The Pequots in Southern New England: The Fall and Rise of an American Indian Nation

Description

Before their massacre by Massachusetts Puritans in 1637, the Pequots were preeminent in southern New England. Their location on the eastern Connecticut shore made them important producers of the wampum required to trade for furs from the Iroquois. They were also the only Connecticut Indians to oppose the land-hungry English. For those reasons, they became the first victims of white genocide in colonial America.Despite the Pequot War of 1637, and the greed and neglect of their white neighbors and "overseers," the Pequots endured in their ancestral homeland. In 1983 they achieved federal recognition. In 1987 they commemorated the 350th anniversary of the Pequot War by organizing the Mashantucket Pequot Historical Conference, at which distinguished scholars presented the articles assembled here. Contents Illustrations Foreword Preface Part One: Introduction 1 New England Indians Part Two: Southern New England Prehistoiy and Eady Pequot Histoiy 2 A Capsule Prehistory of Southern New England 3 The Pequots in the Eaity Seventeenth Century 4 Native Wampum as a Peripheral Resource in the Seventeenth-Centuiy Worid-System Part Three: Pequot Survival 5 The Pequot War and Its Legacies 6 Indians and Colonists in Southern New England after the Pequot War: An Uneasy Balance 7 The Historical Archaeology of the Mashantucket Pequots, 1637—1900: A Preliminary Analysis The Emergence of the Mashantucket Pequot Tribe, 1637—1975 9 The Mystic Voice: Pequot Folklore from the Seventeenth Century to the Present Part Four: Contemporary Federal and State Policies and Southern New England Indians 10 The New England Tribes and Their Quest for Justice 11 Connecticut's Indian Policy: From Testy Arrogance to Benign Bemusement Afterword Notes Selected Bibliography Contributors Index