doing so they would not have to pay the price of later 

frontiers, that of overcoming both the native and the environment. For 

those Indians retaining aey spirit, they soon had it drubbed out of them.2 

Horr the epidemic began is not sufficiently clear, yet it is most 

probable that it was brought by the infected cre,vmen of one of the earlier 

1
11 U3tters Patent to Jolm ca bot, March 5, 1496, 11 in Henry s. Commager 

(ed.), Documents of American Histozz (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 
Inc., 1958), p. 5-

2cf. Samuel E, Morison, Builders.£!:~ Bay Colon,z (Boston: Houghton 
Mifflin Compacy, 1964), P• 13 • 

22. 



coastal V~Jages. Indians of the -ssachusetts tribe, for example, 

believed the sickness was caused by a curse turned upon them by the 

23. 

dying members of a French expedition wrecked on Boston Harbor's Paddock's 

Island. 3 A more prosaic explanation might be measles, or chicken pox, 

or several of the other varieties of childhood diseases to which the 

English had built up a general immunity. Whatever the true nature of the 

malady, the epidemic spread quickly through most of the tribes. 

As the English settlers moved into eastern ~ssachusetts, they saw 

before them a region almost totall,y devoid of human habitation. When 

Bradford, Carter and the Elder Brewster brought their people safely 

ashore, they knew that they had come to a once populous area. Bradford, 

in fact, had a letter written by Dermer in which that ill-fated trader­

ex:plorer spoke of the Pockanocketts as a tribe that not only despised, 

and were determined to resist, the English, but were 11 of more streingth 

then all the savags from thence to Penobscote. 114 When the winter passed 

and Samoset, a sagamore from the Maine coast, wandered into the settlement 

he told the English, having learned a .fair command of their tongue from 

fishermen, that the plague had destroyed the Pockanocketts.' HOii' different 

the story of Plymouth Plantation would be had these people - the same who 

would have killed Dermer had Squanto not intervened - been there to resist. 

They most certainly would have contested the Pilgrims' landing. 

As spring turned to summer in 1621, the P:Ismouth colonists ventured 

inland to pay 8 courtesy call on Massasoit. Cruelly treated by the 

3Howe, Early Explorers• • • , P· 26. 

4quoted in Bradford, P· 74. 
5see D. Kenelm Winslow, May.flower Herita~: ! Fallliq Record of the 

Growth of Anglo-American Partners.hip (London: George G. Harrap ana -
Compaey-;-Ltd., l9.S7), P· 52. 



epidemic, the Wampanoags, in their weakened state, had formed an alliance 

with the English, in part that they might have a strong ally with which to 

face their ambitious enenzy-, the Narragansetts. Massasoit's example was 

soon followed by nine other tribal leaders of like motive. 

Using the courtesy visit as an opportunity for reconnaissance, Edward 

v'finslcnr took a small party, with Squanto as guide, and trekked overland 

to the Taunton River. On the way, the English were able to see the extent 

of the disaster wrecked upon the native people. The sites of former 

Indian villages were scenes more terrible than their own dormant impressions 

of plague-struck cities of the medieval past. They saw the unburied 

remains of hundreds of people who died, suffering their last torments, 

unaware of concepts of the fallen essence of man. But the English paused 

amid the horror and speculated on sin,and the dogged persistence of sin. 

They would later report that "skills and bones were found in many places 

l;ying still above ground, where their houses and dwellings had been; a 
6 

very sad spectakle to behould. 11 Sad indeed, but they unctiously agreed 

that this was an act of Divine Providence; an act of the Lord preparing 

the way for His favored people• 
7 

And so the English came to the abandoned coast, bringing with them 

confidence in their institutions, a hope for prosperity and a surety that 

they were doing the Lord's work. And as they approached their own problems , 

which were legion in number, one is left wondering as to the intensity of 

of their subliminal guilt. 

Within the next several years, colonization activity began to increase 

~rad.ford, p. 78. 

'lwinslow, p. 52. 



25. 

along the Massachusetts coast. Thomas Weston laid the foundation of a 

canmercial settlement at Wessagusset, but by 1623 it was sliding into 

failure. In 1623, Roger Conant, and a band of Puritans from the southern 

shires of England, came to Cape Ann. They quickly moved to the location 

of an Indian village called Naumkeag, and planted the settlement of 5alem. 

Perhaps they too paused to reflect upon the handiwork of the pestilence 

that had prepared their way. 

Some Englishmen, however, turned their back on the place, not so much 

moved by commiseration, but for the prospects of better planting 

elsewhere. In 1625, when Captain Wollaston attempted settlement in that 

area of Quincy Bay which still bears his name, he found himself in a place 

that had supported one of the largest of the New England tribes. But the 

Massachusetts had been engulfed by the sickness, and the sachem 

Chickatabot had moved northward with the shattered remnants of his tribe, 

leaving his empty wigwam standing in testament to his tragedy. 
8 

lfollaston 

left for Virginia in the following year, having been sorely used by the 

New England winter; but again one wonders if perhaps he took one last 

look, scanning the panorama of listless Black's Creek and the hill called 

Passonagessit upon which the sachem's mother was buried, and decided that 

this place bad been touched by the Fates• Had Wollaston remained, he 

would have seen the survivors of this tribe which had once numbered over 

three thousand, decline to the point where by 1630 it rnunbered no more 

than five hundred? This factor alone goes far in explaining why the 

------------------------
8.oamel M. Wilson, Three Hundred Years 2!.. Q~ncy: 1625-1925 

( the City Government of Quincy, Mass • , -'fflo), P • • 

9vaugban, ,!!! England Frontier • • • , P • 54 



Massachusetts, and most of the other eastern tri bes, received t he 

Europeans with such passivity, if not cordiality, during t he f ormative 

period of settlement. This is further highlighted by t he f'act that the 

Nar ragansetts, numbering some four thousand With their Eastern Niantic 

allies, and the only major tribe to escape the full force ot the 

epidemic, remained aggressive for macy decades thereafter.10 

The plague of 1617-1618 overwhelmed most of the tribes from the 

~stic River to Narragansett Bay, and from Cape Cod to the lands ot the 

Nipmucks; and be.fore it had run its full course it had infected Indians 

as far north as saco Bay in Maine, and as far west as the Connecticut. 

At the same time that the Jamestown settlement was struggling to recover 

from the punishment it had absorbed in that first great Indian upri sing, 

there were already some fourteen hundred Englishmen living on the coastal 

fringes of New England between Cape Ann and Cape Cod. 11 While the New 

England colonists were growing more powerful and more organized, the 

native population was growing weaker, and in their debilitated state 

were losing even the semblance of racial cohesiveness. Diseased and 

disunited, the English took their "corne fields and salvage gardens·" 

Defenseless, most gave way and moved from their tribal lands. 

considering the thousands who fell victim to the plague, many of 

them who had !mown and resisted the Europeans in the days of the coastal 

e:x:plorations, it takes no great feat of the imagination to reflect upon 

what might have been. Without the aid of their invisible ally - Without 

this plague that they saw in terms of Moses and Pharaoh - the English 

would have been hardpressed in the seizure of their colonial foothold. 

lOib'd -2:,_•, P· 55 

lief. Herman R. Friis, 11A Series of Populat ion Maps of the Colonies 
and the United states, 1625-1790," Geographical ReView, XXX, No. 3 
(July, 1940), P• 463. 

26. 



CHAPI'ER V 

THE PURITAN VlEl/f OF HEN{ EOOIAND 

The English Puritans who sailed to New England during the years of 

the Great Migration were sustained not only by their dogmatism, but also 

by a world-view which rested upon order. They were moved by innnutable 

principles whose postulates supported method over turmoil, regulation over 

derangement, and the systematizing of all temporal things. They found 

comfort in a~ vivendi that bears little resemblance to the popular, 

romantic notions of pioneering. Rather than approaching their challenge 

in a flurry of random activity, they seized upon opportunity in well­

measured strides; and there, in the Bay region that had known the 

uninhibited ways of the Indian, they would shape a frontier in which 

progress was expressed, almost solely, in terms of deliberate gradation. 

It is to be remembered that the Puritans, in spite of some of their 

misconceptions as to the true nature of the frontier, came to Nerr England 

eminently concious of the porrer of the wilderness. They k.new it could 

hobble the timid, transform the just and, given the chance, debase those 

Englishmen it defeated. They knew, for ex.ample, of the failure of Weston's 

Wessagusset settlement, of English men and women starving and cowed by the 

Indians. They could reason that Weston had failed because his people, 

stripped of their vigor by the wilderness, were unable, or much worse 

unwilling, to make their European institutions work for them. Weston' 8 

people had failed, and once they were too weak to steal food from the 

Indians, they began to die. Had they been witness to these sorry events, 

the Puritans would have reacted just as the horrified Bradford did, and 

27. 



28. 

they too would have seen that the Weston colony's fatal error "must needs 

be their great disorder. 111 But they were determined not to make the same 

mistakes, and they would come to grips with the promise of their new home 

pushed by a sense of community building which grew natural..zy out of their 

European background. 

The Puritans began from the premise that the land, its resources, and 

the native inhabitants as well, were there to be exploited; for the Lord 

had led them, as the Children of Israel, to a Nev, Canaan where he Wished 

them to prosper among all the things he had provided. 2 As for the Indian 

himself, though he might conceivabzy be set to constructive purposes, he 

was always to be regarded with the utmost apprehension. He was the 

personification of the indiscriminate discontinuity of the Wilderness , 
and as such stood as a clear admonition as to the eternal punishment to 

which they might descend. Living not like civilized men, he reaffirmed 

the image they held of themselves, and showed them what they must never 

be.3 And in time the Puritans transformed the wilderness, but as surely 

as time passed, so was their Covenant transformed. The days were not 

long in coming before the religious purpose of their settlement was 

overshadowed by secular pursuits; but then, in the final analysis, they 

"were concerned less with the ends of society than With its organization, 

and less with making the community good than making it effective."4 And 

1Bradf ord, p. 86 • 
2Thomas J. wertenbaker, The Puri tan Oli~arcey: The Founding of 

American Civilization (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, l947), p. 183 . 

3cf. Roy H. Pearce, The Savara 2!,_ America: ,! ~tut!{ .£f ~ Indian 
and the Idea of Ci vilizatiori (Ba~ ore: The Johns op ns Press, 1965), 
~3-5.--

4nan1e1 J. Boorstin, ~ Americans: ~ Colonial Experience (New Yor k : 
Vintage, 1958), P• 29. 



in building the 11Citty upon a Hill" that strong sense of the ordered 

communit~ that had been part and parcel of their cultural heritage,would 

dominate the wilderness, and finally, the Indian himself. 

29. 

Before the Arbella dropped anchor at Salem in June of 1630, its 

passengers must have thought of a life among unknown numbers of potential 

enemies. Even John Winthrop reflects the concern, and certainly during 

the voyage he must have pondered on how honest Englishmen might conduct 

themselves in a land fraught with danger. Confident of the new Covenant , 
he approached the question, albeit somewhat tangentally, in an exhortation 

delivered before landfall was sighted. In this sermon called "A Modell of 

Christian Charity," he reasoned that while the teachings of natural law 

were unclear, 11a11 enemies are to be considered .friends in the estate of 

innocency," for both moral law and Scriptures were definite: "the Gospell 

commands love to an enenzy-. 115 But the proclivities of the Puritan spirit 

tended elsewhere, and the case for charity broke apart in that strange 

dialectic fed by the ambition of Christian imperialism and the limitations 

of Puritan logic. 

To most Puritans the Indian was the spawn of the Devil, proof of this 

being amp'.cy- demonstrated by the savage state of the environment. To those 

who did not assent outright to the Indian's league With Satan, they looked 

upon him, at the very least, as a corrupted being whose offerings of 

friendship was but guile ma.sld.ng the designs of evil. Even those who are 

considered among the first benefactors of the Indian were highly suspect. 

'Daniel J. Boorstin (ed.), An American Primer (Chicago: The University 
of Chicago Press, 1966), PP· 11-!2. 



30. 

Daniel Gooking likened them to "the wild ass's colt, and not maey degrees 

above beasts. 116 John Eliot was not hesitant in calling them the dregs of 

humanity, and even Roger Williams, so often praised for his tolerance, 

described them as the "barborous scum and of.f'scourings of mankinde.n7 

Charles )(. Andrews once wrote: "The Seventeenth Century shows us an 

English world in A.merica, 118 and as surely as the Puritans were English., 

the manner in which they coped with the frontier reflects the bourgeois 

mainstream of the England they had left behind. In trying to fathom the 

the ways of the Indian, their first and lasting mistake was to begin from 

a European frame of reference. This being so, they would never truly 

understand him, nor would their progeny until they too became a naturai 

part of the wilderness. 

In the beginnihg, the Puri tans speculated on the origins of the 

forest dweller. A popular theory, adhered to on both sides of the A tlan­

tic was that he descended from the scattered tribes of Israel, for to 

some the Algonquian tongue sounded like Hebrew. Roger Williams sagely 

put this theory aside when he noted that their "Barborous, Rockie speech" 

was nearer Greek than Hebrew. 
9 

While Williams mulled over the problem, 

others let their imaginations run the full circle. Perhaps, they thought, 

the Indians were Tartar s, or Moors, Carthaginians, Welshmen, or even 

Plato, s Atlanteans. While opinions differed regarding the immediate pl.ace 

6.reach, Flintlock ~ Tomahawk • • • , P • 6 • 

7Ibid. 

8Charles M Andrews, The Set tlements, Vol. I of The Colonial Period 
~ American His-to?:7 (New Haven: Yale Un:i.versity Press-;-"!934), .xiii. 

9covey , p . 47-



of origin, the Indians had to be assigned to a niche within the Judeo­

Christian reference catalogue; so more conventional viEnrs began to 

31. 

prevail. After the first few years of debate, the ovenrhelmingly prevalent 

opinion asserted that the Americas had been inhabited after the Flood by 

the offspring of Noah. This being a reasonable l:zypothesis, Gookin reveals 

the disposition of his fellow colonists by sweeping the Indians into the 

macrocosm of Christian experience, saying: "They are Adam 1s posterity and 

10 
therefore children of wrath. 11 Never developing a theory of toleration, 

the Puri tans began to look upon the Indian as a pariah, seeing him as the 

ever-present eneiey' standing in the way of a predetennined providence. 

Even in a superficial examination of Indian relations in the first 

years of the Massachusetts Bay settlement, a number of contradictions 

between cause and effect seem apparent in Puritan policy. It would 

appear, at first glance, that these hardy Englishmen considered themselves 

soundly motivated in their desire to restructure their American enViron­

ment. As they said, planting models of English villages where there had 

been nothing but an unproductive preserve for savages, would be of benefit 

to both parties. Insisting that they were on a just and moral course 

meant, naturally, that the Indian must shed his blindness to reason, and 

allow the English to drag him out of his condition of depravity. Even in 

the days when the initial suspicion had turned to conflict, there were 

some Puritan liberals, optimists all, who tenaciously held to the precept 

that once the spiritual deficiencies of the Indians were remedied, red men 

and white might join their energies to increase the spiritual and material 

efficacy of the Bible commonwealth. But if any enlightened Puritans did 

lOquoted in John JC. Wright, ~ Nature in Geograph[: Fourteen 
~' 1925-1965 (Cambridge, .Mass.: Harvard University Press, l966J, 
p. -m. 



envision the practical advantages of a spiritual and social merger, 11 the 

good intentions of the few never bore fruit, for the roots of their 

commonwealth would not thrive on a diet of compromise. It cannot be said, 

however, that it was solezy the fault of their Calvinist theology that 

prevented the assimilation of the Indian. Of equal, or perhaps more 

importance, was the ontological awareness of being Englishmen, and there­

fore somehow superior. 

The formative generation of the Massachusetts Bay leadership was 

Elizabethan, men whose belief in an ordered society, With f'ull control 

over its componants, was unquestionable. They placed an abundant amount 

of faith in the hierarchical nature of English society, and, while they 

were not enthusiastically outspoken in their recognition of plateaus above 

them in this world, they were quite prepared to demonstrate the fact that 
12 

there were those who stood below them. Not only the leadership, but the 

vast majority of the Massachusetts Bay settlers, of all classes, held fast 

to tenets which expressed the innate inequality of man. 13 And even the 

fle:x:i.bility that Puritan society succumbed to, as the low- born and inden­

tured became freemen in the settlements of the hinterland, expresses only 

the accidental limits of social mobility; for even on the frontier line 

they refused to give up the idea of caste. 

If it can be said that the Puritans' first reactions to the Indian 

11see Oscar Handlin, Race and Nationality J.n American ~ (New York: 
Doubleday Company, Inc. , 195TI, P • 26 · 

120.r. A. L. Rowse, The Eli1.abethans and America (New York: Harper and 
Bros., 1959), p. 127-

lJGeorge L. Haskins, raw and Authori~ in Earl,y Massachusetts: A 
~u~ in Tradition~ Des!@ {New York: T "Macmillan Company, 1960), 
p. . 

32. 



culture around them were the typical reactions of immigrants,14 then it 

must also be said that thei r Indian policy took form upon more than 

33. 

s imp:cy an initial uneasiness over strange surroundings. Once they had 

established relations with the neighboring tribes, their policy began to 

develop with a vigorous self-assurance tha·t; virtually shouted racial 

conceit. From their vecy first dealings with the Indian sachems, Winthrop 

and the Puritan leadership displayed that "unabashed assumption of superi­

ority which was to carry English rule around the world. 1115 These policy 

makers of the Bay were tru:cy "aristocrats by tradition and profession ... 

but the moral quickening of their religion had not completely freed them 

from the narrowness and bigotcy which their times had inherited from the 
16 Middle Ages . " 

14cf . .Marcus 1. Hansen, The Immigrant in American History (Nevr York: 
Harper and Ro,r, 1964), pp. 101-102. 

15Edmund s. Morgan, The Puritan Dilemma: The Story ~ ~ Winthro,E 
(Boston: Ll.ttle, Brown ancfcompaey, ~ 8), P· 00. 

16H C Hockett Political and Social Growth of the American 
People, .:;~-186,2 (New York; The Macmiilin Compaey, l~3J,p. 4o. 



CHA.Pl'ER VI 

THE FOUNDATI0!-5 OF THE INDIAN TRADE 

In the early years of the Seventeenth Century, the port town backers 

of the Plymouth Compaey were confident that profit earning fa.ctories could 

be established on the North American coast. George Popham rs Sagadahoc 

was to be one of these, built with the hope that natives would come 

bringing all the natural wealth of the surrounding area. With the failure 

of this settlement, thoughts of trucking with the Indians turned to the 

less ambitious subject of fish. By 161.h, the Englishmen contented them­

selves to stay on the offshore islands. Building their shelters on 

Damariscove, Matinicus and Monhegan Islands, the would be traders, hopes 

for large scale commercial success came to nothing. One can hardly blame 

the Indians reluctance to have contacts with them, for a certain John 

Josse,4rn, who had visited their camps, described them as a pack of drunken 

and undisciplined clods and remarked that "when Wine in their guts is at 

1'ull. Tide, they quattel, fight and do one another mischief .11
1 Likewise, 

the trading expeditions along the Massachusetts coast during the same 

period, left those Indians skeptical, and in many cases hostile to the 

English trader. 

In succeeding years, when the Plymouth Coloey began to turn in the 

direction of the Indian trade, they found themselves troubled by outcast 

traders of similar stripe. For throughout the early colonial period, 

there were many men who made a profession of victimizing the Indian. 

lquoted in Bernard Bai].yn, ~ ~ Enfland Merchants in ~ 
Seventeenth Centwz ( NeW York: Harper and cw, 1964), P • 14-

34. 



From the day that the treaty was drawn up with the Wampanoags, 

William Bradford was aware that there were economic benefits to such an 

alliance; and the Indian trade was soon looked upon as the coloey•s 
2 

key to solvency. Realizing that the debts incurred in settlement must 

35. 

be paid, and that a return must be gained for all company investors, the 

Plymouth men watched over their trade with care. As this was "their one 

substantial source of income then avail.able, 113 they were adament in their 

desire to keep other colonials, no matter what their nationality, at a 

safe distance. They were emphatic in their plans to maintain strict 

controls; and, in 1623, when the ships Anne and Little~ brought over 

those first settlers to come independent of the joint-stock company, they 

were barred .f'rom dealing with the Indians• According to Bradford, the 

Indian trade represented a profit earning windfall, and although it never 

did live up to his expectations, he took pains to explain that it should 

4 serve "the generall good, and none were to trade in perticuler. u It was 

not long in coming, however, that the Pilgrims found in their midst that 

same type of unprincipled intruder that had been plying the Indian trade 

since the days of captain Hunt. 

First among these was Thomas Weston, whom they had known since the 

Ieyden days. wanted in England for arms smuggling, 5 he had since brought 

ruin upon the aborted Wessagusset settlement where stealing from the 

Indians had been commonplace. 

2r.each, Northern Colonial Frontier• • • , P• 19. 

3aeorge n. Langdon, Jr., "The Franchise and Political Democracy in 
P:cymouth Colony, 11 William and ~ Quarterq, XX, No• 4 (October, 1963), 
p. 515. 

4Bradford, p. 127-

SBailyn, P. 13 • 



36. 

Next among them was the ubiquitous John Oldham. Oldham was a 

tempestuous sort who respected neither the interests of the Indians, nor 

the rights of the Separatists. This blatant opportunist, who Bradford 

described as a 11mad Jack in his mood, 11 was at last driven from PJ.J,mouth 

With "a bob on the bumme, 11 having dabbled in a conspiracy designed to 
6 return the settlement to episcopacy. 

The most notorious of these derelict traders was Thomas Morton. 

In 1627, Morton established a trading station at Merrymount, close to the 

site of the defunct Wollaston settlement. By any standards Morton was an 

amoral rogue, and his dealings with the Indians represent, perhaps, the 

logical culmination of the unjust and unregulated trade typifying the 

period of exploration and first settlements. At Merrymount, heterodox 

practices became the social norm; and after raising up his celebrated 

maypole, Bradford notes, Morton became a "lord of misrule." 
7 

In the course of his trade with the Indians, Morton made it the 

regular custom to purchase paltry with liquor and firearms. It was a 

highly profitable business, but not all of Morton's relations With the 

Indians were along economic grounds. Bradford soberl.J, points out that 

there were maey riotous nights spent at Merrymount, with Morton I s men and 

their Indian women "dancing and frisking togither (like so many fairies 
8 , 

or furies rather) and worse practices ." While it can be said that the 

lusty predilections of Morton's behavior caused the Pilgrims some degree 

of uneasiness, their most serious concern, as with all the other tizzy 

6Ibid. 

7Bradford, p. 141 

8Ibid. 



settlements from Maine to Plymouth, was his trade in alchohol and guns. 

Morton was given fair warning, but finally, in 1628, it took force and 

lzy-les Standish to close down the bacchanalian retreat at .Merrymount. 

Morton was brought to Plymouth and then shipped to England, but like 

37. 

the proverbial penny, he returned once more to Merrymount. By this time 

the fledgling Bay Colony began to take an interest in his affairs. 

Morton rs business had grown to the point where he was turning a six to 

seven hundred percent profit in furs, and the settlement itself had 

become the haven for runaway servants and thrill-seeking young men.9 

Refusing to conform, Morton was arrested by the Bay authorities. Trans­

ported to Boston, he was clapped in the bilboes to await his second 

expulsion. Before he was sent back to England, however, he was made to 

give satisfaction to the Indians he had wronged, many of them journeying 
10 

to Boston to witness Morton's punishment. 

To classify Morton as a marginal degenerate would be a charitable 

use of understatement, but not quite so ld.nd as Archbishop Laud, s 

committee of the Privy Council which welcomed him back to England as 

11an Anglican martyr."ll After writing his own justification called~ 

English Canaan, he returned to the Bay where, a.fter a short spell in 

jail, he wandered up to York in coastal M'¼ine and died in a half-crazed 

state. 

9Morison, p. 17 • 

lOsee Nathaniel B. Shurtleff (ed.), Records 2£_ the Governor and 
Compa:n;r of the .Massachusetts ~B~ in~ En;land (Boston: William fflirte, 
printer to tlie Commonwealth, 3T," I, P·> (hereafter as ~. Records). 

llvorison, p. 17, 



38. 

As the fur suppzy of coastal Massachusetts was soon exhausted, the 

English began to push outward in search of new pelts. By the time the 

Bay Colony was fully established, Pzymouth had built a series of trading 

stations in the outlying areas. They set up work at the head of 

Buzzards Bay, on Narragansett Bay, and had two major houses in Maine 

controlling the fur trade of the .Penobscot and Kennebec Rivers. Of the 

stations in Maine, one was near the future site of Augusta. The other, 

at Castine, was managed by the half-wild Edward Astly, described by 

Bradford as ai "very profane yonge man.1112 Like Morton, he was finally 

sent home for making illicit sales to the Indians. 

In the early 1630 1 s English farmers were also thinking in terms of 

penetrating the interior; and for them, as well as the traders who sought 

to exploit the western fur resources, it became evident that the English 

must obtain some degree of control over the Connecticut River. As early 

as 1627, the Dutch had sent word to Pzymouth that they were ready to trade 

along the river . .Peter Minuit took the initiative and dispatched an 

enunisary in the person of Isaack de Rasieres, the Secretary of Nmv 

Netherland. Little came of these cordial negotiations, but the men of 

Plymouth were quick to inform the Dutch that they expected no trespassing 

on the lands of the English. 

By 1631, the valley Indians, hard pressed by the Pequots and seeking 

allies, also extended invitations to trade on the river. Both Plymouth 

and the Bay settlers politely refused, although the former sent a pinnace 

on a mission of exploration as far upriver as Matianuck (Windsor). In 

1633, the Valley Indians extended another invitation to the English, and 

this time their complaints of Pequot encroachment were given with a new 

12quoted in Bailyn, P· 14. 



39. 

sense of urgency. They also informed the English that the Dutch were 

preparing a fort on the river. Alive to the danger of Dutch control of 

the west country, Bradford and Winslow traveled to Boston, hoping to 

effect an English partnership along the Connecticu·t;. Governor Winthrop 

refused the offer, but in the next two weeks the Bay sent tw:o expeditions 

to the Valley. One consisted of dispatching the thirty ton bark, Blessi~ 

E!_ ~ Bay, on a voyage to the mouth of the river. The second was an 

overland trip undertaken by John OJd ham and two companions. Upon their 

return, Governor Winthrop was pleased to report that the Indians, some of 

whan might have visited Boston prior to Oldham' s departure, had used the 

Englishmen kindl,y, and had invited them to stay over in Indian villages 

au along the way.13 The explorers returned with hemp, which aroused the 

interest of nautical Boston, and quantities of graphite that the Indians 
14 

used for ceremonial body painting. 

Although primarily interested in the fur trade, John Oldhamrs glOWing 

reports of the land and soil of the Connecticut Valley helped prepare the 

way for its eventual settlement. Oldham himself would come back two yea~ 

later to help plant the town of Wethersfield, Conn. 

In that same year of 1633, the men of Plymouth, not to be outdone by 

either the Dutch or their countrymen at Boston, decided to send a trading 

l3JohnWintbrop, Winthrop's Journal: ~story of~ En~land, 1630-1649, 
ed. James K. Hosmer (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 190 ), r, p. l08. 

14Some years later, in 1644, John W~nthr0P, Jr. purchased these 
graphite deposits at Tentiusques (Sturbr7dge, Mass•~, and all the land for 
ten miles around. With 1,000 Pounds capita~, and nth miners and equipment 
brought over from England, he went into business. The price he paid .fo:r 
both land and mine was ten belts of wampum. See: Roy Johnson, "Not a 
Mining State But We Had Mines," Boston~, December 5, 1967, p. 34. 



40. 

expedition to the Connecticut; but unlike the others, the party from 

P~ou.th was going there to stay. Commanded by William Holmes, the little 

group left Plymouth on September 26, carrying With them several minor 

sachems who had been driven from their lands in the Valley by the expansive 

Pequots. Entering the river from Long Island Sound, they traveled upstream 

as far as the present site of Hartford. Here, during the previous June, 

the Dutch had completed their trading fort called House of Good Hope. The 

fort I s garrison challenged the approaching English, but the Plymouth ll8n 

• continued on their way, and sailed past Dutch Point unharmed. Moving 

upriver to a place the Indians called Matianuck, they planted the tCMn of 

liindsor. Here amid hundreds of acres of meadowland surveyed by their 

exploration of two years earlier, they threw up a prefabricated fort. 15 

Mindful of the fact that both the Dutch and the Pequots were irritated at 

their presence, they quickly added a sturdy palisade. 

The Dutch were first to respond. Incensed that the English had failed 

to heed their commands at Good Hope, they 11sent a band of abou.te 70. men, 
16 

in warrlike maner, with collours displayed, to assault them. 11 Seeing 

the English well defended, the Dutch withdrew, evidently deciding that 

discretion should be the order of the day. 

Unlike the earlier days when the Indian trade was the fiefdom of 

blunderers of sundry and assorted varieties, the trade in the Connecticut 

Valley, from the outset, seems to have been conducted to the apparent 

satisfaction of the valley Indians. However, in inviting the Europeans 

to trade, they bad done themselves, and their eastern brothers, irreparable 

l5samuel E. Morison, ~ Story 2!. the "Old Colocy" .9! !!!! P9D1outh, 
!,620-1692 (New York: Alfred A. Knop!', 1956'), P• 136. 

~radford, p. 169. 



41. 

harm. In hoping that English settlements might contain the menace of the 

Pequota, tbey had opened the floodgates of immigrat:lon. The Valley now 

braced itself for the first seizure of land mania in American history., 17 

for although the first Dutch and English settlers talked constantly- of 

trading in furs, it was not by accident that they located themselves on 

the best soil in the Valley.18 

The coming movement to the Connecticut carried with it the ultimate 

destruction of the Algonquian culture of southern New England; for this 

second .frontier line, thrown up behind the coast, placed the Indian lands 

of the interior in extreme jeopardy. With the Mollllwks to the west, and 

the belligerent Pequots in their very midst, the western tribes took that 

fateful option of asking in the Europeans. Naively, they believed that 

the European trader would protect their interests, while serving his own. 

But they didn't comprehend the full implications of the English presence; 

nor that it would stir into action two damaging forces which, in the end , 
brought about irreversible trends in their culture. First, the European 

demamfor furs, land and trade goods increased economic competition among 

the already fragmented tribes. With this development, petty inter-tribal 

warfare tended to increase instead of diminish, leaving them .f'urther 

weakened in the face of their enemies, European and Indian.
19 

Secondly, 

by joining the fabric of Engl.i.sh trade and commerce, they contributed 

to the stability and economic staying power of the grO'IVing numbers of 

17Ala H imert 11J?uritanism, the Wilderness and the Frontier,11 New 
Engl.~ QU:rt:rJ.:l, XXVI, No. 3 (September, 1953), PP• 364-36,5. -

18'A h B H··,bert Soil: Its Influence on the History of the United 
re er • U-1,. ' ..--- ~ - 1?130,-- -95 - - -----.;: 

~tatea (New Haven : Yale um.vershy .Press, .L7 1, P• • 

19cf. Driver, P• 370 -



42. 

20 
English settlements. Thus, W'ithout truly understanding, they were 

serVing the architects of their own downfall. 

20Clarence L. Ver Steeg, ~Formative~, 1607-l76J (New York: 
Hill and Wang, 1965), P· 35. 



CHA.Pl'ER VII 

THE FEQUOT WAR 

Before the end of 1636, hundreds of English settlers had le.rt tor 

the Connecticut Valley. Coming from Boston and its environs, they soon 

eclipsed the efforts ot the Separatists and the Dutch along the river , 
and, laid the foundations of three Puritan villages at Hartford, 1 Windsor, 

and Wethersfield. Though sure of the promise of their settlements, the 

new immigrants were no less anxious at the close proximity of the Pequots. 

In reminiscing years later, one of their number, a certain Samuel Smith 

ot Hadley, recalled the fears of the early settlement at Wethersfield. 

Writing to his son in 1699, he said: "Ye first Meetinge House was solid 

mayde to withstande ye wicked onsaults of ye Red Skins. Its Foundatione 

was laide in ye feare of ye Lord, but its Walls was truly laide in ye 

feare of ye Indians, for mazzy- & grate was ye TeZTors of em. 112 The fears 

of these Puritan settlers were soon justified, for by the follOWing year 

they became involved in the first large scale Indian war on New England's 

½he ~outh settlers in the Valley had little choice but to merge 
w:i.th their more numerous countrymen, but the manner in which the Dutch 
were finally expelled bears some co1111lent • In 1640, if Adriaen van der 
Donck's account is accurate, the Bay settlers went on to seize the Dutch 
farms surrounding the House of Good Hope• This irate gentleman claimed 
that the English went "even still further, and • • • belabored the 
Cornpaey•s people with sticks and heavy clubs; and have forcibly thrown 
into the river their ploughs and other instruments." See; "The Represen­
tation of New Netherland, 1650," in J. Franklin Jameson (ed.), Narratives 
~ New Netherland, 1609-1664 (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1909), 
p. 308. 

2.Ietter from samuel Smith to Rev. ~enry Smith of Wethersfield, Conn., 
January 1, 1699. Quoted in Helen E. SI11J.th, Colonial Days ~ Was: As 
~thered from Fami;!r Papers (New York: Frederick Ungar Canpaey, 66T; 
pp. 49-50-:--

43. 



frontier. It was a war that laid bare animosities which had been 

simmering for the better part of a decade. It was the war that totally 

destroyed the Pequot people; and as they marched off to their campaigns 

one is left with the impression that the English enthusiastically welcomed 

the opportunity "to teach the Indians a lesson they wouJ.d never for get. rr3 

From the very beginning, the men at the Bay were concerned over the 

possibilities of trouble with the Indians. In the Spring of 1631, for 

ex.ample, the General Court ordered that travel to neighboring plantations 

must be done under arms. But then this was only a matter of caution, and 

good English canmon sense. By 1637, however, the situation in Connecticut 

had caused so much alarm the Court directed that, with the exception o.f 

the village proper, a man was to be fined twelw pence i.f he was found 

wandering about without a weapon.
4 

And their alarm is understandable, 

for the Pequots, interlopers themselves, were determined to aintain 

their hard won hegemoey in south-western New England. 

In 1634 the Pequots, under their grand sachem Wopig,rooit, found 

themselves at war with two potent enemies. The Dutch pressed them fran 

the west, and to the east were the NaITagansetts with whom they disputed 

the land between the Pawcatuck River and Webapaug Brook. Realizing that 

the English in the valley must be kept neutral, they concluded the Treaty 

of Newtarn with the Bay Colony. Engineered by the annipresent John OJdham, 

who was quick to see gain in aey trade agreement with the Pequots, the 

treaty was signed in November of 163h. However, the peace that the Pequots 

so desperately needed was not long in enduring. 

3:reach, Northern Colonial Frontier• • •, p. 37. 

½Jass. Records, I, P• 8~; I, P• 190. -



During the period of these first negotiations, Indians friendJs' to 

the magistrates at Boston intervened to tell the English that the .Pequots 

had lately boarded the ship of a Virginia trader, and killed its captain, 

one John Stone, while he lay sleeping in his cabin. It was further 

reported that after murdering the crew of eight, the assassins looted the 

Ship and made off with its cargo. Upon hearing of this mayhem, the out­

raged magistrates demanded that the Pequots give up the guilty warriors. 

When it was the turn of the Fequot emissaries to speak, however, they 

told a completezy different tale. They said that Stone had seized two 

Indians so that he might have guides to take him up the Connecticut River. 

Unable to tolerate this, the Pequots ambushed Stone and his crew during 

one of their trips ashore. Furthermore, they stated that the leader of 

the ambush had since been killed by the Dutch, and all but two of the 

other participants had fallen victims to disease. The Puritans evidently 

believed the Pequots, 5 and the treaty was signed with the Indians agreeing 

to surrender the two remaining participants, and to recognize the English 

hold along parts of the Connecticut. The Pequots also agreed to pay an 

indemnity in wampwn and beaver skins; but then, at least for the present, 

they had no other choice if the English were to remain neutral. 

In 1635, the sachem sassacus succeeded Wopigwooit as leader of the 

.Pequots, and a stiffening of their stand against the Bay Colony was forth­

coming. Sassacus was reluctant to surrender the two Indians in question, 

but the English were insistent. John Wint brop, Jr., already settled in 

Connecticut, was informed by the .Bay in midsummer of 1636, that he must 

demonstrate English power by personal.Js' charging Sassacus to give up the 

Svaughan, William~ ~ Quarterq, XXI, No. 2, p. 258. 



two warriors. Before Winthrop could complet e his mis sion, hOiVever, an 

event toolc place which novr serves as a watershed in the history of the 

Indian in New England. 

On July 20, 1636, a trader named John Gallop was pushing his craft 

d own Rhode Island Sound i n t he direction of Long Island . With a crmT of 

a man and two boys, he approached the coast of Block Island, and there 

spotted a pinnace mrarming with Indians . Driving them off with gunfire, 

he boarded the vessel and found the naked and mutilated body of John 

Oldham. Oldham the trader - past Deputy from Watert<Mn, planter of 

'Wethersfield, and religious provocateur whose theological disposi tions 

were limber enough to bend to the prevaili ng winds - was dead at last. 

He was pioneer, scoundrel, trailblazer, opport;unist; and the c0t1ploate man 

will ne·ver be fully knovm. Bu-Ii he lay in a pool of blood with his skull 

crushed and his limbs partlally severed .from his body, and New England's 

future turned on the question of culpability. 

Soon after Oldham's murder, the .Narragansetts quicltly adopted a 

,irilderness version of real,2olitik. Through Roger Williams, they sent word 

to the Bay that the guilty Indians could be found among the Pequots. To 

demons·trate their good faith, they delivered up two young survivors who 

had sailed with Oldham, and a portion of his cargo. At the same time, they 

allowed the Pequots to del ude themselves over the possibility o:f a truce, 

while muzzling several of the more ambitious sagamores who actually 

favored a Pequot-Narr aga nsett alliance. Fearful of such an alliance, and 

with the Bay's milit arJ pr eparations in a somewhat disorganized state, 

Gover nor Vane appealed to Williams t o go t o the Narragansetts in an effort 

to prevent t he pact. In what has been called "one of the greatest feats 

of di 1 . Am • can histo,...,. 11
6 Roger Williams traveled about thi rty p omacy in eri ~J, 

-------·------------ ---- ---- --

46. 



miles down the west shore of .Narragansett Bay in an open canoe, to confer 

With the .Narngansett co-sachems, Canonicu.s, and his aggressive nephew, 

Miantononzy-. The hazards of this trip were numerous, but considering the 

importance of the mission, and the fact that the Pequot ambassadors were 

already in the village when he arrived, lends a higher sense of drama to 

the proceedings. Williams was successful, and though the Narragansetts 

were never overly fond of the English, they were, after an, realists. 

Events were now beginning to overrun the Pequots. Recently, after a 

succession controversy which had made Sassacus chief, a pCMerful group of 

Pequots had defected from the tribe, restored the old name Mohican, and 

accepted the :e adership of a new sachem, Uncas. Weakened in this .fashion, 

they were forced to accept a sell out on the part of the Narragansetts. 

For not only did Williams prevent a Pequot-Narragansett alliance, but he 

went on to lay the groundwork of the Narragansett-Mohican-Massachusetts 

alliance that helped the English in the months to come. At this time 

When the future of New England rested upon the skill, courage and 

incredible boldness of a single outcast Englishmen, Roger Williams was 

to write: "God wondrously praeserued me & helpt me to breake to pieces 

the Peq~s Negociations & Designe & to make & promote & finish . . • the 

English league with the NahiggonsikS & Monhigg:1.ns against the Pequts." 7 

The first movement against the Pequots was organized by the English 

in September, and placed under the command of magistrate John Endicott. 

A veteran of the Dutch wars and a man of violent temper, he had a great 

distaste f or Indians, whatever the tribe. Assisted by Captain John 

Underhill, Endicott •s punitive expedition was to proceed to Block Island, 

\uoted in covey, P • 162 • 



48. 

kill t he male Indian population, and seize aey surviving women and 

children. 8 It took two days for Endicott's ninety men to devastate the 

isl.and, and then they set out for Pequot country. Mald.ng passage across 

Block Island Sound, they quickly established contacts With the Pequots. 

A parley was convened, but with both sides embittered and suspicious, 

i t soon erupted into a brawl in which a number of the Indians were killed . 

Ironical.zy, as tradition would have it, the first Pequot to fall died at 

the hands of another Indian, one of Endicott's several guides, Cutshamekin, 

sagamore of the .Massachusetts. 

Humiliated in their past dealings with the English, who were novr 

demanding little else but total submission, the .Pequots began to take 

their revenge. After 1d J Jing a fe:vr isolated traders, it was not long 

bef are Pequot warriors began attacld.ng settlements from Fort Saybrook, 

at the mouth of the Connecticut, to Wethersfield. The English reeled 

under the shock, but it ~snot until the following spring that they 

resumed the offensive. 

In May of 1637 Connecticut, bearing the full brunt of the war, 

assumed the status of a mw coloey. NOVI', with the war moving into its 

second phase, the three colonies, galvanized by the emergency into a 

policy of military cooperation, began the offensive which brought the 

predictable victory. The quality of the English forces had improved 

considerably in the intervening months. It had not been long ago that 

colonial trainband musters bad been characterized by confusion and a 

humorous lack of military competence. Winthrop, in writing of one o:f 

these exercises, describes captain Underhill's men as a bevrildered mob, 

\.1nthrop 1s Journal• • ·, I, P· 186• 



"who like men amazed, knew not how to behave themselves, so as the of.ficers 

could not draw them into any order.u9 But in the Spring of 1637, the 

English troops were better motivated, better trained, and better artned, 

for by now the cumbersome matchlock had largely been replaced with the 

more effective flint firearms. 10 

As the war moved into its final stage, the fighting was marked by 

lopsided English victories such as the burning of the major Pequot strong­

hold at }zystic.11 Nearzy two decades after this blooczy- encounter, captain 

John Mason of the Connecticut forces was commissioned by his General Court 

to record his remembrances of the English victory. He vividly recalled 

that the calculated massacre of the Pequots was completed 11 to the extreme 

Amazement of the Enenzy-, and great Rejoycing of our selves .u12 

With the war lost, small bands of Pequots began to flee north and 

westward. Many of these 1"8re hunted dawn and killed by the Valley Indians, 

who took delight in demonstrating their loyalty to the English by deliver­

ing the severed heads of their quarry to the frontier towns along the 

river. Along with forty of his warriors, Sassacus himself met this fate 

at the hands of the treacherous Mohawks, to whom he had gone seeking 

protection. For most of that small and tragic number of the Pequots who 

had somehow survived the bloodletting, the New England colonials, as they 

9 Ibid., p. 92. 

lOHarold L. Peterson, Arms ~A.rm.or!!! Colonial America, 1526-1783 
(New York: Bramhill House, ~), P· ---r;i;;-

ll.908 John Tebbel and Keith Jennison,~ American Indian~ 
(New York: Harper and Bros., l960), P· 28. 

l2John Mason, A Brief Hist-03' 2f_ the Pequot~ (Ann Arbor, J.fi.ch.: 
University Microfil.mS;--liic•, l966 ' p.T. 



50. 

did throughout the Seventeenth Century, recognized the immediate 

possibilities of slave trading.13 For the one hundred a nd eighty captives 

who were placed in bondage, some scattered as .far away as the West Indies 

Plantations, it would have been i'ar better had they perished with t he 

rest of their people. 

The English victory in the Pequot War represents yet another eJeample 

of superior organization, and singleness of purpose, adapted to exploit 

the Indian's tendencies toward .fragmentation and disunity. Even to the 

point of assuring the militia that their fortunes would not be compro­

mised by service, men remaining behind in the Bay Colony were impressed 

to carry on "the husbandry of such persons" who had been sent to .fight 

the Indians .14 And in terms of' inter-colonial cooperation, the forth­

Coming New England confederation of 164.3 demonstrates that the English 

f'ully realized that synchronization of effort was the real key to military 

POWer.15 

In late November of 1637, the General Court of Massachusett s issued 

a declaration of self-congratulations which reveals not only a Puritan 

interpretation of the gains of victory, but perhaps a valuabl e key to 

an understanding of the causes of the war• The Court proclaimed that 

through God's intercession, the English bad won the lands of the Pequot 

"by just title of conquest," and that by this conquest "oportunity is also 

l3cf. Handlin, Race and Nationality: • • • , P• 18; and James T. A.dams 
£!:,OVincial Societz , W0-!753 {New York: The Mllcrofllan Company, 1927), ' 
p. 101. 

14Richard B. Morris, Government~~ in Early America (New York: 
Harper and Row, 1965) , P • 7 • 

l.5Harry M Ward, The United Colonie! 2£. ~ Engl.and, 1643-1690 
(New York: vantage PreSS, 1961), P· 26 • 



given for peaceable habitation to all such as shall hearafter inhabite 

the lands of our said enemies. 11 The Court .further amplified the English 

Claim., and stated that regarding those "parts beyond towards the Dutch, 

we do haarby declare the just right & title wch ourselves & our said 

assotiats upon Conecticot have to all the said lands & territories.nl6 

In the light of this proclamation, there see.ms little doubt that in 

sifting out the Puritan reasons for going to war, the subject of "1' nd 

hunger" becomes one of paramount importance. 

From the time of the initial negotiations in which the .Pequots 

hesitated under the demands to "yield up Conecticot," it would seem that 

the English were in search of a ~ belli • It was to be found in the 

incidents surrounding the deaths of Stone and Oldham. The English rested 

their case on the assertion that they went to war in order to avenge their 

murdered countrymen,17 but their claims of bereavement have a hollow ring 

to them. 

First considering the case of Stone, it seems likely that the English 

believed the Pequot account of his death, for no military action was taken 

in 1634. This is further supported by the Puritans' knowledge that Stone 

was a thief, and a malicious drunkard who would be prone to mistreating 

any Indians with which he bad contact. It is known, for example, that on 

his voyage .tram Virginia, he stopped over at Manhattan w-lth a cargo of 

cattle and salt. Here, in a drunken fuddle, he attempted to steal a 

vessel from Plymouth as it lay at anchor in the harbor. In what cannot be 

considered a completely rational move, he then set sail for P.lymouth where 

~ss. Records, I, P· 216• 

1 ~inthrop 1s Journal • • • , I, P• 186• 

51. 



52. 

he was promptl,y- charged with piracy.18 In offering a defense, he claimed 

that the Plymouth sailors had said some unld.nd things about his native 

Virginia; but on the verge of being shipped to England for an appearance 

before an Admiralty Court, he succeeded in persuading the captain of the 

P.lymoutb vessel to drop the charges •19 Not leaving well enough alone, 

he initiated an argument with Governor Thomas Prence, and would have 

20 stabbed him had he not been restrained. Run out of Plymouth, Stone 

made his way to Boston where he was accused of lem:lness and drunkedness, 

and of "being found upon the bed in the night with one Barcroft, s ll'i.fe. 11 21 

Tried on these charges, and having threatened plzysical injury to Deputy 

Governor Roger Ludlow, he was banished from the colocy under pain of 

22 
death, and given a suspended fine of 100 Pounds. On his way back to 

Virginia he was killed by the Indians, and it would be stretching the 

imagination to envision either Plymouth or Boston mourning his passing. 

As for the case of Oldham, whose death Bradford notes "was one 
23 

ground of the Pequente warr which followed," it is also difficult to 

imagine either colony inordinatel,y- grief-stricken over his fate. 24 At the 

time in 1625 when OJdham, and the Anglican minister John Ivford, tried to 

18Ibid., p. 102. 

19Ibid. -20
vaughan, William~ ~ Quarterly, .nr, No. 2, P· 263. 

21winthrop 1 s Journal, I, p. 108. 

22Ibid. -
23Brad.tord, p. 120. 

24rhe same might be said of Oldham' s maey creditors, for earzy 
Connecticut probate records show that at the time of his death he owed 
seventeen individuals .504/09s/03d, while he had l36/66s/21d due him. 
See: Harral Ayres, The Great ~ of New England (Boston: Meador Compaey, 
19),o) . ,.,_ 1?':ln . 



undermine the Separatist structure of the Plymouth church, Bradford 

described him as a man who "suffered his unruly passion to rune beyonde 

the limits of all reason and modestie. 1125 Both men were driven from 

Plymouth, and both later expressed a contrite conversion to the Bay's 

form of congregationalism. Iqf ord went on to a pastorate where, in 

addition to his theological backsliding, he retained a wandering eye for 

the ladies and a marked fondness for political intrigues. Oldham 

continued on his errant ways, but he soon became a nominal Puritan and 

allowed the profits of the Indian trade to temper his zeal for the 

sacramental liturgy. It is no doubt, however, that his maneuverings at 

P~outh had made the men of the Bay uneasy, for Oldham continued to be 

the maverick to wham 11all reprofes were but as oyle to the fire and made 
26 

the flame of his collar greater." But at last the Puritans were 

obliged to come to a position of a mutually beneficial tolerance. Trail­

blazers were needed, and if Oldham refrained from sticking out his 

heretical neck they would endure him, but only as long as the Bay was 

served. 

The circumstances of Oldham's death also tend to support the notion 

that t he English artificially constructed the excuse of maldng war. To 

begin with, it is well established that the actual perpetrators of the 

crime were the Block Island Indians, and not the Pequots. But it is 

highly unreasonable to suppose that the Block Islanders, already in a 

state of war with the Pequots as a result of their alliance with the 

Narragansetts, acted as the agents of a Pequot conspiracy. It is, 

2~radford, p. ll8. 
26lbid. 

53. 



how-ever, clearly reasonable to conclude that Oldham was killed by the 

Block Islanders because he had been trading with the hated Pequots. And 

it is most probable, in spite of the feigned innocence of their sachems 
' 

that he was killed with the full concurrence of the Narragansetts, whose 

eagerness to blame the Pequots does not fully conceal the benefits they 

would realize from an all out English-Pequot war . It was, after all, the 

Narragansetts who so efficiently recovered the survivors and cargo of the 

Oldham pinnace, a vessel which, by the way, carried two Narragansett 

warriors to assist the crew. 27 Finally, it was the Narragansetts who had 

the most to gain from a war of mutual destruction. They would be rid of 

the Pequots, and the continual challenge they posed. Then, established as 

the dominant tribe in southern New England, they could go on to finish the 

job on the English, a hatred of whom they periodically revealed from the 

time they sent the Pilgrims their first war challenge. In entering the 

do-nothing alliance with the English, they thought they were follOWing the 

logical course to their ultimate triumph. But while content to let them 

fight their war with the Pequots, they failed, in the end, to reckon With 

the prospects of a massive English victory. 

The English were likewise guided by expediency. With the Narra.gan­

setts thus committed, their hands were free to get on with the most 

imrnediate task, the clearing of the Connecticut Valley. And so the jihad 

began, the Soldiers of Christ off to fight the forces of Satan. They 

went, they said, to avenge the death of two of their countrymen whose 

bones they thought to be as corrupt as the Indians they were about to 

destroy. Though years afterward, Puritan historians like Winthrop, Mason, 

27winthrop •s Journal, I, p. 183. 

54. 



and Edward Johnson vociferously and self-righteously pronounced their 

acquital of English conduct,
28 

at least the moti ves are clear: land , 
trade and an open line of overland communications. For the Indians who 

55. 

helped forge the conclusive English victory, their fate was sealed. They 

novr Ufound themselves between the English hammer and the Iroquoian anv:i.l,"29 

with the later holocaust of King Philip's War representing merely the 

final spasm of an expiring culture. 

28see Richard S. Dunn, nseventeenth Century English His torians of 
Anerica , 11 Seventeenth Century America: Essays in Colonial History, ed. 
James M. Smith (Chapel Hill, N.c.: Universi ty oTNarth Carolina Press, 
1959), pp. 195-225-

29m,nard H. Peckham, The Col onial wars (Chicago: Univer sity of 
Chi cago Press, 1965), p. 20:- -



CHAPI'ER VIII 

THE TONN PIANTERS 

The Puritan migration to Nei,v England stands as a significant turning 

point in the history of the English colonization of North America. Unlike 

the first clumsy failures, or even those settlements that Je arned to 

survive by the painful process of trial and error, the Puritans came with 

a steady confidence in proven institutions and procedures . Like those who 

went before them, they would make adaptations demanded by the wilderness , 
but much of the Puritan's frontier was bent and shaped into forms which 

satisfied him. Quite unlike his countrymen to the south, his frontier 

moved forward in methodical progression. Whereas the Virginian moved 

inland in random expansion, his single staple agriculture watered by the 

macy navigable streams of the tidewater, the Puritan, by desire and circum­

stance, was much more restrained. Held in check by the congregatio