Indian Wars in Upper North America
1622 CE to 1924 CE
Indian Wars in Upper North America describes a series of conflicts between American settlers or the federal government and the native peoples of North America before and after the American Revolutionary War.
The wars result from the arrival of European colonizers who continuously seek to expand their territory, pushing the indigenous populations westwards.
The wars are spurred by ideologies such as Manifest Destiny, which holds that the United States is destined to expand from coast to coast on the American continent, and which results in the policy of Indian removal, by which indigenous peoples are removed from the areas where Europeans are settling, either forcefully or by means of voluntary exchange of territory through treaties.
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Driven from there by armed, aggressive neighbors, they settle for a while south of Lake Winnipeg in present Manitoba.
Later the people move to the Devil's Lake region of North Dakota before the Crow split from the Hidatsa and move westward.
The Crow have largely pushed westward due to intrusion and influx of the Cheyenne and subsequently the Sioux, also known as the Lakota.
To acquire control of their new territory, they war against Shoshone bands (called Bikkaashe—"People of the Grass Lodges"), and drive them westward.
They ally with local Kiowa and Kiowa Apache bands.
The Pequot aggressively work to extend their area of control, at the expense of the Wampanoag to the north, the Narragansett to the east, the Connecticut River Valley Algonquians and Mohegan to the west, and the Algonquian peoples of present-day Long Island to the south.
The tribes contend for political dominance and control of the European fur trade.
The Dutch and the English are also striving to extend the reach of their trade into the interior to achieve dominance in the lush, fertile region.
Efforts to control fur trade access have resulted in a series of escalating incidents and attacks that have increased tensions on both sides.
Political divisions between the Pequot and Mohegan have widened as they aligned with different trade sources—the Mohegan with the English, and the Pequot with the Dutch.
The Pequot had attacked a group of Wangunk natives who had attempted to trade at Hartford.
The Connecticut River Valley is in turmoil in the 1630s.
A series of smallpox epidemics over the course of the previous three decades has severely reduced the indigenous populations, due to their lack of immunity to the disease.
As a result, there is a power vacuum in the area.
Tension have also increased as Massachusetts Bay Colony began to manufacture wampum, the supply of which the Pequot had controlled up until 1633, when an epidemic had devastated the entirety of the region's native population.
Historians will estimate that the Pequot had suffered the loss of eighty percent of their entire population.
At the outbreak of the Pequot War then, the Pequot may number only about three thousand.
The Niantic (or, in their own language, the Nehântick or Nehantucket) are divided by the due to intrusions of the Pequot into an eastern and a western division.
The Western Niantic are subject to the Pequot and live just east of the mouth of the Connecticut River while the Eastern Niantic have become very close allies to the Narragansett.
The division of the Niantic has become so great that the language of the eastern Niantic is classified as a dialect of Narragansett while the language of the western Niantic is classified as Pequot-Mohegan.
The Niantic are an Algonquian speaking people, speaking an Algonquian Y-dialect, similar to their neighbors the Pequot, Montaukett, Mohegan, and Narragansett.
The tribe's name "Nehantic" (Nehântick) means "of long-necked waters" believed by local residents to refer to the "long neck" or peninsula of land now known as Black Point; located in the village of Niantic, Connecticut.
The Nehântics spend their summers fishing and digging the abundant shellfish here.
They live on corn, beans, and squash, supplemented by hunting, fishing, and collecting.
Tatobem, a principal Pequot sachem, had boarded a Dutch vessel to trade in 1634, but instead of conducting trade, the Dutch had seized the sachem and demanded a substantial ransom for his safe return.
The Pequot had quickly sent a bushel of wampum, and received Tatobem's corpse in return.
John Stone, a privateer from the West Indies who had been banished from Boston for malfeasance, had set sail from Boston and was in the process of kidnapping women and children of the Western Niantic, tributary clients of the Pequot, to sell as slaves in the Virginia Colony when he is killed, along with seven of his crewmen, near the mouth of the Connecticut River.
Colonial officials in Boston had protested the killing.
The Pequot sachem, Sassacus, refuses the colonists' demands that the Western Niantic warriors responsible for Stone's death be turned over to them for trial and punishment.
The respected trader John Oldham, attacked on a trading voyage to Block Island on July 20, 1636, is killed, together with several of his crew, and his ship looted by Narragansett-allied natives who seek to discourage English settlers from trading with their Pequot rivals.
Puritan officials have become suspicious of the Narragansett, knowing that the natives of Block Island are allies of the Eastern Niantic, who are allied with the Narragansett.
In the weeks that follow the Oldham killings, colonial officials from Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, assume the Narragansett are the likely culprits.
Even so, the colonial English response to Oldham's death, the last in a series of escalating incidents, has traditionally been viewed as the beginning of the Pequot War.
News of Oldham's death has become the subject of sermons in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
Governor Vane sends John Endecott to exact revenge on the natives of Block Island in August.
Endecott's party of roughly ninety men sails to Block Island and attacks a Niantic village.
Most of the Niantic escape, but fourteen are killed, while two of Endecott's men are injured.
The Puritan militia burns the village to the ground, carrying away crops which the Niantic have stored for winter, and destroying what they cannot carry.
Endecott goes on to Fort Saybrook.
The English at Saybrook are not happy about the raid, but agree that some of them will accompany Endecott as guides.
Endecott sails along the coast to a Pequot village, where he repeats the previous year's demand of payment for the death of Stone and more for Oldham.
After some discussion, Endecott concludes that the Pequot are stalling and attacks.
The Pequot ruse works: most escape into the woods.
Endecott has his forces burn down the village and crops before sailing home.
The three Connecticut River towns—Windsor, Wethersfield, and Hartford—set up a collective government in 1637 in order to fight the Pequot War.
These settlers seek to establish a new ecclesiastical society subject to their own rules and regulations.
According to historian Henry S. Cohn: "They resented the power of the Magistrates who were not elected by the people. But they also wanted to expand their land holdings...”
The English of the Connecticut colonies have to deal with the anger of the Pequot in the aftermath of the raid.
The Pequot attempt to enjoin their allies, some thirty-six tributary villages, to their cause but are only partly effective.
The Western Niantic join them but the Eastern Niantic remain neutral.
The traditional enemies of the Pequot, the Mohegan and the Narragansett, openly side with the English.
The Narragansett had warred with and lost territory to the Pequot in 1622.
Now their friend Roger Williams urges them to side with the English against them.
Fort Saybrook has been effectively besieged through the fall and winter; persons venturing outside have been killed.
The Pequot step up their raids on Connecticut towns as spring arrives in 1637.