Memorial Day Report: from the 388th Anniversary Observance of the Pequot Massacre
Mashantucket, CT – Imagine that all of your ancestors had been declared extinct after a scorched-earth campaign of aggressive warfare, massacres and the attempted total annihilation of your people. Imagine that the settlers who carried out this campaign of genocide against your people went on to assume control of your homeland, religion and governance for the next 400 years.
The Irish side of me can certainly envision that type of cultural apocalypse, because my Irish ancestors lived through just that from the 12th century onward, under the barbarous rule of the English. But the English were only honing their techniques of savage violence on the Irish. Four hundred years later, they unleashed the full fury of their genocidal impulses on the Indigenous people of this continent – Turtle Island – beginning with their war of aggression against the Pequots.
On the 388th anniversary of the May 26th, 1637 Mistick Massacre, where a militia of English colonial settlers from Connecticut and Massachusetts, along with their Native allies, surrounded and burned alive approximately 600 Pequot men, women and children in a fortified Pequot village, descendants of the survivors of that genocide stood at the lectern in the War Theater of the Mashantucket Pequot Museum in Ledyard, CT to ask the question: Is decolonization possible?
More than 40 people, gathered to observe the anniversary of the massacre with a viewing of the film: The Witness, struggled with that question on Saturday, May 24th.
The film is graphic in its portrayal of the Pequot War, 1636 – 1638, and the burning of the palisaded Pequot fort at Mistick.
“Our people are still dealing with the trauma and PTSD from the effects of that war,” said Museum director Joshua Carter, who has Irish bloodlines mingled with his Pequot, Narragansett and African American ancestry. He said, “This would not be Connecticut today if it wasn’t for the blood of the Pequot people. The Pequot massacre is carved in stone on the Connecticut capitol building in Hartford.” Yet despite the endurance of the settler state that tried to totally eliminate them in 1638, Carter declared, “Our people are still here. They will always be here.”
Dioramas on display in the galleries of the expansive, curving, easy-to-get-lost in 308,000-square-foot museum describe the impact of the Pequot War, calling it, “One of the most significant and tragic events in our early American history. More than 1,500 Pequot people were killed or captured and enslaved by the war’s end. The 1638 Treaty of Hartford between Connecticut and their Narragansett and Mohegan allies dispersed the remaining Pequot among their allied nations, and declared that: ‘They shall no longer be called Pequots, but Narragansetts and Mohegans… and shall not suffer them to live in the country that was formerly theirs but is now the Englishes by conquest.’”
In March of this year, Connecticut state senator Cathy Osten, (D-Sprague) filed a resolution to condemn the Treaty of Hartford as an example of genocide. The town of Sprague is located in the area of historical Pequot homelands.
Testifying in support of the resolution at a hearing before the Connecticut General Assembly’s Government Administration and Elections Committee, LaToya Cluff, vice-chair of the Mashantucket Pequots, said, “This resolution is so meaningful for our tribe in so many ways, and we believe that this is long overdue — the condemnation of the genocidal provision of the 1638 Treaty of Hartford, an agreement that sought to erase the very existence of our people.”
The Mashantucket Reservation, one of the oldest recognized Native reservations in America today, had by 1865 shrunk to just 214 acres in an impoverished corner of the town of Ledyard, following the state of Connecticut’s unilateral forced sale of reservation lands considered no longer occupied by members of the Pequot Nation. With the passage of the Mashantucket Pequot Indian Claims Settlement Act in 1983, the Pequots were able to reclaim 800 acres of their original homelands, enabling economic development in the form of the nine-million-square-foot Foxwoods Resort and Casino, the largest resort casino on the continent. The Mashantucket Museum and Research Center is part of that.
Carter’s assistant, Nakai Northrup, a tall, slender man with deep-set eyes and an earnest demeanor, spoke about the way in which the Native allies of the English, including ancestors from the Narragansett side of his family line, parted company from the colonial militia in horror at the way the war against their traditional Pequot foes was being prosecuted. “This was the first time the English and the Natives came together to declare an aggressive war against another Native nation. But for us, women and children were always considered sacrosanct, to preserve the future of the nation,” Northrup said.
When Captain John Mason, leading the colonial militia and Native allies, tried to force entrance into the Pequot fort at Mistick, his troops were met with fierce resistance, and took many casualties. Abandoning this approach, Mason called for the village to be set ablaze with all of its inhabitants, while the soldiers blocked the two narrow entrances and fired on any who tried to escape the conflagration. He set the example himself with a burning brand.
Mason has a statue commemorating his deeds in a niche on the exterior of the Connecticut Capitol building.
Before the war which decimated their people, the Pequot had formed a trade alliance with the early Dutch settlers of Connecticut. Between them, the Pequot and the Dutch controlled the trade and bartering routes for wampum (considered by the colonists to be a form of money, rather than a sacred ceremonial item) along with the burgeoning fur trade. This earned them the rivalry and enmity of neighboring tribal nations who were blocked out from the lucrative trade routes.
The narrative laid out on the museum dioramas continues: “The hundreds of Pequot killed in the war are remembered in Pequot oral traditions and through ceremony. One account describes the legend of the Bloody Hearted Rhododendrons that grow in the Great Cedar Swamp at Mashantucket. After the battle of Mistick Fort, a Pequot sachem named Puttaquapouk and his people fled to the cedar swamp for safety. There they were captured by the English; the men were executed and the women and children enslaved. Before Puttaquapouk died he declared that the golden hearts of the rhododendrons would turn blood-red as a perpetual reminder of the Pequot killed in the war. Every year on the anniversary of the May 26th, 1637 Mistick Massacre, tribal members gather at dawn for a First Light Ceremony to commemorate the 400 men, women and children killed at Mistick.
“Just before dawn on May 26th, Colonial and native forces (Mohegan, Niantic and Narragansett) attacked the Pequot village at Mistick, setting the village on fire and massacring all but a half dozen of the inhabitants. Perhaps as many as 600 Pequots died. Within days, the Pequots living at other villages dispersed. Colonists continued to pursue the survivors for months, killing leaders and combatants, and capturing women and children. The Pequot sachem Sassacus reached Mohawk Country in July seeking refuge, but the Mohawks killed him, sending his head to Hartford. His death effectively ended the war.”
The film showing began late, with people waiting quietly in the small semicircular theater as Carter explained the origin of the term ‘Indian Time.’
“A long time ago when colonists and Native people met, the colonists asked for important decisions to be made. The colonists had a patriarchal form of decision making where a few men made all the decisions; women were not included.
“Their expectation was that we could turn around these decisions fairly quickly. Our tradition was consensus, where every member of the community was consulted and had to agree before a decision was made. This could often take weeks, even months. The colonists referred to that as ‘Indian Time,’ but we needed agreements to include every single member of our society.
“Fast forward 400 years: now we use the term Indian Time as an excuse to be late. But we’re still operating on Indian Time.”
When the room filled up, Carter greeted everyone in the Pequot language: “Wuyeepuyôk.” (Welcome!)
Carter, his hair pulled back in a tight braid and his blue eyes conveying depth of emotion, pointed out the features of the room, including a pattern of irregular, silvery-pointed pickets arranged closely around the curving wall, fashioned to look like the palisades of the Mistick Fort. “The lighting in the ceiling is reminiscent of the constellations of stars,” he added.
He and Northrup excused themselves from the room. “We don’t watch this film ourselves,” Carter said, noting its graphic depiction of violence against their ancestors.
They returned to two minutes of profound silence once the film had ended.
Finally, Carter broke the spell by saying, “It is through the story that we survive.”
He opened up a lively discussion on decolonization, describing the attempted erasure of Indigeneity through the destruction and destabilization of native language, religion, governance and economic systems as clear markers of colonization’s ongoing impact, and characterizing the main goal of the global colonial project as “extractive industry designed to enrich colonial power, sidelining Native cultures in the belief that they had no value.” Colonialism is based on “violence, environmental destruction, and the use of force,” Carter said. But now, “Many people are coming together to see what they can do to support Native communities.”
Carter pointed again to the walls of the theater, and asked, “Is decolonization even possible? Even museums like this one are a colonizer’s tool. I realized that about four days after I took the job here as director.”
As the discussion continued, Carter put up Powerpoint slides detailing the progress and pitfalls of decolonization.
“Across the world, Indigenous nations, colonized peoples and their allies are actively decolonizing. They’re taking land back with land trusts, legal battles, and co-management agreements. They are revitalizing languages and ceremonies once banned or shamed by the colonizers. They are building independent institutions, schools, media platforms, museums, and health systems grounded in Indigenous or community-rooted values. They are demanding reparations and accountability from governments, churches, and corporations. They are changing laws and public consciousness, especially through youth activism, scholarship and the arts.”
The presentation continued with a slide that stated: “Decolonization isn’t a theory. It’s a living, breathing movement of resistance, reclamation, and regeneration. But decolonization challenges the very foundation of modern nation states, capitalism, borders, property rights, and dominant ideas of power and progress. Can we redistribute land and wealth in societies built on theft? Can Indigenous sovereignty coexist with settler nationalism? Can languages and cultural lifeways ever be regenerated?”
Carter answered, “Decolonization – or un-colonization,” as he preferred to call the process of reclaiming Indigeneity, “is not only possible, it’s necessary.”
The audience contributed their own ideas for how to advance the goal of re-Indigenizing the world. I almost spoke up about the effort in Massachusetts to change our state symbol commemorating the genocide of Native people – the Massachusetts flag, seal and motto, with the colonizer’s sword poised above the head of an Indigenous caricature, and a Latin motto that translates, essentially, as ‘Peace Under the Sword.’ But the effort to change that shameful symbol has already taken five decades, and Massachusetts still flies the flag of colonial violence.
To participate in this vital process of decolonization and change, tune in for the next meeting of the Massachusetts Seal, Flag and Motto Advisory Commission on Wednesday, May 28th from 1 to 2 p.m. For the link to that meeting, and to submit your own ideas and designs for a new flag, seal and motto for the Commonwealth, go to: https://www.mass.gov/orgs/massachusetts-seal-flag-and-motto-advisory-commission
– David Detmold, Great Falls, Montague, May 26th, 2025