An Indigenous Peoples History of the United States Ortiz

62 An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

the settlement frontier deeper into Indigenous territories.14 That the

rebellion's leader, Nathaniel Bacon, was a wealthy planter reveals

the relationship between the wealthy landed settlers and the poorer,

often landless, settlers. Historian Eric Foner rightly concludes that

the rebellion was a power play by Bacon against the Virginia gov­

ernor William Berkeley and his planter allies, as Bacon's financial

backers included other wealthy planters opposed to Berkeley. 15

IN THE NAME OF GOD

What transpired up the coast in the founding and growth of the

New England colony was different, at least at first. Just before the

1620 landing of the Mayflower, smallpox had spread from English

trading ships off the coast to the Pequot fishing and farming com­

munities on land, greatly reducing the population of the area the

Plymouth Colony would occupy. King James attributed the epidemic

to God's "great goodness and bounty toward us." 16 Consequently,

those who survived in the Indigenous communities had little means

to immediately resist the settlers' expropriation of their lands and

resources. Sixteen years later, however, the Indigenous villages had

recovered and were considered a barrier to the settlers moving into

Pequot territory in Connecticut. A single violent incident triggered

a devastating Puritan war against the Pequots in what the colony's

annals and subsequent history texts call the Pequot War.

The Puritan settlers, as if by instinct, jumped immediately into a

hideous war of annihilation, entering Indigenous villages and kill­

ing women and children or taking them hostage. The Pequots re­

sponded by attacking English settlements, including Fort Saybrook

in Connecticut. Connecticut authorities commissioned mercenary

John Mason to lead a force of soldiers from that colony and Mas­

sachusetts to one of the two Pequot strongholds on the Mystic River.

Pequot fighters occupied one of the forts, while the other one con­

tained only women, children, and old men. The latter was the one

John Mason targeted. Slaughter ensued. After killing most of the

Pequot defenders, the soldiers set fire to the structures and burned

the remaining inhabitants alive.1 7