Pequot War Research Paper

The Pequot War, although it has received little recognition in our understanding of American history, was the first war between English colonists in the New World and an indigenous group. It is often considered the first war in the United States. The Pequot tribe was the dominant Native American in southern New England during the early seventeenth century, controlling trade with the Dutch along the Hudson River Valley and Long Island Sound. The arrival of European settlers affected the relationships between tribes. The Pequots initially benefitted from these circumstances, expanding their territory over thousands of square miles from Long Island Sound to the Thames, Mystic, and Pawcatuck Rivers (Urbanus 2015:34), as well as the southern area of the Connecticut River. The earliest surviving account of this tribe comes from Dutch explorer Adrian Block in 1614. They were valued by the Dutch for trade in beaver pelts, belts, and wampum in the 1610s-1620s. However, in the late 1630s, the English had begun to covet the tribe’s land and resources. They soon sought to break up the Dutch-Pequot trade complex (Silberman

Shaken, the colony resolved to declare war on the Pequot tribe. The events that followed were to irreparably change the way the colonies and Native Americans interacted for the next 300 years. Many, including professor at the University of Connecticut and director of research at the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center, Kevin A. McBride, have considered The Battle of Mistick Fort and subsequent events to be “one of the first cases of cultural genocide” in the colonies. It was certainly the most violent. Out of a population of 8,000, only a few hundred survived by the end of the war (Urbanus