Conceived in Liberty (42 page)

But this swift punishment of the actual criminals was of course thought insufficient. Governor Vane of Massachusetts Bay quickly outfitted the tough John Endecott with an armed troop to slaughter more Block Island Indians. Now the Block Islanders had nothing to do with the Pequots. But somehow even the relatively liberal Vane concluded
a priori
that the Pequots
must
be harboring some of the murderers and he ordered Endecott to include the Pequots in the rigors of collective “punishment.” Specifically, Endecott was instructed to massacre every male Indian on Block Island whether guilty or innocent of the crime, and to kidnap all the women and children—in short, to depopulate Block Island of native Indians. He also instructed to demand from them a thousand fathoms of wampum and to seize a few Pequot children as hostages for their good behavior.

Endecott found that he could not catch the Block Island Indians, but he partially compensated by burning all their crops and wigwams and by destroying their property. Returning from the island, he could not persuade the supposedly ferocious Pequots to fight, but he nevertheless managed to kill some of them and to burn many Pequot crops and wigwams.

The Pequots, understandably rather bitter at this undeserved plunder, urged the Narragansett Indians, the leading tribe in Rhode Island, to join with them in warring against the white invaders. The Narragansetts, however, were very friendly with Roger Williams and, under his influence, refused the offer (for which friendship, as we have seen, the Narragansett grand sachem was later murdered by Massachusetts). The Pequot reprisal was to besiege Fort Saybrook, whose leader, Lt. Lyon Gardiner, had warned the exuberant Endecott in his plunder that “you come hither to raise these wasps about my ears, and then you will take wings and flee away.” Still, the situation was not yet out of hand, as only the military had been attacked, and not the settlers. But then, in the spring of 1637, amidst this explosive situation, the settlers at Wethersfield violated a solemn agreement they had made with a friendly chief named Sequin. When they bought the land from Sequin, they agreed to allow him to remain within the town limits. But now Wethersfield violated the agreement and expelled Sequin from the town. For the Pequots this was the last straw and they attacked Wethersfield and killed some of the inhabitants.

In the minds of the white men of that era, the deaths of a few white settlers were enough to justify the immediate extermination of an entire Indian nation—and it was precisely on such a course that the New England colonies now embarked. The first meeting of the General Court of
Connecticut in May resolved upon an “offensive war against the Pequot,” and ninety men were conscripted from the three river towns under the command of Capt. John Mason (no relation to the Mason of New Hampshire). Joined by some dissident Indians, Mason launched a sneak attack on the Pequot camp, surrounding and burning the entire camp and slaughtering some six hundred Indians, the bulk of them old men, women, and children.

The remnant of the Pequot tribe, under Sassacus, attempted to flee westward, but they were now pursued by a combined force of Mason’s troops and over a hundred men from Massachusetts and Plymouth. Stragglers from the Pequots were slaughtered; of over a hundred Pequot men, women, and children hiding in a swamp, all the men were murdered in cold blood by the Massachusetts troop. Two Pequots, spared when they promised to take the whites to Sassacus, were murdered when they failed to do so. The Pequot women were all either turned over to the ungracious hands of the dissident Indians, or sold into slavery in Massachusetts. Finally, the remainder of the Pequots were trapped in a swamp near the site of Fairfield. The men were wiped out and the women sold into slavery, in which, not making successful slaves, they died soon after. Roger Williams’ pleas to Massachusetts for mercy for the Pequot prisoners were unheeded—despite his great service in keeping the Narragansetts out of the war. As for Sassacus, he managed to escape across the Hudson, but there the Mohawks—one of the Iroquois tribes allied to the Dutch and English—killed him and sent his scalp back to Boston as a token of their friendship with the English. The extermination of the Pequot people had been successfully accomplished.

The experience of the Puritan colonies in the joint aggression against the Pequots, added to the continuing drive of Massachusetts Bay for domination over its neighbors, led to a more formal bond between them.

As early as 1634 Massachusetts had moved in to establish control over a wholly Pilgrim trading post on the Kennebec in Maine. It arrested a Plymouth magistrate there and forced Plymouth leaders to go to Boston to settle the matter. Similarly, the following year Massachusetts forced Pilgrims out of land that they had settled on the Connecticut River, to permit Bay settlers to occupy the land. Massachusetts also pressed claims for large portions of Connecticut and Plymouth territory, and we have seen its designs on Rhode Island.

The first discussion of a confederation between the Puritan colonies occurred at the synod of August-September 1637 for the condemnation of Anne Hutchinson. The synod was attended by ministers from Connecticut and Massachusetts. Governor Winthrop of Massachusetts suggested to the Connecticut ministers that the synod become a regular annual meeting of the ministers of both areas because of their mutual “distaste for unauthorized interpretation.” In the spring of 1638 Roger Ludlow, an advocate of strong government in Connecticut, inquired further about a confederation, as did John Davenport and Theophilus Eaton of New Haven. Connecticut sent John Haynes to Massachusetts to confer on the matter, but Massachusetts insisted on control of the upper Connecticut Valley about Springfield—crucial to the fur trade—which Connecticut refused to acknowledge. Massachusetts proposed setting up a commission with absolute power to settle all disputes between the colonies, and without reference to the
separate assemblies. In this way, Massachusetts hoped to gain control of the sister colonies, deeming it far easier to dominate a group of magistrates than the elected General Courts of the various colonies. But Thomas Hooker pointed out that the terms proposed by Massachusetts exceeded the “limits of that equity which is to be looked at in all combinations of free states.” To prevent oligarchic control by the joint magistrates of the colonies, Hooker insisted that any such commissioners be elected.

The confederation proposed at this time therefore proved abortive. The joint Pequot War effort and the growing united interest in preventing asylum from being granted to runaway indentured servants, however, caused the Puritan colonies to draw closer together. Despite this, Massachusetts continued its aggressive expansion, seizing, as we have seen, the New Hampshire settlements. Similarly, Connecticut and New Haven were settling in territory claimed arbitrarily by the Dutch and liked the idea of a confederation for defending it. Furthermore, the civil strife in England was making the New England colonies even more self-governing than before and giving them an opportunity to carry more weight by acting jointly.

Finally, in the fall of 1642 Plymouth proposed a confederation provided that the General Court of each colony ratify all agreements. Connecticut also agreed to send delegates to a meeting in the spring, quickly making sure that Saybrook was incorporated within its realm before the confederation was formed. In May 1643 Massachusetts, Connecticut, Plymouth, and New Haven colonies agreed to form the “Confederation of the United Colonies of New England.”

The Articles of Confederation declared its purpose to be “a firm and perpetual league of friendship, for offense and defense... both for preserving and propagating the truths of the Gospel and for their mutual safety and welfare.” The General Court of each colony was to elect two commissioners to meet once a year and on special occasions. These eight commissioners had the power to declare war, make peace, and allocate military expenses among the colonies in proportion to their population. But approval of each colony’s General Court was needed to levy the tax. For commissioners to reach any decision whatever required an affirmative vote of six of the eight. The commissioners were also to make recommendations to the specific colonies, settle boundary disputes, and provide for the capture of fugitives—for example, runaway servants. There was no executive; annually one of the commissioners was chosen president, and he served merely as moderator of the proceedings. All the commissioners had to be Puritan church members.

No colony was bound by the commissioners’ decisions unless its General Court approved. Thus each colony could nullify any decisions affecting it, and insure against aggrandizement by the new centralized power.

One important provision of the confederation was to guarantee the independence and given territory of each member colony. For this reason,
Massachusetts moved to reject a proposal to admit the Maine settlements to the confederation, since Massachusetts was preparing to confiscate them. Rhode Island was not admitted for similar reasons, and also because its individualistic policies were a standing reproach to the other colonies. Thus, Rhode Island’s continual refusal to coerce the return of fugitives and runaway servants from the other colonies—the colony was preserving itself as a haven for the oppressed—was itself a vital blow to the structure of caste and persecution in the other New England colonies. Hence, Rhode Island’s application for admission in 1648 was rejected unless it agreed to become part of Massachusetts Bay—a condition that Rhode Island, of course, angrily rejected.

This first confederation of colonies in the New World was modeled on the United Provinces of the Netherlands, which had been established by the Union of Utrecht in 1579. The United Provinces was a loose confederation of seven provinces for purposes of defense. Deputies were selected by the autonomous provinces, each of which had to approve the decisions of the union for it to be bound by the union’s actions. Many New Englanders had experienced the workings of such a confederation during their previous exile in the Netherlands.

From the start, the commissioners were clearly extensions of the ruling magistracy of the colonies. First president of the confederation was Governor John Winthrop, and his sons and grandsons became commissioners as well as magistrates in Massachusetts and Connecticut. The same was true for the other Massachusetts signatory of the Articles of Confederation, Thomas Dudley; he and his sons-in-law were to become governors and commissioners. Similarly Theophilus Eaton, governor and commissioner from New Haven; his sons-in-law became magistrates and commissioners from New Haven and Connecticut.

The requirement that commissioners belong to the Puritan church soon bore fruit. One of their earliest proposals, in 1646, was in answer to a request of Massachusetts for a meeting of the elders of the New England churches “to consider some confession of doctrine and discipline with solid grounds to be approved by the churches.” After the Westminster Assembly in England adopted the Westminster Confession of Faith (1647), which espoused presbyterianism, a synod was held at Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1648, the same year in which the Cambridge Platform of the church was issued. The Platform accepted the Westminster Confession and provided that “idolatry, blasphemy, venting corruption and pernicious opinions are to be restrained and punished by the civil authority,” and “if any church one or more shall grow schismatical, rending itself from the communion of other churches, or shall walk incorrigibly or obstinately in any corrupt way of their own, contrary to the rule of the Word; in such case, the Magistrate is to put forth his coercive power, as the matter shall require.” The Massachusetts path of persecution had been confirmed by the
United Colonies. The commissioners of the confederation also levied an annual contribution on the towns of the colonies for the support of Harvard College.

After the massacre of the Pequots, the Narragansetts became the main body of Indians in southern New England. We have seen how Massachusetts and the United Colonies tried to take over Warwick and the Narragansetts, only to be foiled by the submission of the Narragansetts to England through Samuell Gorton. The United Colonies, however, struggled hard to conquer the Narragansetts. In 1645 Miles Standish led a confederation force into Rhode Island to beat the Narragansett Indians into a “sober temper.” Foiled by Roger Williams’ negotiation of peace and neutrality with the Indians, the enraged Standish threatened to seize any settler helping the Indians.

The confederation scarcely fulfilled the high hopes of its founders, and largely because of continuing difficulties between Massachusetts and its fellow colonies, with Massachusetts aggressively pressing its claims against the others. Thus, Massachusetts and Connecticut quarreled over the land taken from the Pequots. For years, Massachusetts claimed the lands, granting large tracts to Governor Winthrop’s son John Jr., an assistant of the colony. Young Winthrop was even granted governmental power over his plantation. Finally, after the senior Winthrop’s death in 1649, his son accepted Connecticut jurisdiction and was soon to become a long-term governor of his adopted colony. A more important rift occurred over Springfield, the northernmost settlement on the Connecticut River. Geographically one of the Connecticut towns, Springfield, as the uppermost town on the river, was critically important in the beaver trade with the Indians. In the late 1640s, Connecticut levied a river tax on the various towns to finance its hastily purchased Fort Saybrook. Springfield, led by its virtual manorial lord, William Pynchon, refused to pay the tax, pointing out that it had joined Massachusetts upon the creation of the New England Confederation, and was therefore outside Connecticut’s jurisdiction. Massachusetts had appointed Pynchon as chief judge and magistrate; he ruled Springfield, and had a right of appeal to the court of assistants of the colony at Boston. To strengthen its claim on Springfield, Massachusetts now accepted deputies from the town to its General Court. Massachusetts of course backed Springfield’s refusal to pay and persisted in defying the confederation agreement to submit all such disputes to arbitration. Massachusetts also retaliated by taxing products of the other New England colonies entering Boston. For the remainder of the century, Springfield continued as a virtually independent republic, loosely under Massachusetts, and governed by Pynchon and his son John. Springfield, indeed, set up its own frontier trading posts at such new settlements as Westfield, Hadley, and Northampton.