By Kevin McBride, Ph.D., and David Naumec (Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center)
Researchers Kevin McBride and David Naumec from the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center will provide a free lecture at the Fairfield Museum and History Center on Thursday, June 19 at 7pm. The lecture, entitled The Great Swamp Fight, will discuss battle sites of the Pequot War and preliminary findings about the Pequot Swamp in Southport. The lecture is intended to be a show and tell format, encouraging public
participation. The researchers welcome ideas, theories, speculations or questions regarding the Pequot War or a particular battlefield site. The research team is also very interested in personal viewpoints and perspectives of the war, and encourages attendees to bring found objects that might date to the battle.
After more than 370 years the Pequot War (1636-1638) remains one of the most controversial and significant events in the Colonial and Native history. The war has been debated, discussed and analyzed for centuries in hundreds of articles, books, narratives and films. Often lost in the works of scholars and antiquarians is the fact that the Pequot War lasted more than two years, consisted of dozens of battles and skirmishes extending through Rhode Island, Connecticut and eastern New York, and was as much an inter-tribal war as it was a Pequot-English War. The Pequot War forever changed the political and social landscape of southern New England. The massacre at Mystic Fort, as was the English intent, demonstrated to all Native people in southern New England and elsewhere the English ability and will to wage total war against real and imagined enemies. The defeat of the Pequot left a power vacuum in southern New England that initiated forty years of inter-tribal warfare as the Mohegan and Narragansett competed to replace the Pequot as the most powerful Native tribe in the region.
Irrespective of the historical significance of the war, the war continues to live on in the individual and collective memories of the descendants of the Colonists and Native peoples of southern New England. Each year members of the Pequot Tribe gather on the anniversary of the Mystic Massacre for a “First Light” ceremony to commemorate and honor the hundreds of Pequot men, women and children who were massacred at the Mystic Fort on June 11, 1637. The Townspeople of Groton, Old Saybrook and Fairfield memorialized the war through pageants, plays and monuments in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The John Mason statue, erected in 1889 at the site of the massacre, was removed to Windsor in 1996 and subsequently vandalized, is testimony to the ongoing debate about the war and its legacy.
In spite of centuries of research, debate and discussion, the Pequot War remains one of the most mis-interpreted and least understood events in the Colonial and Native history of early America. Native groups through the region sought to ally themselves with the English to pursue their own political and military goals. The numerous letters and narratives of the war testify to the complexity of Native social, political, diplomatic and military relationships in the region. Natives fought alongside the Pequot throughout the war in a loose “confederacy”, and include the Western Niantic, Mohegan, several Nipmuck bands from northeastern Connecticut, the Sasqua of Fairfield and the Quinnipiac of New Haven. There is evidence the Quinnipiac participated in the Pequot attack on Wethersfield on May 4, 1637; one of the most significant events in the war. This attack justified an English declaration of an “offensive” and “just” war against the Pequot, and led directly to the attack on the Pequot fortified Village at Mystic a few weeks later.
In recognition of the historical and contemporary significance of the Pequot War, the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center (MPMRC) has embarked on a multi-year research project funded by the National Park Service American Battlefield Protection Program (ABPP) to identify and preserve battlefields and historical sites associated with the Pequot War. The primary goal of the project is the identification of prospective battlefield sites and obtaining physical evidence of a battlefield through archaeological investigations.
The MPMRC has partnered with the Office of the Connecticut State Archaeologist, the Connecticut State Historian and many local historical societies, research centers and museums from Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and New York to undertake a comprehensive study of all aspects of the Pequot War. The early phases of research include identification and analysis of primary narratives, accounts and descriptions of the war, a review of scholarly and antiquarian works, analysis of Inter-tribal diplomatic and political relations, analysis of Native and Colonial military strategies, understanding tactics and weapons, analysis of artifacts associated with the war, and a review of historical and contemporary perspectives and images of the war.
The Fairfield Swamp Fight is one of the most significant events of the Pequot War and has become the main focus of research in the last few months. The numerous narratives and accounts of the battle provide valuable information on English and Pequot military tactics and weapons (including the only known reference of the use of firearms by Pequot warriors in combat), as well as important insight into the relationship between the Pequot and their native allies and tributaries.
The Fairfield Swamp Fight is also significant because it marks the first time during the Pequot War that English policy and practice regarding war captives and combatants is clarified. Native warriors and sachems were systematically executed by the English, while women and children of high social/political status who could rebuild the shattered Pequot tribe were sold into slavery outside of the colonies. Approximately two dozen Pequot and Sasqua women and children were sold into slavery to English colonists at Providence Island off the coast Nicaragua and the Isle of Nevis in the Lesser Antilles. The remainder of the 180 women and children captured at the Fairfield Swamp Fight were sold or given to English colonists in Connecticut or Massachusetts Bay.
The settlement of Fairfield which occurred less than a year after the Fairfield Swamp Fight was a direct result of the battle that took place at Pequot Swamp. When the Sasqua surrendered to the English in the midst of the battle they ceded all rights to their lands by right of conquest. The core group of the first Fairfield settlers, including notable Connecticut colonist Roger Ludlow future governor of Connecticut, were primarily soldiers who fought at Fairfield Swamp.
In the centuries following the end of the Pequot War, the Pequot Swamp Fight continues to be memorialized as a seminal event in Colonial and Native history. In one of the historical ironies of the Pequot War, the memory and name of Pequot people, declared to be extinct in the Treaty of Hartford, continued to persist in the many monuments, places and edifices that bear the Pequot name in Fairfield- a lasting testament to the legacy of the Pequot War.
Fairfield Museum and History Center is located at 370 Beach Road in Fairfield CT, behind Old Town Hall. For more information about this lecture and all the other events and programs the museum offers, please visit www.fairfieldhs.org or call 203-259-1598.
