Note: Whites and Natives means the forefathers of White and Native Americans, though they rarely called themselves that back then.
The Mystic massacre (May 26th 1637) was the worst massacre in the genocide known as the Pequot War. White Americans killed 400 to 900 Pequots, mostly women, children and old men. They burned down their main town, Mystic (in present-day Connecticut), killing those who tried to escape. Most were burned alive.
William Bradford, Pilgrim Father:
It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fire and the streams of blood quenching the same, and horrible was the stink and scent thereof; but the victory seemed a sweet sacrifice, and they gave the praise thereof to God, who had wrought so wonderfully for them, thus to enclose their enemies in their hands and give them so speedy a victory over so proud and insulting an enemy.
Captain John Mason attacked Mystic at dawn when most were still asleep. He cried out, “We must burn them!” God approved, said Mason:
God was above them, who laughed his Enemies and the Enemies of his People to Scorn, making them as a fiery Oven: … Thus did the Lord judge among the Heathen, filling the Place with dead Bodies!
The Narragansetts, long-time enemies of the Pequots, fought alongside Whites. But at Mystic they fell back and started shouting. They said:
It is too furious, and slays too many men.
Rev. Cotton Mather of Boston said in 1702 that it was “the just Judgment of God”, that
In a little more than one hour, five or six hundred of these barbarians were dismissed from a world that was burdened with them.
Mystic was merely the worst massacre. Not much later, 300 Pequots fled through swampland. Because their children slowed them down, Whites were able to run them down and kill them, tramping them into the mud or burying them in the swamp.
The war had blindsided the Pequots. They thought Whites were their friends: they had a treaty.
Pequots who lived through the war were made slaves and forced to give up the name of Pequot. The Pequot River was renamed the Thames, the town of Pequot became New London.
The excuse for genocide was the murder of two White men whose killers the Pequots were harbouring.
The motive was land: Pequots and their allies controlled much of what is now Connecticut.
Lessons that Natives of the region learned about White Americans:
- They break promises when it suits them.
- They make war without mercy or scruple.
- They have way better weapons.
The Pequots had warned the Narrangansetts against allying with Whites, that they would be next. They were right: in the 1640s Whites forced the Narrangansetts, under threat of war, to give up most of their land (now called Rhode Island). In the 1670s they too were massacred, in King Philip’s War.
A ship that sold Pequots into slavery in the Caribbean returned the following year, 1638: it brought the first known black slaves to New England.
See also:
Good post!
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Once again, Abagond pretends to give a shlt about Indians to justify his racism against whites. I particularly enjoyed his alleged Narragansett quote. The idea that the Narragansett were merely bystanders is absurd. It’s well-known they participated fully in the attack. They even chased down and killed any Pequot trying to flee.
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Da Jokah,
And once again, you CHOSE to come back. lol
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@ Abagond, you said that the actions of the English settlers were:
Lessons that Natives of the region learned about White Americans.
I’d put that in another way: this was a lesson in Anglo-Saxon domination.
The military cruelty and political treachery of the Englishmen the Native peoples encountered acted in the service of systemic and overwhelming greed that was at the heart of their own society. The England these men and women knew was not a country where one isolated landlord subjugated the peasantry and stole their land. Hardly. The English land system DEPENDED on theft and exploitation and killing, when necessary, to work.
By “Anglo-Saxon” I don’t mean something ethnic, I mean psychology and culture. So, in a sense, any recounting of American history should have as its prologue some bloody history of the English — for clarity and context.
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Abagond, who is the artist who painted the Pequot warrior towards the end of your article?
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@ Bulanik
I believe that is the work of Z.S. Liang , a Chinese painter specializing in paintings featuring Native Americans.
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[…] The Mystic massacre (May 26th 1637) was the worst massacre in the genocide known as the Pequot War. White Americans killed 400 to 900 Pequots, mostly women, children and old men. They burned down their main town, Mystic (in present-day Connecticut), killing those who tried to escape. Most were burned alive…. […]
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@ King, I’ve never heard of Z.S. Liang before. Thank you.
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[…] See on abagond.wordpress.com […]
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that is disgusting they have a statue of a murderer at the site, why not a memorial for the victims. it’s crazy they burned them while they slept I see it was a bunch of bi#@charse fighting back then, burning ppl while they slept, killing women and children. smh
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It seems that Reverend Cotton Mather got around, since he was also a central figure in the Salem witch trials.
As with the razing of the Pequot village, land theft, aka land “transfer”, also played a role in the imprisonment and murder of the so-called Salem “witches” (most of whom were women that were killed via hangings and NOT immolation, as is frequently assumed, though burning at the stake was indeed the main method used in medieval Europe to kill tens of thousands of people, with the majority of them also being women).
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[…] The Mystic massacre (May 26th 1637) was the worst massacre in the genocide known as the Pequot War. White Americans killed 400 to 900 Pequots, mostly women, children and old men. They burned down their main town, Mystic (in present-day Connecticut), killing those who tried to escape. Most were burned alive…. […]
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[…] See on abagond.wordpress.com […]
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This is an insightful post, this is so horrific burning people alive, this is just disgusiting and shows how depraved these individuals who perpetrated this animalistic and sadistic act. This is just another example of the hatred of certain racist individuals towards Native Americans. Shameful and sadistic. All the stuff they taught us in school as when we were youngsters was just a bunch of lies.
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Why are statues erected for individuals who commit heinous crimes?
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The most vile perpetrators of evil always profess to be God fearing Christians. But, I forgot the KKK, professed to be so called God fearing Christians as well.
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“Why are statues erected for individuals who commit heinous crimes?”
*********
One answer: Why is the president and the US military still held in high esteem by millions? Because a nation/culture that is steeped (rooted and co-opted in EVIL) in DEMONISM, yet professed to be a Godly country cannot help but do such vile things. In other words, they *tell on* themselves.
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@ mary burrell
“Why are statues erected for individuals who commit heinous crimes?”
B/c US (and most other countries) were built on the blood and sweat of others.
Go to any old US city and the statues usually honour war “heroes” …like Chicago, which has had several huge statues of war “heroes” for many years. One would think du Sable, the city’s Afro-Haitian, businessman founder would have been honoured in the same way, but no, not in Chicago. It took until 2009 to give its founder a statue, but instead of something big and grand, it’s a tiny bust in an inconspicuous location.
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Da jokah, really? Come on man. Be a decent human please. Abagond, thank you for the post.
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Kiwi,
Da Jokah cares more about the revelation of a massacre done by white men tarnishing the image of white people than the actual event itself which resulted in hundreds of lives lost. It speaks volumes about his morality and maturity level.
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@MB
Andrew Jackson’s statue is right in front of the White House and in New Orleans.
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@ King
Thanks for the artist ID.
@ Bulanik
Liang paints sympathetic and historically accurate paintings of Native Americans. More:
http://www.mountaintraditions.com/s-760-liang-zs.aspx
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@ Da Jokah
The Narrangansetts did catch those who made it past Mason’s line of soldiers, maybe about like five people, who became slaves from what I understand.
The Narrangansetts were not Boy Scouts and they had little love for the Pequots, a long-time enemy. On the other hand, destroying a whole town, men, women and children, went way beyond what they considered necessary or honourable.
That is not some PC fantasy of mine. Even Whites of that time and place said so:
John Mason himself said the Native style of fighting was of:
John Underhill, who was at the Massacre, said that Natives:
Roger Williams, who founded the colony of Rhode Island and knew the Narrangansetts well, said:
Williams added the Native code of honour:
ON TOP OF THAT there is a huge difference between genocide and war, one that White commenters love to overlook. The purpose of war is to defeat your enemy militarily. The purpose of genocide is to wipe them out, not just their armies but their unarmed men, women, children as well.
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Correction: That statue of John Mason no longer stands in Mystic. In 1993 they moved it to another part of the state. It is now in Windsor, Connecticut, north of Hartford.
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Reblogged this on oogenhand.
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“might fight seven yeares and not kill seven men.”
Roger Williams, who founded the colony of Rhode Island and knew the Narrangansetts well, said:
“Their Warres are farre lesse bloudy, and devouring than the cruell Warres of Europe; and seldome twenty slain in a pitcht field. . . . When they fight in a plaine, they fight with leaping and dancing, that seldome an Arrow hits, and when a man is wounded, unlesse he that shot followes upon the wounded, they soone retire and save the wounded.”
Williams added the Native code of honour:
“ordinarily spared the women and children of their adversaries.”
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Abagond,
Yet these *settlers* (European invaders) had the audacity to call the Native Americans, primitive & SAVAGE. The irony (and projection) is incredible!
The universe gave them several teachable moments, and they wasted it!
Makes me wonder what else they lied about … that we don’t yet know.
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“The war had blindsided the Pequots. They thought the whites were their friends: they had a treaty.” A classic mistake made by everyone who has ever had any contact with those people. Everyone has been ‘blindsided’ by them because they’ve used pretense and smooth talk to misrepresent themselves and mask their real agenda. Most people, thinking they were dealing with normal humans usually got fooled, and subsequently lost their land, their resources, their people, their wealth, their sanity, their culture, their happiness, their freedom, and ultimately their lives. Any people who would burn others alive (and they’ve done this to their own) or trample women and children into the mud and kill them is not a people to be trusted or given the benefit of the doubt, and that’s being nice about it. It is just heartbreaking to read about what was done to the native people of this continent by what I consider to be humanity’s worst enemy.
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@ mary burrell,
Why ARE statues erected to commemorate killers? The English talk proudly of the murderer that was Oliver Cromwell. The Irish remember him for his personally directed massacres…and then systematically enforcing famine and watching over the breakout of the Plague of the population….
Notice too, these statues are always placed high so that we have to look UP to them? It’s to promote lies and cover up what they were child-killing, raping, ethnic cleansing, genocidal maniacs, and to mythologize them as heroes instead. Then, after we look up to these fine examples of humanity, teachers won’t tell us that they were mass murdering bastards.
No, school tells us these great men are “our” champions, that they fought for “us” and our rights.
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I would love to repost at http://www.ensaynreality.squarespace.com
Peace…Excellent post!
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@ Ensayn
Thanks. Feel free to repost so long as you give credit.
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It’s interesting that Native peoples are referred to as “Pequots” and “Narrangansetts” while European peoples are referred to as simply “whites”.
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^ Well, that’s exactly how the first British settlers saw themselves. In fact, they basically saw themselves as one of the only people who WERE white. Even people from Ireland and parts of Europe (e.g. people in the Balkans, Bulgaria, Romania) were seen as ‘non-white subhumans’. In fact, just before they started invading the new world, the British army was having a whale of a time senselessly slaughtering Irish tribes in the wars preceding, with British generals claiming that they were ‘untrustworthee and scandaluss savages, hew would betraie a civilais’d man as soon as theiee met them’ before going on to massacre an entire Irish village and plant each villagers’ head in a uniform line towards the village to serve as a ‘warning’ for other Irish tribes.
Also, what the hell has that got to do with this? Are you seriously trying to claim ‘racism towards whites’ in an article about white English invaders massacring locals and forcefully appropriating land?
What’s next? Are you going to claim that calling the conquistadors savages is racist? Calling a group of Spanish Jihadis who cut off native children’s heads for ball games, bifurcated native people with swords for fun, hunted native people with dogs as if they were less than animals, spread disease, forced natives to slave away for gold resources that did not even exist to begin with and cut their hands off – leaving them to bleed to death – if they couldn’t attain the imaginary metal deposits in a set amount of time as savages is ‘racist’, now?
With this stupid line of logic, it’ll be racist to call the Nazis racists!
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@ Yosef
Who cares? Seriously? I mean, what you wrote about white-on-white warfare is true and all, but why is it that people always bring up European fratricidal warfare when one speaks about the crimes against Humanity that whites have yet to be punished for?
What parity is there between the experience of Blacks vs that of whites? None. Yes, all warfare is bad (and it’s worse that otherwise sane humans can be tricked into killing other humans) but it’s fvcking annoying to see this card being played all the time. No one is robbing and looting Europe (of natural and human resources) and no one ever has.
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Abagond
If your quotes portend to show the peaceful non-violent nature of the Pequot then they do no such thing. The meaning of the quotes is that they were incompetent when it came to organized warfare.
The Pequot War originated with the fur trade. The Pequot wanted a monopoly on the fur trade. Consequently, they invaded Mohegan and Narrangansett lands and aggressively attacked and murdered other Indians who tried to trade with the Dutch. The Mohegan and Narrangansett naturally traded with the English instead. So the Pequot expanded their attacks to English fur traders and small, isolated English towns of just a couple of houses where they murdered the families. The English demanded that the Pequot surrender those responsible to be punished. The Pequot refused and continued in the attacks. So the English, Mohegan and Narrangansett raised a militia to attack the Pequot village responsible.
The Pequot village was undefended for a reason. The militia didn’t want to be ambushed so they set out by boat to deliberately mislead the Pequot into thinking they were headed in another direction. They then took to shore and marched 20 miles back upriver towards the Pequot village. Pequot spies along the river raced back and told the village that the English, Mohegan and Narragansett homes were undefended. The entire Pequot male population left to go massacre the women and children. In other words, Pequot homes were undefended because they were trying to do the same thing. It’s quite obvious who the aggressors were leading up to the “Mystic Massacre”. It was preceded by 40 years of conflict and followed by 40 years of peace. If the English, Mohegan and Narragansett had been the aggressors they would have continued fighting each other for power. They didn’t.
Massacres were not, however, out of character for eastern woodland indians. Only 15 years earlier, Powhatan had massacred 347 men, women and children at Jamestown in the Indian massacre of 1622. That was the first massacre between whites and indians in what was later to become the continental US. Interesting that you should choose the Mystic Massacre to write about and not this one
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Interesting! It seems that the forefathers of today’s “Patriots” of the USA came to America without passports or visas and shot up the indigenous people. Now, these “Patriots” of today, among other things, want to prevent other people from coming into the USA…..
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@Lord of Mirkwood
Why should Abagond change the language when it is 100% accurate? To make you feel comfortable? They called themselves white, and white people associate with them. And they acted no differently from the French a few hundred miles north or the Dutch and Swedish a few hundred miles south.
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@ Lord of Mirkwood
It is a bit anachronistic. I know that. That is why I noted that at the top of the post. The period from 1607 to 1676 is awkward to write about because, while it is clearly part of White American history, no one back then saw it that way. That is the effect of historical hindsight. The word “Americans” still meant just the Indians at that point. But for the sake of consistency with other posts, in what is a searchable medium, I use “White American” and “Native American”, with the caveat at top.
“Anglo” might be a better term, if I used it consistently, not just about US history, but also British, Canadian, Australian, South African and New Zealand history. Probably in a thousand years historians will use some sort of term like that, just as we use “Greek” and “Arab” in the same way. I have found, though, that not everyone has a clear idea of what “Anglo” means. Since I write mainly about racism, “White” is a much clearer term. I have seen it used the way I use it in books on Native Americans and it works pretty well.
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@ Lord of Mirkwood
The British Empire is to blame, but so are the people we now call White Americans, the massacre’s main beneficiaries to this day.
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[…] The first official “Day of Thanksgiving” was recorded in November of 1637 by Massachusetts Governor John Winthrope who did so to celebrate the safe return of English patriots from Mystic, Connecticut. There, these patriots massacred 600 members of the Pequot tribe after they had peacefully surrendered and accepted Christianity at the colonists request, and is known today as the Mystic Massacre. […]
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