The Mystic Massacre

465 Words2 Pages
The puritans The Pequot War The Mystic massacre In chapter two of our book, I was shocked that there was only a brief paragraph on the Pequot War (1634-1638). Many history buffs consider the Mystic massacre genocide as others do not. I believe it was genocide and there should have been more explanation about the escalating tensions between the Pequot and Puritans in the book. This was a giant event in American History as “The destruction of one of the region’s most powerful Indian groups not only opened the Connecticut River valley to rapid white settlement but also persuaded other Indians that the newcomers possessed a power that could not be resisted”(pg. 78). The raid on Mystic left hundreds of men, women, and, children burned alive and for dead. Those that tried to escape from the flames were shot by the guns of the Puritans or from the Puritans allies, the Narragansett tribe. Many survivors of the Pequot were forced into slavery and others were hunted down to be exterminated leaving a dismantled tribe. This colossal win for the English Puritans allowed for being unmolested by Native Tribes for many years to come, increased expansion as the English were not to be contested, and , in all helped bring more revenue as the fur trade was now an open market. The Puritans After reading about the Puritans I found them overly and disgustingly egotistical. There are many examples in the book of their narcissistic ways. The puritans believed they were chosen by God to lead people to true salvation. The pilgrims who arrived and settled in Plymouth, “an area whose native population had recently been decimated by smallpox…whose fields had been cleared before the epidemic and were ready for cultivation” (pg. 70) claimed God has prepared the land for them ignoring the fact this was a Native village and people had cultivated the land, not a doing of God. Another
Open Document