Aftermath
In September, the victorious Mohegan and Narragansett met at the General Court of Connecticut and agreed on the disposition of the Pequot and their lands. The agreement, known as the first Treaty of Hartford, was signed on September 21, 1638. About 200 Pequot "old men, women, and children" survived the war and massacre at Mystic. Unable to find refuge with a neighboring tribe, they finally gave up and offered themselves as slaves in exchange for life:
| “ | There were then given to ONKOS, Sachem of MONHEAG, Eighty; to MYAN TONIMO, Sachem of NARRAGANSETT, Eighty; and to NYNIGRETT, Twenty, when he should satisfy for a Mare of Edward Pomroye’s killed by his Men. The Pequots were then bound by COVENANT, That none should inhabit their native Country, nor should any of them be called PEQUOTS any more, but MOHEAGS and NARRAGANSETTS for ever. | ” |
Other Pequot were enslaved and shipped to Bermuda or the West Indies, or were forced to become household servants in English households in Connecticut and Massachusetts Bay. Colonists appropriated Pequot lands under claims of a "just war". They essentially declared the Pequot extinct by prohibiting speaking the name of the people. The few Pequot who managed to evade death or slavery later recovered from captivity by the Mohegan and were assigned reservations in Connecticut Colony.
The colonists attributed the success of end of the murderous aggression of the Pequot tribe to an act of God:
| “ | Let the whole Earth be filled with his Glory! Thus the LORD was pleased to smite our Enemies in the hinder Parts, and to give us their Land for an Inheritance. | ” |
Lion Gardiner, a soldier involved in the Pequot War, in his 1660 Relation of the Pequot Wars, expressed a different perspective:
| “ | And now I am old, I would fain die a natural death or like a soldier in the field with honor and not to have a sharp stake set in the ground and thrust into my fundament and to have my skin flayed off by piecemeal and cut in pieces and bits and my flesh roasted and thrust down my throat as these people have done and I know will be done to the chieftest in the Country by hundreds if god should deliver us into their hands as Justly he may for our sins. | ” |
This was the first instance wherein Algonquian peoples of what is now southern New England encountered European-style warfare. The idea of "total war" was kind of new to them. After the Pequot War, the native were too scared to rise up against the colonists. In 1675, a fairly long period of peace came to an end with King Philip's War.
Read more about this topic: Pequot War
Famous quotes containing the word aftermath:
“The aftermath of joy is not usually more joy.”
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