The Pequot War and the Salem Witch Trials were major events in 17th century colonial America.
The Pequot War
The Pequot War lasted from July 1636 to September 21, 1638 and was a conflict involving the Pequot tribe and a collection of English colonies. The cause of the war is heavily disputed today, but one opinion is that the Pequot War occurred because of aggression from the Pequot tribe. An author that shares that opinion is Steven T. Katz, writer of The Pequot War Reconsidered. He believes that the Puritan colonists had to wage a defensive war against the Pequots to protect themselves and their colonial settlements. A person who disagrees with Katz is Alfred A. Cave, the author of The Pequot War and the Mythology of the Frontier. Cave believes cultural differences were a major part of the conflict, and that Puritans believed the Pequots were satanic savages.1 The Puritans thought a war with the Pequots was an important part of God’s plan for the colonists in New England.
In Katz’s writing he notes the instances when the Pequots murdered English colonists. In 1634 two English captains were killed, and in the next two years six more colonists were murdered by the Pequots. However, the murder of John Oldham on Block Island was the final death before the Puritans waged war on the Pequots. The colonists did try to resolve their differences with the Pequots, but treaty negotiations fell through so they resorted to punishing the natives on Block Island by sending ninety Englishmen, led by John Endecott, to participate in a raid to punish and warn the Indians for their criminal actions.
The Pequots took exception to this, so they began raids of their own on colonial towns. In Wethersfield, Connecticut nine colonists were killed, and two women were captured during an attack on April 23. Thirty other colonists were killed in other raids, this amounts to about 5% of the colonists in Connecticut. The climax of their resistance against the Puritans was when they attempted to form an alliance with Narragansett tribe to dispel of all Europeans in the surrounding area.
The battle at Fort Mystic was the beginning of the end for the Pequots’ attempt to eliminate the colonists. The Puritans went of the offense when seventy Connecticut and ninety Massachusetts colonists, with sixty Mohegans, and some Narragansett and Eastern Niantic Indians attacked the fort. This was a major win for the colonists because almost all of the Indians, between 400 and 700 including women and children, were killed while only two English soldiers were killed, twenty wounded, along with about half of their Indian allies. The Treaty of Hartford was signed on September 21, 1638, ending the war and dividing the Pequot among the tribes of the Indian allies
Cave looks at the events leading up to the war from a different perspective, one where the Puritans were the aggressors. Many of the clergymen wrote about the urgency of the situation and the dangers of hesitation.2 The Pequots were seen as natural enemies of Christians that had to be dealt with in a timely manner. Cave even explains, “In their reflections of the Pequot War, Puritan apologists argued that English troops were instruments of divine judgements. Early Puritan historians portrayed the war as a key episode in the unfolding of God’s plan for New England.”3
The Puritans are driven by their obsession with pleasing God and obeying him for their entire lives. Since the Pequots were not Christian, the Puritans believed God was testing them to see if they would get rid of the natives. They also thought they could spread their Puritan views to the Pequots if they defeated them. Cave describes their ambitions as “Conquering the Indians symbolized and personified the conquest of American difficulties, the surmounting of wilderness. To push back the indian was to prove the worth of one’s own mission, to make straight in the desert a highway for civilization” 4.
The Pequot War is ultimately a plan by the Puritans to gain resources and land in the New England according to Cave. They justified their actions as part of a plan designed by God for the New England region colonists. Cave summarizes his thesis by saying:
The Pequot War in reality was the messy outgrowth of petty squabbles over trade, tribute, and land among Pequots, Mohegans, River Indians, Niantics, Narragansetts, Dutch traders, and English Puritans. The Puritans imagination endowed this little war with a metahistorical significance it hardly preserved. But the inner logic of Puritan belief required creation of mythical conflict, a cosmic struggle of good and evil in the wilderness, and out of that need the Pequot War epic was born.5
The Salem Witch Trials
Another turning point in the history of the New England colonies was the Salem Witch Trials. Two clashing views regarding this turning point center around the claim that the witch trials were caused by socioeconomic tensions within the Salem. Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum support this position in their book Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft. An opposing opinion is presented by Laurie Winn Carlson, author of A Fever in Salem: A New Interpretation of the New England Witch Trials, where she discusses the product of people’s responses to physical and neurological behaviors resulting from an unrecognized epidemic of encephalitis.6
The traditional view for the cause of the Salem Witch Trials centers around the divide between people interested in gaining more autonomy for Salem Village, led by the Putnam family, and people interested in the mercantile and political life of Salem Town, led by the Porter family. The faction led by the Putnam family identified itself with the traditional agricultural activities of the village and consequently supported the village minister, Samuel Parris, and the drive for greater autonomy from Salem Town. The faction led by the Porter family identified itself with the mercantile town, near which most of the Porter faction lived. In opposition to the Putnam faction, the Porters opposed the minister and wanted greater association with the town of Salem.
The bitter and contentious disputes between the two factions within Salem Village demonstrates a pattern of communal conflict which transcended the events of 1692.
These fault-lines explain the pattern of witchcraft accusations. The same villagers who stood with the Putnams to support Parris and petition for an independent church for the village, show up as complaints on witchcraft indictments in 1692. Similarly, many of the accused witches in Salem belonged to the Porter faction or represented the projection of the grievances caused by such factionalism. Through such a reconstruction of the factional village of Salem, the Salem witchcraft episode from within the larger history of the transformation to a modern capitalist society, and the divisions and conflicts that naturally arose from this change.