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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...

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

“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.