The Pequot War was the first major conflict between Native Americans and Europeans in northeastern North America. It began in September 1636, lasted eleven months, and involved thousands of Native and English peoples in several major battles in present-day Connecticut. In the early months, most of the fighting occurred about a half-mile east of here during the Siege and Battle of Saybrook Fort from September 1636 to March 1637. Lieutenant Lion Gardiner defended Saybrook Fort against repeated Pequot attacks during the fall and winter of 1636-1637, while over half of the fort garrison became casualties. In early March 1637, the siege ended when the English-allied Narragansett attacked Pequot country from the east and reinforcements from Massachusetts Bay arrived under Captain John Underhill. For the rest of the war, Saybrook Fort served as the gathering place for most English forces before campaigns against the Pequot at Mistick and Quinnipiac, and after the war it remained in use until fire destroyed it in 1647. Before European arrival, Western Niantic Indians lived on the lands at the mouth of the Connecticut River and east to their largest village at Nameaug, at the site of present-day New London. They called Saybrook Point Pasbeshauke, meaning place at the river's mouth, and established village sites there and near the Oyster River. They farmed corn, squash, and beans, harvested fish and oysters, hunted seasonally, used hollowed-tree canoes called muhshoon, wove mats and baskets from cattails and bulrushes, and made pottery from local clay. At the time of European contact, the Niantic Tribe numbered around 2,500 people under Sachem Sassious. When Dutch traders including Adriaen Block arrived in 1614, they called the point Kieveets Hoek, and around 1624 they began a short-lived settlement there before moving to New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island. The Dutch West India Company formed a trading relationship with the Pequot, who exchanged fur and wampum for European goods and expanded their dominance over tribes along the coast, the lower Connecticut River valley, and eastern Long Island. The Pequot granted the Dutch the right to build the House of Hope at present-day Hartford in 1633, and by 1635 had formed a confederacy of dozens of tribes in which the Western Niantics were close allies and later fought beside them in the war. English settlers from Plimoth Colony and Massachusetts Bay began arriving on the Connecticut River in late 1633 and quickly established Windsor, Wethersfield, and Hartford. In 1635, workmen from the Saybrook Company took control of the point and named the settlement Saybrook after Viscount Saye and Sele and Lord Brooke. Rising tensions among Native American, Dutch, and English interests ended with English victory in the Pequot War, which gave the English control of the Connecticut River Valley despite protests from the Dutch and neighboring tribes. The Western Niantics were later allotted reservation lands in the Town of Lyme at Black Point through the 1870's.

Photo: Michael Herrick

Photo: Michael Herrick