Description

Before their massacre by Massachusetts Puritans in 1637, the Pequots were preeminent in southern New England. Their location on the eastern Connecticut shore made them important producers of the wampum required to trade for furs from the Iroquois. They were also the only Connecticut Indians to oppose the land-hungry English. For those reasons, they became the first victims of white genocide in colonial America. Despite the Pequot War of 1637, and the greed and neglect of their white neighbors and "overseers," the Pequots endured in their ancestral homeland. In 1983 they achieved federal recognition. In 1987 they commemorated the 350th anniversary of the Pequot War by organizing the Mashantucket Pequot Historical Conference, at which distinguished scholars presented the articles assembled here. William T. Hagan is retired Professor of History at the University of Oklahoma. His numerous books on American Indian subjects include The Sac and Fox Indians; United States-Comanche Relations; Quanah Parker, Comanche Chief; and Theodore Roosevelt and Six Friends of the Indian, all published by the University of Oklahoma Press. Laurence M. Hauptman is Professor of History in the State University of New York, College at New Paltz, and the author of several books on the Iroquois in New York state. James Wherry is the Socio-Economic Development Specialist of the Mashantucket Pequot Tribe. He has won the Praxis Award for his work as an applied anthropologist.