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| Field name | Value |
|---|---|
| Collection Reference Number | GLC01105 |
| From Archive Folder | Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Exploration and Settlement |
| Title | John Winthrop to Nathaniel Rich, imparting news regarding the colony and the local Native Americans |
| Date | 22 May 1634 |
| Author | Winthrop, John (1588-1649) |
| Recipient | Rich, Nathaniel |
| Document Type | Correspondence |
| Content Description | Reply to an October 1633 letter from Sir Nathaniel Rich inquiring about conditions in the colony. Describes Boston and the local Native Americans and mentions Royal Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony Thomas Dudley, Mr. Parker, John Alden, and John Howland, the last two in reference to an altercation on the Pascataqua River. Written just after Winthrop's first term as Royal Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. |
| Subjects | American Indian History Government and Civics |
| People | Winthrop, John (1588-1649) Alden, John (1599-1687) Dudley, Thomas (1576-1653) |
| Place written | Boston, Massachusetts |
| Theme | Native Americans; Government & Politics |
| Sub-collection | The Gilder Lehrman Collection, 1493-1859 |
| Additional Information | In a letter written in Boston four years after its founding, John Winthrop (1606-1676) explains the difficulties of establishing a self-sustaining, self-governing settlement and describes the colonists' mounting conflict with the Indians. Compared to the Southeast, it was much more difficult for native peoples of New England to resist the encroaching English colonists. For one thing, the Northeast was much less densely populated. Epidemic diseases introduced by European fishermen and fur traders reduced the population of New England's coastal Indians about 90 percent by the early 1620s. Further, this area was fragmented politically into autonomous villages with a long history of bitter tribal rivalries. Such factors allowed the Puritans to expand rapidly across New England. Some groups, notably the Massachusetts, whose number had fallen from about 20,000 to just 750 in 1631, allied with the Puritans and agreed to convert to Christianity in exchange for military protection. But the migration of Puritan colonists into western Massachusetts and Connecticut during the 1630s provoked bitter warfare, especially with the Pequots, the area's most powerful people. In 1636, English settlers accused a Pequot of attacking ships and murdering several sailors; in revenge, they burned a Pequot settlement on what is now Block Island, Rhode Island. Pequot raids left about 30 colonists dead. A combined force of Puritans and Narragansett and Mohegan Indians retaliated by surrounding and setting fire to the main Pequot village on the Mystic River. In his History of Plymouth Plantation, William Bradford described the destruction by fire of the Pequot's major village, in which at least 300 Indians were burned to death: "Those that escaped from the fire were slain with the sword; some hewed to pieces, others run threw with their rapiers [swords]....It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fier, and the streams of blood quenching the same." The survivors were enslaved and shipped to the Caribbean. Altogether about 800 of 3,500 Pequot were killed during the Pequot War. In his epic novel Moby Dick, Herman Melville names his doomed whaling ship The Pequod, a clear reference to earlier events in New England. |
| Copyright | The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History |
| Module | Settlement, Commerce, Revolution and Reform: 1493-1859 |
| Transcript | Show/hide |