Pequot Indians in AP US History

Wampum, river land, and the road to war in 1636

Before the English arrived in force, the Pequot controlled much of the trade in wampum, the shell beads that worked like money in the regional fur trade. That position made them powerful, and it also made them rivals of nearby nations like the Narragansett and the Mohegan.

In the 1630s, Puritans spread out of Massachusetts Bay and founded towns along the Connecticut River, while Dutch traders were also working the area. The English wanted farmland and a share of the trade, and the Pequot stood in the way of both.

The spark came in 1636, when English trader John Oldham was killed near Block Island. Massachusetts sent an expedition under John Endecott that raided Block Island and Pequot territory. Pequot counterattacks on English settlements followed, and open war began.

Mystic, 1637: English soldiers fighting beside Native rivals

The war's turning point came in May 1637. Connecticut troops under John Mason and Massachusetts troops under John Underhill, along with Mohegan warriors under the sachem Uncas and Narragansett fighters, surrounded a fortified Pequot village on the Mystic River and set it on fire. Hundreds of Pequot died, many of them women, children, and elderly people. The attack is usually called the Mystic Massacre.

Pequot resistance collapsed after that. Survivors were hunted down, killed, or captured. Some captives were enslaved by colonists or shipped to the West Indies, and others were handed over to the Mohegan and Narragansett.

The 1638 Treaty of Hartford declared the Pequot nation dissolved and even banned use of the Pequot name. The war strengthened English access to Connecticut land and trade routes and sped up settlement there, though Dutch traders and other Native nations stayed active in the region.

What the Pequot War proves about Topic 2.5

The Pequot War shows, in just two years, how English settlement could turn trade rivalry into a war of destruction. That makes it strong evidence for Topic 2.5 (Interactions Between American Indians and Europeans), which asks you to explain how and why relations between colonists and American Indians shifted over time, mixing accommodation with conflict.

The war is a clean early example of several patterns the course describes:

• Disputes over land, boundaries, and resources between the English and American Indians led to armed clashes.
• American Indian groups (here the Mohegan and Narragansett) looked to Europeans as allies against other American Indian groups.
• Rival Europeans, English and Dutch, competed for Native trade partners in the same region.

On the exam, the Pequot are most likely to appear as outside evidence. A multiple-choice set might use a Puritan account of the war (Mason and Underhill both wrote one) and ask for the cause of English-Native conflict or the pattern it reflects. For a short-answer question about colonial Native relations, or a long essay covering 1607-1754, a top answer goes past naming the war. It explains that English expansion was driven by demand for land, that colonists used Native rivalries strategically, and that the result was destruction and enslavement for the group that resisted.

1636 or 1675: keeping the Pequot War apart from Metacom's War

The Pequot War (1636-1638) and King Philip's War (1675-1676), also called Metacom's War, both pit New England colonists against American Indians, so answers mix them up. The course names Metacom's War directly as its example of armed conflict in New England, and the Pequot War is the earlier case you can add.

Here's the difference. The Pequot War was fought against one nation in Connecticut, early in Puritan settlement, with other Native nations fighting on the English side. Metacom's War came almost 40 years later, when the Wampanoag leader Metacom led a broad coalition against decades of English expansion across New England. It was larger and far deadlier for the colonists.

Used together, the two wars support a change-over-time argument. English land pressure stayed constant, but by the 1670s English expansion faced a much wider regional uprising. Native alliances and rivalries still shaped the fighting, though. The English again relied on Native allies, including Mohegan and Pequot fighters, during Metacom's War.

One smaller slip: the Mohegan who fought with the English were a Connecticut nation. They're different from the Mohican of the Hudson Valley, despite the similar names.