Digs in Conn. neighborhood find artifacts of 1637 battle

AP via Columbus Dispatch ^ | July 12, 2010 | Stephanie Reitz

[Pharmboy]

MYSTIC, Conn. - Artifacts of a battle between an American Indian tribe and English settlers, a confrontation that helped shape early American history, have sat for years beneath manicured lawns and children's swing sets in a Connecticut neighborhood.

A project to map the battlefields of the Pequot War is bringing those musket balls, gunflints and arrowheads into the sunlight for the first time in centuries. It's also giving researchers insight into the combatants and the land on which they fought, particularly the Mystic hilltop where at least 400 Pequot Indians died in a 1637 massacre by English settlers.

Historians say the attack was a turning point in English warfare with native tribes. It nearly wiped out the powerful Pequots and showed other tribes that the colonists wouldn't hesitate to use methods that some consider genocide. snip..

The researchers have already found remnants of English metal uniform buttons, bandoliers and other items that might help mark where settlers marched, camped before the attack and retreated afterward. The artifacts are being cataloged at the museum and will be kept and displayed there.

[Pharmboy]

They do not mention it here, but those early wars were pretty bloody on both sides. Reading just this, one might get the feeling that it was just the colonists who resorted to brutish techniques.

[JennysCool]

Can you dig it ping ...

[Zeppelin]

Historians say the attack was a turning point in English warfare with native tribes. It nearly wiped out the powerful Pequots and showed other tribes that the colonists wouldn't hesitate to use methods that some consider genocide.

That's a revisionist "historian" way of putting it.

Or perhaps this was simply a battle fought in a time when men were men and sought to destroy their enemies, lest they come back seeking vengeance.

[Zeppelin]

cool find though...I’ll be interested to see what all they uncover as time goes on.

[militant2]

Never bring a bow and arrows to a musket fight.....!!

Militant

[Pharmboy]

The Pequot Indians, once a powerful tribe, controlled all of Connecticut east of the Connecticut River. The tribe numbered 2,500, and its name meant "Destroyer." After they were defeated by colonists in the Pequot War of 1637, the Pequots' influence diminished significantly, and many of them were sold into slavery. In 1655, some Pequots were released and resettled onto a strip of land near New Haven. Although he tribe gradually dispersed, those that remained in Connecticut were forced to share their land with great numbers of English settlers. By 1735, the colonists had encroached so severely on the Indians' land, cutting down their timber and stealing their crops, that the Pequots petitioned Governor Joseph Talcott for help. None was forthcoming, and the Pequot population continued to dwindle, so that by 1850 the number of full- blooded Pequot Indians was down to forty. The above graphic and copy from here.

Thanks to the Free Republic's resident scholar SunkenCiv for alerting me to this story...

The RevWar/Colonial History/General Washington ping list...

[Berlin_Freeper]

The English are great warriors.

[Puppage]

Or perhaps this was simply a battle fought in a time when men were men and sought to destroy their enemies, lest they come back seeking vengeance.

That's EXACTLY right.

[Zeppelin]

I'd like to revise my statement...

Or perhaps this was simply a battle fought in a time when men were men (despite the wigs) and sought to destroy their enemies, lest they come back seeking vengeance.

[Red Badger]

I wonder, what part of “WAR” does this writer not understand?.......................

[NonValueAdded]

Imagine a Connecticut Yankee in Sachem Sassacus’ Court trying to explain Foxwoods.

[Pharmboy]

Ya think, even though Johnny Mathis will be appearing there later in July?

[Jacquerie]

The Pequot War convinced several colonies to band together for mutual protection from the French and Indians. They formed The New England Confederation. It lasted about 40 years. During the English Civil Wars, the colonies were on their own; no help came from the mother country. French foreign policy was one of containment of the prosperous English in North America. It is why after 150 years, the colonies were still huddled along the Atlantic seaboard.

The confederation was something of a precursor to the colonies’ response to another threat in the mid 1770s.

[ZULU]

Thanks for the link Pharmboy. I’m really interested in Colonial Wars.

“A project to map the battlefields of the Pequot War is bringing those musket balls, gunflints and arrowheads into the sunlight for the first time in centuries. It’s also giving researchers insight into the combatants and the land on which they fought, particularly the Mystic hilltop where at least 400 Pequot Indians died in a 1637 massacre by English settlers.”

I read somewhere that the English Colonists at this time and through King Philip’s War in the 1660’s, used matchlock muskets and the Indians used flintlocks. The settlers had less use for firearms than the Native Americans who valued them as a tool to obtain furs and hides for trade with the Europeans, and, as such, purchased the more effective weapon at the time.

The War was supposedly started by the murder of a questionable character, John Stone, a privateer or pirate, and slaver, by the Western Niantics

“In the same year, John Stone was murdered by the Pequots on the Connecticut River. It may be that he was thought to be a Dutchman, and one of the murderers of Tatobem. Stone was known to the Bay Colony authorities as a privateer and rogue and may have provoked the Indians who claim to have acted in self-defense, but he soon became another statistic in the Colony’s list of Pequot “crimes.”

http://www.dowdgen.com/dowd/document/pequots.html

[colorado tanker]

And today they have the largest resort casino in the world . . . .

[Theophilus]

I always thought King Philip's war was the first war between the Indians and the Colonists. I'm glad to learn about this one.

[AppyPappy]

Considering that Indians tortured each other to death during wars, the Brits were pretty easy on them

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

How those sweet little Indians fought before the white man came...

http://www.dickshovel.com/scalp.html

[Red Badger]

I once read or heard that each tribe’s name for itself translated “human being” and that other tribes were considered as animals, ergo, they could be killed at will..........

[Pharmboy]

I never knew that...thanks for that insight. One of those that’s so spot on yet so obvious when one thinks about it.

[kickstart]

I hope they don’t find any lead musket balls. If they do, they will have to declare the area a hazardous waste dump, just like my shooting club in Massholechusetts.

[Pharmboy]

Thanks for that link...fills in much information.

[ansel12]

Interesting link that you posted.

” The five to seven year old from the Fay Tolton site in South Dakota may have provided trophies in two different raids. The presence on the cranium of a characteristic scalping lesion with some bone remodelling indicates that the child survived an initial scalping event by at least two weeks before being killed in yet another raid. Obviously there was no scalp left on this child to take as a trophy, but both hands appear to have been removed by breaking the radii and ulnae toward their distal ends, and these hands were probably kept as trophies, along with the head of another individual from the site who was quite obviously decapitated (Hollimon & Owsley 1994).”

[Theophilus]

I always thought King Philip's war was the first war between the Indians and the Colonists. I'm glad to learn about this one.

[JerseyHighlander]

Whigs weren’t popular in North America for another 3 decades.

The other side of this battle showed the Native people the necessity of banding together to resist European expansion, leading eventually to Metacomet’s War (otherwise known as King Philip’s War) in 1675 - 1676. To this date it was the bloodiest war fought on American soil since first European contact.

[Jacquerie]

You may be interested in the pdf of “The Rise Of The Republic Of The United States,” by Richard Frothingham, 1872. Just google it.

Our Constitution was not a flash in the pan, but the end point of almost two centuries of self government.

[Red Boots]

That's a revisionist "historian" way of putting it.

I'll say...just sort of forgetting thst the Pequot war was started by the combined tribes, via surprise attacks, with the stated aim of killing ALL the whites in America. But, hey ! What's a little revisionist history to the kids !

[RobinOfKingston]

... by 1850 the number of full- blooded Pequot Indians was down to forty.

There must be two or three of them left who could petition the US Gubmint to build them a casino so they could live happily ever after.

[Pharmboy]

It’s called Foxwoods...

[dasboot]

“After they were defeated by colonists in the Pequot War of 1637, the Pequots’ influence diminished significantly, and many of them were sold into slavery.”

I done some readin’ on this a long time ago.

The Narragansett and Mohegans {SP?] were allied with the colonists, and loaded for bear against the troublesome Pequots....revenge for the predations of the Pequots on those tribes.

The colonists were horrified by the brutality of the allied Indian tribes: having subdued the Pequots, the colonists could only watch as the executions started. Written accounts exist of how sickened many of the colonists became at the slaughter. And, IIRC, the remainder of the captured Pequots were sold into slavery by those colonist-allied Indian tribes to other Indians. I recall no mention of colonists being involved in the traffic.

[Pharmboy]

No doubt you are correct. During the French and Indian war the French could not always keep their Indian allies controlled after they won battles and slaughtered the defeated English and colonists.

[wardaddy]

none of today’s academia dwells on Indian atrocities yet here in Middle Tn I see evidence of it frequently in markers from back in the day when history was more honest and factual

[mewzilla]

An interesting article that deals with the point you made. Scroll down for the section on the Pequot War.

Howard Zinn's Biased History

And thanks for the thread!