How Captain John Underhill and his Company Smote the Pequots

The Sinner

1634 - 1638

 

Lion Gardiner in the Pequot War from a Charles Stanley Reinhart
drawing circa 1890  fro m Wikipedia

The Boston company’s arrival at Fort Saybrook coincides with that of the Mohegan chief, Uncas, and sixty warriors. The Pequots were known as the Mohegan, when they originally invaded southern New England. The Algonquin gave them the name, Pequot, which means “Destroyer.” In 1636, a splinter group under Uncas broke away from Sassacus, great sachem of the Pequots, and set themselves up as the re-formed Mohegans.

When the English question their loyalty, Uncas and his warriors demonstrate their good faith by exterminating a party of Pequots and presenting their allies with four decapitated heads. They also deliver a spy of Chief Sassacus to Fort Saybrook. One of the man’s legs is tied to a post, a rope is secured to the other, and the man is torn limb from limb by English soldiers. As the Pequot’s screams rend the air, Nat demands that Underhill stop the atrocity. The captain’s weapon misfires. Nat raises his own pistol and shoots the prisoner.

A 19th-century engraving depicting an incident in the Pequot War
from Wikipedia Commons

 

Away from the war zone, Thomas is in the battle lines at Newtowne on Election Day, May 17, 1637. So fierce is the contest between the Winthrop-Vane factions that Thomas and several rivals come to blows. Henry Vane is ousted before the Wheelwright petition can be submitted. Winthrop is elected governor, with Dudley as his deputy. Their first move is to pass an alien exclusion act aimed at Boston and the Hutchinsonians, forbidding the landing of “any persons as might be dangerous to the commonwealth.”

 

At dawn on May 26, 1637, the English attack the Pequot stronghold at Mystic. Nat and Underhill breach the stockade from the southwest; John Mason and his Connecticut men storm in on the northeast. Eighty huts housing men, women and children are set on fire. In one hour, four hundred Pequots die, most burned alive. Seven are captured, and seven escape. Two Englishmen are killed and a third of the force wounded.

Adam and Jacques Petit witness the Pequots’ last stand in a swamp near New Haven. Two hundred old men, women and children are taken prisoner. Chief Sassacus and twenty followers escape to the west seeking refuge with the Mohawks. Awed by the violence of the Cut-Throats, no tribe will offer Sassacus sanctuary. Instead, the Pequot chief and his bodyguards are butchered. Sassacus’ head and the forty hands of his followers are delivered to John Wilson, serving as army chaplain. The zealot carries the trophies back to Boston.

Scores of captive Pequot men, women and children are placed in holding pens next to Frog Pond. Most will be distributed among English settlers as farm laborers and house servants. Fifteen men, three boys and a girl who begs not to be separated from her brother are chosen for transportation. – Nat Steele is appointed factor in a ship sailing to the Caribbean, where the cargo of Pequots will be sold as slaves.

In the dark of night, Jacques Petit hurries across Boston Common, moving as stealthily as when he was a boy taking food to William Blaxton, only now his mission is personal. In the inferno at Mystic, Jacques pulls a Pequot girl out of a blazing wigwam. Sixteen-year-old Tanawaka, Little Cloud, is the lone female held in the slave pen with her brother, Mikweh, The Squirrel.

Jacques and Little Cloud come to love each other, a love growing desperate with each hour that brings the girl closer to perpetual banishment. Jacques goes to the only people who can help him. When Adam and Recompense hear his impassioned appeal, they don’t hesitate. “I’ve thirty shillings from a saint of Plymouth,” declares Recompense. “It’s enough to buy one little Pequot devil!” When Nat sails for the Caribbean, Adam also arranges for the girl’s brother to stay behind.