ments for the settlement of estates and for the procuring of provisions. The trespasses of swine made constant trouble for the founders of Connecticut, as well as for the legislators of the community they had left. Before the year expired, new names were given to the three 1637. lower towns. Newtown was called Hartford, Feb. 21. after the English birthplace of Mr. Stone; Watertown took the name of Wethersfield, and Dorchester that of Windsor.1 The government of the Connecticut towns by Commissioners of Massachusetts had been but a provisional arrangement, and in practice was found to be inconvenient. The sense of allegiance, such as it was, had been weakened by the short time of absence; and there appeared no good reason why one primitive settlement should owe its laws to another, from which it was separated by the distance of a fortnight's journey through the woods. Accordingly, the Massachusetts commission was not renewed; and, in the second month after the expiration of the year to which it was limited, a General Court was held at Hartford. In it the aggregate community was represented by six persons, five of whom had been Commissioners, while nine others appeared as "committees" from the several towns. Almost at the same time, the new Colony received the welcome accession of John Haynes.3 May 1. The population of the three lower towns on the Connecticut is estimated to have been now about eight hundred, including two hundred and fifty adult men. There were besides twenty of the younger Winthrop's men, under 1 Connecticut Colony Records, 7. 2 Ibid., 9. Mr. 3 “Third month [May], 2. Haynes, one of our Magistrates, removed with his family to Connecticut." (Winthrop, I. 260.) Haynes was in his place at a Court of Assistants of Massachusetts, March 7 (Mass. Col. Rec., I. 193), thus performing the last public service to which his official term as Assistant extended. "Mr. Haynes is now come to Hartford." (Letter of Ludlow to Pynchon, May 17, in Mass. Hist. Coll., XVIII. 235.) Gardiner, in the fort at the river's mouth. The colonists early had cause for extreme uneasiness, and they had not been a year in their new home, before they waged a sanguinary war for their existence. War with It has been mentioned that the Pequots, the most formidable tribe of New England, occupied the country between the Pawcatuck River, now the western the Pequots. boundary of Rhode Island, and the river then bearing their name, now called the Thames. Their western border was some thirty miles distant, in a straight line, from the nearest of the recent English settlements. Sassacus was their chief, and twenty-six subordinate sachems acknowledged his sway. It was the encroachments of these people which had led the neighboring tribes to send an embassy to invite an English settlement for their protection. The Narragansetts, whose hunting-grounds lay to the eastward of theirs, and who had hitherto been able, with difficulty, to escape subjection to them, regarded the Pequot chief with a superstitious awe. The Mohegans, who had been tributary to the Pequots, were now irritated against them, and ready for rebellion. 1633. Murder of Stone and 2 Some three years before, two traders, named Stone and Norton, having sailed from New England for Virginia, with a crew of six other persons, had steered their vessel up the Connecticut River for traffic Norton. at the Dutch trading-house. Stone admitted twelve of the natives on board his vessel, and engaged others to pilot two of his men higher up the stream in a boat. The guides, at night, murdered these men, and the Indians on board the vessel rose upon her company while most of them were asleep, and put them also to death. Intelligence of the transaction came by the way of Plymouth to Boston, where the Magistrates "agreed to write to the Governor of Virginia, because Stone was one of that Colony, to move him to revenge it, and upon his 1 Mason, History of the Pequot War, ix. 2 See above, pp. 24, 328. answer, to take further counsel." The murderers belonged to a tribe subject to Sassacus.1 The business slept for several months, when a messenger came to Boston from the Pequot chief, with friendly professions and overtures. By a number of 1634. sticks, brought in two bundles, he signified the October. number of beaver and otter skins which he would give as the price of a treaty. He was told that his master ought to be represented by "persons of greater quality"; and, a fortnight after, two such messengers appeared. When questioned about the death of Stone's people, they protested that the affair was in part accidental, and in part a revenge for ill-treatment from Stone; the latter branch of which allegation was thought not unlikely to be true, as Stone had conducted himself ill in Massachusetts, and had gone away under a sentence of banishment, with the threat of being put to death if he should return.2 The envoys agreed, however, to surrender the only two of the murderers that survived, the rest, as they pretended, having been all killed since, some by the Dutch, others by the small-pox; and they engaged to pay smart-money in the form of wampum and furs, and to cede a further space for settlement. The reason for this submissiveness afterwards appeared to be, that the Pequots were just then in trouble and apprehension on account both of the Narragansetts and the Dutch. The treaty was concluded, but the savages broke their word as to every part of it; and during the following winter their suspicious conduct kept the little garrison at the mouth of the Connecticut in constant alarm. Some further negotiation followed, which came to nothing. The murder of John Oldham, of Watertown, excited fresh alarm. He had early set on foot a Murder of commerce with the Rhode Island and Connect- Oldham. 1 Winthrop, I. 123. Mason, Brief History of the Pequot War, ix. 2 Winthrop, I. 104, 111. Comp. VOL. I. 39 Bradford, 323; Brodhead, History of 3 Winthrop, I. 148. 1636. July 20. icut Indians, and sailed on a trip of this kind in the summer of the English emigrations to that quarter. A Massachusetts fisherman, John Gallup, of Boston, in a boat with another man and two boys, was driven soon after, by a head wind, out of his course, which was from Connecticut to Long Island. In the neighborhood of Block Island, his attention was attracted by the awkward management of a little vessel, which he recognized as belonging to Oldham, of whom he had heard as being on the coast with only two white boys and two Indians. Approaching, he saw a canoe put off from her, and her deck covered with natives. The chances in a conflict were unequal. The savages had greatly the advantage in numbers, and were well armed with pikes, guns, and swords. But Gallup was an English sailor. He had two guns, two pistols, and some duck-shot. With these he kept up so brisk a fire, that the Indians retreated below. He then ran against their vessel with his own, striking so severe a blow that six of the Indians, in their fright, jumped overboard. Repeating this manœuvre,— in unconscious imitation of Athenian naval tactics, he saw four more Indians follow their companions, leaving but four on board. When he sprang on the deck, two of these came up and surrendered themselves, and were bound hand and foot; the other two were shut under the hatches. The body of Oldham was on board, still warm, the head cloven, the hands and feet cut off.1 When the intelligence reached Boston, it occasioned the greater uneasiness on account of the unsettled state of relations with the Pequots, with whom also it was feared that the Narragansetts would be induced to conspire. After consultation with "the Magistrates and minExpedition isters," Governor Vane despatched ninety men to Block-Island- Long Island Sound, in three small vessels, under the command of Endicott of Salem, and of four Aug. 24. against the ers. 1 Winthrop, I. 189, 190. company officers, one of whom, Captain John Underhill, has written an account of this expedition, and of the more important one which followed. A sort of Friar Tuck,devotee, bravo, libertine, and buffoon in equal parts,Underhill takes a memorable place among the eccentric characters who from time to time break what is altogether too easily assumed to have been the dead level of NewEngland gravity in those days. He had been a soldier in Ireland, in Spain, and more recently in the Netherlands, where he "had spoken freely to Count Nassau." He was brought over by Governor Winthrop to train the people in military exercises, and was one of the Deputies from Boston in the first General Court. It was Endicott's earliest trust of this kind, and the manner in which he acquitted himself of it does not constitute one of the most creditable portions of his history. He killed or wounded some of the Block-Islanders, burned their houses, staved their canoes, and cut down their corn.2 1 Antinomians and Familists, &c., 41. 2 Underhill says (Newes from America, 8) that fourteen of the BlockIslanders were killed. But perhaps he was romancing. According to Winthrop (I. 194), "they could not tell what men they killed, but some were wounded, and carried away by their fellows." He afterwards learned (Ibid., 196) that only one Block-Islander was killed outright. Underhill (Newes, &c., 5, 6) relates his own experiences on this occasion: "Myself received an arrow through my coat-sleeve, a second against my helmet on the forehead, so as if God in his providence had not moved the heart of my wife to persuade me to carry it along with me (which I was unwilling to do), I had been slain. Give me leave to observe two things from hence: first, when the hour of death is not yet come, you see God useth weak means to keep his purpose unviolated; secondly, let no man despise advice and counsel of It his wife, though she be a woman. |