Pequot War

The Pequot War was an armed conflict between the Pequot tribe and an alliance of the English colonists of the Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, and Saybrook colonies and their Native American allies (the Narragansett and Mohegan tribes) which occurred between 1634 and 1638.

The Pequots lost the war. At the end, about seven hundred Pequots had been killed or taken into captivity. Hundreds of prisoners were sold into slavery to the West Indies. Other survivors were dispersed. The result was the elimination of the Pequot as a viable polity in what is present-day Southern New England. The colonial authorities falsely classified the tribe as extinct. However, survivors remained in the area and did regain marginal recognition and land thanks to the relationship of Robin Cassacinnamon and his guardian John Winthrop Jr. Subsequent descendants struggled to hold on and it would take the Pequot more than three and a half centuries to regain political and economic power in their traditional homeland along the Pequot (present-day Thames) and Mystic rivers in what is now southeastern Connecticut.