Connecticut Colony
The Connecticut Colony, originally known as the Connecticut River Colony, was an English colony in New England which became the state of Connecticut. It was organized on March 3, 1636 as a settlement for a Puritan congregation of settlers from the Massachusetts Bay Colony led by Thomas Hooker. The English secured their control of the region in the Pequot War. The colony eventually absorbed the neighboring New Haven and Saybrook colonies. It was part of the brief Dominion of New England. The colony's founding document was the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, which has been called the first written constitution of a democratic government, earning Connecticut the nickname "The Constitution State".
History
Prior to European settlement, the land that would become Connecticut was home to the Wappinger Confederacy along the western coast and the Niantics on the eastern coast. Further inland were the Pequot, who pushed the Niantic to the coast and would become the most important tribe in relations with colonists. Also present were the Nipmucs and Mohicans, though these two tribes largely lived in the neighboring states of Massachusetts and New York respectively. The first European to visit Connecticut was Dutch explorer Adriaen Block, who sailed up the Connecticut River with his yacht Onrust. Accordingly, as the first Europeans to explore Connecticut, the Dutch claimed the land as part of New Netherland and negotiated a land purchase of 20 acres along the river from Wopigwooit, the Grand Sachem of the Pequot in 1633. The Dutch would establish a trading post named Kivett's Point and a redoubt named Fort Good Hope, the future sites of Saybrook and Hartford respectively.English settlement
In 1631, a group of sachems from the Connecticut valley led by Wahquimacut visited Plymouth Colony and Boston, asking both colonies to send settlers to Connecticut to fight the Pequot. Massachusetts governor John Winthrop rejected the proposal but Edward Winslow, governor of Plymouth was more open, traveling to Connecticut in person in 1632. Winslow, along with William Bradford would later travel to Boston to convince the leaders of Massachusetts Bay to join Plymouth in constructing a trading post on the Connecticut River before the Dutch could. Winthrop rejected the offer, calling Connecticut "not fit to meddle with" citing hostile Indians and the difficulty of moving large ships into the Connecticut River.Despite the Bay Colony's refusal to join the venture, Plymouth sent a bark led by William Holmes to establish a trading post on the Connecticut. Besides the English settlers, they took some of the original sachems of the area to prove the validity of their claim. As they passed Fort Good Hope they were threatened by the Dutch, a threat ignored by Holmes. Holmes proceeded a few miles up river and constructed a trading post on the modern site of Windsor. Hearing of the English activities, New Netherland governor Wouter Van Twiller dispatched 70 men to dislodge the English. The Dutch would find the English well prepared to defend themselves and left, seeking to avoid bloodshed. Meanwhile, John Oldham led a group of men from the Bay Colony to the river to see Connecticut for themselves. They returned with accounts of plentiful beaver, hemp, and graphite. A year later, Oldham would lead a group of settlers to found the town of Wethersfield.
By 1635, Massachusetts' English population had grown immensely and it was clear there was not enough land for the settlers. Particularly eager to leave the crowded Bay colony were the residents of Newtown. The founder of Newtown, Thomas Dudley was frequently at odds with Winthrop, including anger at the choice of Boston as the colony's capital and refusal to support the construction of a fort in Boston. Dudley sent one Thomas Hooker, Newtown's pastor to Boston to resolve the latter dispute, but the resentment of Winthrop remained. After Dudley replaced Winthrop as governor in May 1634, the issue of Hooker's congregation's desire for removal to Connecticut was raised in the General Court. Opponents of the removal feared the impact of a large exodus of Massachusetts population and that the geographic division would foster disunity. A charismatic preacher like Hooker was also likely to draw future settlers from Massachusetts as well. Ultimately the General Court swayed the Newtowners with a grant of land within Massachusetts. This proved unsatisfactory, but removal was nonetheless delayed for two years.
Despite the refusal of Hooker's request for removal, settlers continued to pour into the valley. In May 1635 the Saybrook Colony was established at the mouth of the Connecticut River. Considerable amounts of emigrants from Massachusetts also settled in the recently established town of Wethersfield. Plymouth's settlement of Windsor also found itself swamped by settlers from Dorchester who took over the settlement. The issue was resolved when the Dorchester settlers agreed to pay the Plymouth settlers for the land appropriated. Finally in 1636 the arrival of a new group of settlers allowed Hooker's congregation to sell their homes and set off on the journey to Connecticut on the May 31.
Hooker's group of around a hundred settlers and as many cattle soon arrived at the Connecticut River and established the town of Newtown near the Dutch fort. This name would not last however, as it was soon renamed Hartford after Hertford, the hometown of settler Samuel Stone. In May 1638 Thomas Hooker delivered a sermon on civil government. Inspired by this sermon the settlers sought to create a constitution for the colony. The resulting document, the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, was likely mostly drafted by Roger Ludlow, the only trained lawyer in the colonies. The document was adopted in January 1639 and formally united the settlements of Hartford, Windsor, and Wetherfield together and has been called the first written democratic constitution. Under the new constitution, John Haynes was elected governor with Ludlow as deputy governor. Owing to a restriction against governors seeking office in consecutive years, Haynes would alternate the office of governor with Edward Hopkins every year until 1655. Shortly after the Fundamental Orders were established, the nearby New Haven colony organized its own government.
Pequot War
When Fort Good Hope was constructed, the Dutch specified in their treaty with the Pequot that the trading post was to be open to all tribes. Ignoring this, the Pequot attacked a rival tribe attempting to trade. The Dutch retaliated by kidnapping the sachem of the Pequot, Tatobem, and holding him for ransom. After the Pequot paid the ransom, the Dutch gave them Tatobem's corpse. The Pequot retaliated for this by attacking an English ship, believing it to be Dutch. The ship's captain, John Stone, and his crew were killed by the Pequot. A Pequot envoy was sent to Massachusetts to explain the misunderstanding. The envoy told the English about the mistaken identity of the ship. When asked to turn over the killers, the envoy claimed all but two of the killers had died of a recent smallpox epidemic and they lacked the authority to turn over the two survivors. The Pequot further claimed the killing was justified as Stone had captured two Pequots and mistreated them. When John Gallup was sailing to Long Island he spotted a pinnace belonging to John Oldham, its deck covered with Indians. When Gallup attempted to board the ship to investigate, a fight ensued, with Gallup victorious. The colonists blamed the Narragansett for the killing, warning Roger Williams to be careful. The Narragansett leaders Canonicus and Miantonomoh were able to reassure the colonist, claiming that the culprits not killed by Gallup were hiding among the Pequot.After this, a group of ninety men led by John Endecott and his captains John Underhill and Nathaniel Turner was sent from Massachusetts to the Pequot's territory to demand the return of the murderers of both Stone and Oldham. The force first sailed to Block Island, but the Indians evaded them there, and the force left with the only casualty inflicted on the villagers being the burning of the island's empty villages. When the forces arrived in Pequot territory, they were told that the murder was committed by none other than Sassacus, grand sachem of the Pequot. The Pequot also claimed to be unable to distinguish the Dutch from the English. Disbelieving these claims and seeing there were no women or children among the Pequot, Endecott attacked, beginning the war. The Pequot responded by besieging Saybrook and attacking Wethersfield, where they would kill nine and take two women hostage. The women were daughters of William Swaine and would later be rescued by the Dutch.
Connecticut sent a force of ninety men, led by John Mason. The force was joined by sixty Mohegans led by Uncas and came to Saybrook, where a group of Massachusetts men led by Underhill joined them. On May 26, 1637, the group, encamped outside a fortified Pequot village on the Mystic River, launched a surprise attack at dawn. The English charged into the village, set it on fire, and formed a ring around the stockades to kill anyone attempting to escape. The Indian allies formed a second ring to catch anyone who managed to escape the first. Hundreds of Pequots died, many of them women and children.
Their spirits broken, many of the Pequot attempted to flee west. Mason, accompanied by Israel Stoughton pursued a group of three hundred Pequots to a swamp near modern Fairfield, where they killed and captured a great number of them. Sassacus was able to escape to the Mohawks, who immediately killed him and his party, sending his scalp to Boston. With the Pequots vanquished the Treaty of Hartford was signed between Connecticut, the Mohegans, and the Narragansett, granting the Connecticut settlers the exclusive right to the former Pequot land and dissolving the Pequot as both a political and cultural entity, with surviving Pequots made to assimilate into the other tribes.