Pequot War Was Connecticut's 'Jamestown'

A violent conflict between English colonists and Native Americans almost 400 years ago grew into a war that ended with the near extermination of an entire Indian tribe.

Now, archaeologists in Connecticut are investigating the town at the center of the conflict — the scene of an attack by Pequot warriors concerned by the burgeoning population of English settlers in the area.

The attack on Puritan colonists in 1637 at Wethersfield, Connecticut, was smaller in scale than the Jamestown attack in Virginia in 1622 — just nine settlers were killed, while hundreds were killed in Jamestown. But the Wethersfield conflict grew into the Pequot War in New England, and it resulted in the Mystic River Massacre in May 1637; during that massacre, an army of colonists and their Native American allies killed about 500 people and effectively wiped out the Pequot tribe.