Did English Puritans Commit Genocide in New England?
A nineteenth-century engraving depicting the burning of a Pequot Nation Fort, believed to be the Mystic massacre in 1637
WASHINGTON – Sometime before dawn on May 27, 1637, English militia from Massachusetts and Connecticut, backed by several hundred Narragansett and Mohegan allies, launched a surprise attack on the fortified Pequot village of Mystic, one of about 20 Pequot tribal villages in southeastern Connecticut.
By now, Plymouth Colony, established by the Pilgrims in 1620, was a self-sufficient settlement. After a rocky first winter that saw half the colonists die, the Pilgrims and local Wampanoag tribe signed a peace deal that still held 16 years later.