Sometime before dawn on May 27, 1637, English militia from Massachusetts and Connecticut, backed by several hundred Narragansett and Mohegan allies, launched a surprise attack on the fortified Pequot village of Mystic, one of about 20 Pequot tribal villages in southeastern Connecticut.
"The figure of the Indians’ fort or palizado in New England and the manner of the destroying it by Captayne Underhill and Captayne Mason," 1638 engraving directed by Captain John Mason.
"The figure of the Indians’ fort or palizado in New England and the manner of the destroying it by Captayne Underhill and Captayne Mason," 1638 engraving directed by Captain John Mason.
By now, Plymouth Colony, established by the Pilgrims in 1620, was a self-sufficient settlement. After a rocky first winter that saw half the colonists die, the Pilgrims and local Wampanoag tribe signed a peace deal that still held 16 years later.
But things were not so quiet to the west: thousands more Puritans had come to New England and fanned out across Massachusetts and beyond. As each new town filled to capacity, newcomers looked inland to the Connecticut River Valley, which was controlled by the powerful Pequot tribe.
Tensions escalated into a series of attacks and counterattacks. In April 1637, the Pequot raided the English village of Wethersfield, killing nine settlers and kidnapping two young girls who were later ransomed. A month later, the English launched “a full-scale...war of extermination,” as Laurence M. Hauptman, a historian at State University of New York at New Paltz, described it in “The Pequots in Southern New England."
