Pequot Paper

I am done with my research paper on the Pequot war! Twenty pages, 14 sources, and 60 citations. This paper was really difficult to do. It was hard to compile information on a war that was fought nearly 400 years ago and has been nearly forgotten by American history. My Colonial America textbook contained a mere three paragraphs on this topic.

So basically, the Pequot War was fought between the Pequots and an alliance of English colonists, Mohegans, and Narragansetts. The Mohegans and Narragansetts pretty much manipulated the fear of the English to go to war with the Pequots. The English saw all Indians as devil-worshipping savages and didn't need much provocation to go to war. An English ship captain was killed by the Narragansetts' subsidiary tribe, but the Narragansetts accused the Pequots of harboring the murderers. The English confronted the Pequots and the conflict eventually escalated into an all out war. The climax of the war was the massacre at Mystic, where 600 Pequots were burned alive by the English and Mohegans. The remaining Pequots were killed or enslaved.

I found this topic interesting because the Pequots and Mohegans are still rivals. The Pequots own Foxwoods in Ledyard, CT and the Mohegans own Mohegan Sun in nearby Uncasville. Also, the paranoia of the English is not that different from the paranoid state the US currently exists in. They preemptively struck the Pequots because they were afraid of the Pequots. Sounds close to the War we're currently entangled in.

The Pequot War was also the first real test of English power in New England. Had the Narragansetts and Mohegans allied with the Pequots instead of the English, the Puritans might have been driven back to the sea. Things would definitely have been different in this country.