The settlers, led by John Mason, struck the largest Pequot community at dawn and killed most of its inhabitants, burning the wigwams and shooting any who attempted to flee. The Pequots were concentrated in a pair of encampments near what is now Norwich, Connecticut, each of these a several-acre enclosure of a few dozen wigwams. Believing it wise to approach from the least likely side, the group attacked from the east, sailing to Rhode Island’s Narragansett Bay and marching west with a force of about 400 Narragansetts looking on. These tensions escalated the following spring into the great Pequot War of 1637, during which about 130 European settlers from the Connecticut River towns, along with 70 allied Mohegans, developed a plan to destroy their enemy. The Pequots continued to strike, attacking and murdering several Wethersfield families during the winter of 1636-1637 and unsuccessfully attempting to establish a warring pact with their neighbors, the formidable Narragansett Indians of nearby Aquidneck Island. They further raised the ire of the settlers when they killed the respected explorer John Oldham off the coast of Block Island in 1636, an act that led to immediate reprisals in the form of burnings and raids by English troops. In the 1630s the Pequots killed a pair of British merchants whom they encountered sailing up the Connecticut River on a trading mission. This warlike mentality quickly led to their near-extinction as colonists killed them and even turned friendlier tribes, such as the Narragansetts and the Connecticut Mohegans, against them. When Europeans first began to explore what is now Rhode Island in the 1500s, there were five indigenous groups living here: the Pequots, the Nipmucs, the Niantics, the Narragansetts, and the Wampanoags.Īmong the five, the Pequots-who lived mostly in what is now southeastern Connecticut but also in southwestern Rhode Island-exercised the greatest degree of autonomy and defiance of the settlers. The museum is operated by the Narragansett Tribe.
Learn more about Indigenous culture and arts (both historic and contemporary) at the Tomaquag Museum in Exeter.
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