Plymouth Colony
English colony
1620–1691 →
Seal of Plymouth Colony
Map of Plymouth Colony showing town locations
Capital	Plymouth
Language(s)	English
Religion	Puritan, Separatist
Government	Monarchy
Legislature	Plymouth General Court
History
- Established	1620
- First Thanksgiving
- Pequot War
- King Philip's War	1675–1676
- Part of the Dominion of New England	1686–1688
- Disestablished	1691

Plymouth Colony (sometimes New Plymouth, or Plymouth Bay Colony) was an English colonial venture in North America from 1620 to 1691. The first settlement of the Plymouth Colony was at New Plymouth, a location previously surveyed and named by Captain John Smith. The settlement, which served as the capital of the colony, is today the modern town of Plymouth, Massachusetts. At its height, Plymouth Colony occupied most of the southeastern portion of the modern state of Massachusetts.

Founded by a group of Separatists and Anglicans, who together later came to be known as the Pilgrims, Plymouth Colony was, along with Jamestown, Virginia, one of the earliest successful colonies to be founded by the English in North America and the first sizable permanent English settlement in the New England region. Aided by Squanto, a Native American of the Patuxet people, the colony was able to establish a treaty with Chief Massasoit which helped to ensure the colony's success. It played a central role in King Philip's War, one of the earliest of the Indian Wars. Ultimately, the colony was merged with the Massachusetts Bay Colony and other territories in 1691 to form the Province of Massachusetts Bay.

Despite the colony's relatively short history, Plymouth holds a special role in American history. Rather than being entrepreneurs like many of the settlers of Jamestown, a significant proportion of the citizens of Plymouth were fleeing religious persecution and searching for a place to worship as they saw fit. The social and legal systems of the colony became closely tied to their religious beliefs, as well as English custom. Many of the people and events surrounding Plymouth Colony have become part of American folklore, including the North American tradition known as Thanksgiving and the monument known as Plymouth Rock.

History[link]

Origins[link]

The village of Scrooby, England c. 1911, home to the 'Saints' until 1607

Plymouth Colony was founded by a group of people (separatists) who later came to be known as the "Pilgrims". The core group—roughly 40% of the adults and 56% of the family groupings^[1]—was part of a congregation of religious separatists led by pastor John Robinson, church elder William Brewster, and William Bradford. While still in the town of Scrooby in Nottinghamshire, England, the congregation began to feel the pressures of religious persecution. In 1607 Tobias Matthew, Archbishop of York, raided homes and imprisoned several members of the congregation.^[2][3] The congregation then left England and emigrated to the Netherlands, first to Amsterdam and then to Leiden, in 1609.^[4]

In Leiden, the congregation gained the freedom to worship as it chose, but Dutch society was unfamiliar to these immigrants. Scrooby had been an agricultural community, whereas Leiden was a thriving industrial center, and the pace of life was hard on the Separatists. Furthermore, though the community remained close-knit, their children began adopting Dutch language and customs.Their children were also going into the Dutch Army. The Separatists were also still not free from the persecutions of the English Crown; in 1618, after William Brewster published comments highly critical of the King of England and the Anglican Church, English authorities came to Leiden to arrest him. Though Brewster escaped arrest, the events spurred the congregation to move even farther from England.^[5]

In June 1619, after declining the opportunity to settle south of Cape Cod in New Netherland, because of their desire to avoid the Dutch influence,^[6] the Congregation obtained a land patent from the London Virginia Company, allowing them to settle at the mouth of the Hudson River. They then sought financing through the Merchant Adventurers, a group of businessmen who principally viewed the colony as a means of making a profit. Upon arriving in America, the Pilgrims began working to repay their debts.^[7]

Using the financing secured from the Merchant Adventurers, the Colonists bought provisions and obtained passage on two ships, the Mayflower and the Speedwell. Though they had intended to leave early in 1620, difficulties in dealing with the Merchant Adventurers, including several changes in plans for the voyage and in financing, resulted in a delay of several months. The Congregation and the other colonists finally boarded the Speedwell in July 1620 in the Dutch port of Delfshaven.^[8]

[edit] Mayflower voyage

The Mayflower arrived in Southampton, England, to rendezvous with the Speedwell and to pick up supplies and additional passengers. Among the passengers to join the group in Southampton were many Pilgrims including William Brewster, who had been in hiding for the better part of a year, and a group of passengers known to the Leiden congregation as "The Strangers". This group was largely made up of passengers recruited by the Merchant Adventurers to provide governance for the colony and additional hands to work for the colony's ventures. Among the Strangers were Myles Standish, who would be the colony's military leader, Christopher Martin, who had been designated by the Merchant Adventurers to act as Governor for the duration of the trans-Atlantic trip, and Stephen Hopkins, a veteran of a failed colonial venture that may have been the inspiration for Shakespeare's The Tempest.^[9]

"The Embarkation of the Pilgrims from Delfthaven in Holland" (1844) by Robert Walter Weir

The departure of the Mayflower and Speedwell for America was beset by delays. Further disagreements with the Merchant Adventurers held up the departure in Southampton. A total of 120 passengers, 90 on the Mayflower and 30 on the Speedwell, finally departed on August 15.^[10] Leaving Southampton, the Speedwell experienced significant leakage, which required the ships to immediately put in at Dartmouth. After repairs were completed and a further delay ensued awaiting favorable winds, the two ships made it only two hundred miles beyond Land's End before another major leak in the Speedwell forced the expedition to return again to England, this time to the port of Plymouth. The Speedwell was determined to be unseaworthy; some passengers abandoned their attempt to emigrate, while others joined the Mayflower, crowding the already heavily burdened ship. Later, it was speculated that the master of the Speedwell had intentionally sabotaged his ship to avoid having to make the treacherous trans-Atlantic voyage.^[11]

The Mayflower, carrying 102 settlers, left Plymouth on September 6, 1620, without the Speedwell, and sailed for the New World with a land patent allowing them to settle specifically at the mouth of the Hudson River. The voyage took almost two months as it was drawn out by strong westerly winds and by the Gulf Stream. Turbulent seas and storms added to this delay. In one such episode, John Howland was thrown overboard, but managed to grab a topsail halyard that was trailing in the water and was hauled back aboard safely. Land was sighted on November 9 off the coast of Cape Cod. The Mayflower made an attempt to sail south to the designated landing site at the mouth of the Hudson but ran into trouble in the region of Pollack Rip, a shallow area of shoals between Cape Cod and Nantucket Island. With winter approaching and provisions running dangerously low, the passengers decided to return north and abandon their original landing plans.^[12]

The location in Cape Cod Bay settled by the Plymouth Colony was outside the territory of the London Company, which had granted its patent. The northern coastal territory had been granted to the Plymouth Company, but this patent fell into disuse after the failure of the Popham Colony. It was reorganized under a sea-to-sea charter under the Plymouth Council for New England. The actual Plymouth Colony would obtain land patents from the Plymouth Council in 1621 and in 1630, but it was governed independently from the Council under the Mayflower Compact.

Prior exploration and settlements[link]

Title page of Captain John Smith's 1616 work A Description of New England, the first text to use the name "New Plymouth" to describe the site of the future colony

The Pilgrims were not the first people in the area. Besides the indigenous tribes, there had been nearly a century of exploration, fishing, and settlement by Europeans. John Cabot's discovery of Newfoundland in 1497 had laid the foundation for the extensive English claims over the east coast of North America.^[13] One of the earliest maps of New England, produced c. 1540 by cartographer Giacomo Gastaldi, erroneously identified Cape Breton with the Narragansett Bay; the resulting map completely omits most of the New England coast.^[14] European fishermen had been plying the waters off the New England coast for much of the 16th and 17th centuries.

Frenchman Samuel de Champlain had explored the area extensively in 1605. He had specifically explored Plymouth Harbor, which he called "Port St. Louis", and made an extensive and detailed map of it and the surrounding lands. Patuxet, the native village upon which the town of Plymouth would soon be built, was shown by Champlain as a thriving settlement.^[15] However, in 1617–1619, before the arrival of the Mayflower, an epidemic wiped out up to 90% of the Native Americans along the Massachusetts coast, including Patuxet. Although generally thought to be smallpox,^[16] a recent analysis has concluded it may have been a lesser-known disease, leptospirosis.^[17] The absence of any serious native opposition to settlement by the Pilgrims may have been a pivotal event to their success and to English colonization in the Americas.

Popham Colony, also known as Fort St. George, was organized by the Plymouth Company (unrelated to Plymouth Colony) and founded in 1607. It was settled on the coast of Maine and was beset by internal political struggles, sickness, and weather problems. It was abandoned in 1608.^[18]

Captain John Smith of Jamestown fame had explored the area in 1614 and is credited with naming the region of New England. He named many locations using approximations of Native American words. The future site of the Pilgrim's first settlement was originally named "Accomack" by Smith. In consultation with Prince Charles, son of King James, Smith changed "Accomack" to New Plymouth. A map published in his 1616 work A Description of New England clearly shows the site of the future Pilgrim settlement as named "New Plimouth".^[19]

In the Mayflower settlers' first explorations of Cape Cod, they came across evidence that Europeans had previously spent extensive time there. They discovered remains of a European fort and uncovered a grave that contained the remains of both an adult European male and a Native American child.^[20]

Landings at Provincetown and Plymouth[link]

The Mayflower anchored at Provincetown Harbor on November 11. The Pilgrims did not have a patent to settle this area, thus some passengers began to question their right to land; they complained that there was no legal authority to establish a colony. In response to this, a group of colonists, still aboard the ship as it lay off-shore, drafted and ratified the first governing document of the colony, the Mayflower Compact, the intent of which was to establish a means of governing the colony. Though it did little more than confirm that the colony would be governed like any English town, it did serve the purpose of relieving the concerns of many of the settlers.^[21]

"Signing of the Mayflower Compact" (c. 1900) by Edward Percy Moran

The group remained onboard the ship through the next day, a Sunday, for prayer and worship. The immigrants finally set foot on land at what would become Provincetown on November 13. The first task was to rebuild a shallop, a shallow draft boat that had been built in England and disassembled for transport aboard the Mayflower. It would remain with the Pilgrims while the Mayflower returned to England. On November 15, Captain Myles Standish led a party of sixteen men on an exploratory mission, during which they disturbed a Native American grave and located a buried cache of Indian corn. The following week Susanna White gave birth to a son, Peregrine White, on the Mayflower. He was the first English child born to the Pilgrims in the New World. The shallop was finished on November 27, and using it, a second expedition was undertaken, under the direction of Mayflower master Christopher Jones. Thirty-four men went, but the expedition was beset by bad weather; the only positive result, was that they found a Native burial ground and disturbed it, stealing corn that had been intended for the dead. A third expedition along Cape Cod left on December 6; it resulted in a skirmish with local Native Americans known as the "First Encounter" near modern-day Eastham, Massachusetts. Having failed to secure a proper site for their settlement, and fearing that they had angered the local Native Americans by robbing their corn stores and firing upon them, the colonists decided to look elsewhere; the Mayflower left Provincetown Harbor and set sail for Plymouth Harbor.^[22]

The Mayflower dropped anchor in Plymouth Harbor on December 17 and spent three days surveying for a settlement site. They rejected several sites, including one on Clark's Island and another at the mouth of the Jones River, in favor of the site of a recently abandoned Native American settlement named Patuxet. The location was chosen largely for its defensive position; the settlement would be centered on two hills: Cole's Hill, where the village would be built, and Fort Hill, where a defensive cannon would be stationed. Also important in choosing the site, the prior Native villagers had cleared much of the land, making agriculture relatively easy. Fresh water for the colony was provided by Town Brook and Billington Sea. Although there are no contemporary accounts to verify the legend, Plymouth Rock is often hailed as the point where the colonists first set foot on their new homeland.^[23][24]

The area where the colonists settled had been identified as "New Plymouth" in maps by John Smith published in 1614. The colonists elected to retain the name for their own settlement—after their final point of departure from England: Plymouth, Devon.^[25]

First winter[link]

"The Landing of the Pilgrims" (1877) by Henry A. Bacon

On December 21, 1620, the first landing party arrived at the site of what would later become the settlement of Plymouth. Plans to immediately begin building houses, however, were delayed by inclement weather until December 23. As the building progressed, twenty men always remained ashore for security purposes, while the rest of the work crews returned each night to the Mayflower. Women, children, and the infirm remained on board the Mayflower; many had not left the ship for six months. The first structure, a "common house" of wattle and daub, took two weeks to complete in the harsh New England winter. In the following weeks, the rest of the settlement slowly took shape. The living and working structures were built on the relatively flat top of Cole's Hill, and a wooden platform was constructed to support the cannon that would defend the settlement from nearby Fort Hill.

Many of the able-bodied men were too infirm to work, and some died of their illnesses. Thus, only seven residences (of a planned nineteen) and four common houses were constructed during the first winter.^[26]

During the first winter in the New World, the Mayflower colonists suffered greatly from diseases like scurvy, lack of shelter and general conditions onboard ship.^[6] 45 of the 102 emigrants died the first winter and were buried on Cole's Hill. By the end of January, enough of the settlement had been built to begin unloading provisions from the Mayflower. In mid-February, after several tense encounters with local Native Americans, the male residents of the settlement organized themselves into military orders; Myles Standish was designated as the commanding officer. By the end of the month, five cannons had been defensively positioned on Fort Hill.^[27] John Carver was elected governor to replace Governor Martin.

On March 16, 1621, the first formal contact with the Native Americans occurred. A Native American named Samoset, originally from Pemaquid Point in modern Maine, walked boldly into the midst of the settlement and proclaimed, "Welcome, Englishmen!" He had learned some English since he had previously been enslaved by them and sent to Europe before escaping back to Maine years later. It was during this meeting that the Pilgrims found out that the previous residents of the Native American village, Patuxet, had probably died of smallpox. They also discovered that the supreme leader of the region was a Wampanoag Native American sachem (chief) by the name of Massasoit;^[28] and they learned of the existence of Squanto—also known by his full Massachusett name of Tisquantum—a Native American originally from Patuxet. Squanto had spent time in Europe and spoke English quite well. Samoset spent the night in Plymouth and agreed to arrange a meeting with some of Massasoit's men.^[29]

Massasoit and Squanto were apprehensive about the Pilgrims. In Massasoit's first contact with the English, several men of his tribe had been killed in an unprovoked attack by English sailors. He also knew of the Pilgrims' theft of the corn stores in their landings at Provincetown.^[30] Squanto had been abducted in 1614 by the English explorer Thomas Hunt and had spent five years in Europe, first as a slave for a group of Spanish monks, then in England. He had returned to New England in 1619, acting as a guide to the explorer Capt. Robert Gorges. Massasoit and his men had massacred the crew of the ship and had taken in Squanto.^[31][32]

Samoset returned to Plymouth on March 22 with a delegation from Massasoit that included Squanto; Massasoit joined them shortly thereafter. After an exchange of gifts, Massasoit and Governor Martin established a formal treaty of peace. This treaty ensured that each people would not bring harm to the other, that Massasoit would send his allies to make peaceful negotiations with Plymouth, and that they would come to each other's aid in a time of war.^[33]

On April 5, 1621, after being anchored for almost four months in Plymouth Harbor, the Mayflower set sail for England.^[34] Nearly half of the original 102 passengers had died during the first winter.^[35] As William Bradford wrote, "of these one hundred persons who came over in this first ship together, the greatest half died in the general mortality, and most of them in two or three months' time".^[36] By November 1621, only 53 pilgrims were alive to celebrate the harvest feast which modern Americans know as "The First Thanksgiving."^[37] Of the 18 adult women, 13 died the first winter while another died in May. Only four adult women were left alive for the Thanksgiving.^[38]

Several of the graves on Cole's Hill were uncovered in 1855; their bodies were disinterred and moved to a site near Plymouth Rock.^[39]

"First Thanksgiving"[link]

"The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth" (1914) By Jennie A. Brownscombe

The autumn celebration in late 1621 that has become known as "The First Thanksgiving" was not known as such to the Pilgrims. The Pilgrims did recognize a celebration known as a "Thanksgiving", which was a solemn ceremony of praise and thanks to God for a congregation's good fortune. The first such Thanksgiving as the Pilgrims would have called it did not occur until 1623, in response to the good news of the arrival of additional colonists and supplies. That event probably occurred in July and consisted of a full day of prayer and worship and probably very little revelry.^[40]

The event now commemorated by the United States at the end of November each year is more properly termed a "harvest festival". The original festival was probably held in early October 1621 and was celebrated by the 53 surviving Pilgrims, along with Massasoit and 90 of his men. Three contemporary accounts of the event survive: Of Plymouth Plantation by William Bradford; Mourt's Relation probably written by Edward Winslow; and New England's Memorial penned by Plymouth Colony Secretary – and Bradford's nephew – Capt. Nathaniel Morton.^[41] The celebration lasted three days and featured a feast that included numerous types of waterfowl, wild turkeys and fish procured by the colonists, and five deer brought by the Native Americans.^[42]

Early relations with the Native Americans[link]

After the departure of Massasoit and his men, Squanto remained in Plymouth to teach the Pilgrims how to survive in New England, for example using dead fish to fertilize the soil. For the first few years of colonial life, the fur trade (buying furs from Native Americans and selling to Europeans) was the dominant source of income beyond subsistence farming.^[43] Shortly after the departure of the Mayflower, Governor Carver suddenly died. William Bradford was elected to replace him and went on to lead the colony through much of its formative years.^[44]

As promised by Massasoit, numerous Native Americans arrived at Plymouth throughout the middle of 1621 with pledges of peace. On July 2, a party of Pilgrims, led by Edward Winslow (who later became the chief diplomat of the colony), set out to continue negotiations with the chief. The delegation also included Squanto, who acted as a translator. After traveling for several days, they arrived at Massasoit's capital, the village of Sowams near Narragansett Bay. After meals and an exchange of gifts, Massasoit agreed to an exclusive trading pact with the English (and thus the French, who were also frequent traders in the area, were no longer welcome). Squanto remained behind and traveled the area to establish trading relations with several tribes in the area.^[45]

In late July, a boy by the name of John Billington became lost for some time in the woods around the colony. It was reported he was found by the Nauset, the same group of Native Americans on Cape Cod from whom the Pilgrims had stolen corn seed the prior year upon their first explorations. The English organized a party to return Billington to Plymouth. The Pilgrims agreed to reimburse the Nauset for the stolen goods in return for the Billington boy. This negotiation did much to secure further peace with the Native Americans in the area.^[46]

During their dealings with the Nausets over the release of John Billington, the Pilgrims learned of troubles that Massasoit was experiencing. Massasoit, Squanto, and several other Wampanoags had been captured by Corbitant, sachem of the Narragansett tribe. A party of ten men, under the leadership of Myles Standish, set out to find and execute Corbitant. While hunting for Corbitant, they learned that Squanto had escaped and Massasoit was back in power. Several Native Americans had been injured by Standish and his men and were offered medical attention in Plymouth. Though they had failed to capture Corbitant, the show of force by Standish had garnered respect for the Pilgrims, and as a result nine of the most powerful sachems in the area, including Massasoit and Corbitant, signed a treaty in September that pledged their loyalty to King James.^[47]

In May 1622, a vessel named the Sparrow arrived carrying seven men from the Merchant Adventurers whose purpose was to seek out a site for a new settlement in the area. Two ships followed shortly thereafter carrying sixty settlers, all men. They spent July and August in Plymouth before moving north to settle in modern Weymouth, Massachusetts at a settlement they named Wessagussett.^[48] Though short-lived, the settlement of Wessagussett provided the spark for an event that would dramatically change the political landscape between the local Native American tribes and the English settlers. Responding to reports of a military threat to Wessagussett, Myles Standish organized a militia to defend Wessagussett. However, he found that there had been no attack. He therefore decided on a pre-emptive strike. In an event called "Standish's raid" by historian Nathaniel Philbrick, he lured two prominent Massachusett military leaders into a house at Wessagussett under the pretense of sharing a meal and making negotiations. Standish and his men then stabbed and killed the two unsuspecting Native Americans. The local sachem, named Obtakiest, was pursued by Standish and his men but escaped with three English prisoners from Wessagussett, whom he then executed.^[49] Within a short time, Wessagussett was disbanded, and the survivors were integrated into the town of Plymouth.^[48]

Word quickly spread among the Native American tribes of Standish's attack; many Native Americans abandoned their villages and fled the area. As noted by Philbrick: "Standish's raid had irreparably damaged the human ecology of the region...It was some time before a new equilibrium came to the region."^[50] Edward Winslow, in his 1624 memoirs Good News from New England, reports that "they forsook their houses, running to and fro like men distracted, living in swamps and other desert places, and so brought manifold diseases amongst themselves, whereof very many are dead".^[51] Lacking the trade in furs provided by the local tribes, the Pilgrims lost their main source of income for paying off their debts to the Merchant Adventurers. Rather than strengthening their position, Standish's raid had disastrous consequences for the colony, as attested William Bradford, who in a letter to the Merchant Adventurers noted "[W]e had much damaged our trade, for there where we had [the] most skins the Indians are run away from their habitations..."^[50] The only positive effect of Standish's raid seemed to be the increased power of the Massasoit-led Wampanoag, the Pilgrims' closest ally in the region.^[50]

Growth of Plymouth[link]

In November 1621, one year after the Pilgrims first set foot in New England, a second ship sent by the Merchant Adventurers arrived. Named the Fortune, it arrived with 37 new settlers for Plymouth. However, as the ship had arrived unexpectedly, and also without many supplies, the additional settlers put a strain on the resources of the colony. Among the passengers of the Fortune were several additional people of the original Leiden congregation, including William Brewster's son Jonathan, Edward Winslow's brother John, and Philip Delano (the family name was earlier "de la Noye") whose descendants include President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The Fortune also carried a letter from the Merchant Adventurers chastising the colony for failure to return goods with the Mayflower that had been promised in return for their support. The Fortune began its return to England laden with £500 worth of goods (£82.8 thousand as of 2010, or $126 thousand at PPP), more than enough to keep the colonists on schedule for repayment of their debt, however the Fortune was captured by the French before she could deliver her cargo to England, creating an even larger deficit for the colony.^[52]

In July 1623, two more ships arrived named the Ann, under the command of Captain Anthony Dike, and the Little James ^[53] ten days later, carrying 96 new settlers, among them Leideners, including William Bradford's future wife, Alice. Some of the passengers who arrived on the Ann were either unprepared for frontier life or undesirable additions to the colony and returned to England the next year. According to Gleason Archer, (With Axe and Musket at Plymouth. New York: The American Historical Society, Inc., 1936.) "those who remained were not willing to join the colony under the terms of the agreement with the Merchand Adventureres. They had embarked for America upon an understanding with the Adventurers that they might settle in a community of their own, or at least be free from the bonds by which the Plymouth colonists were enslaved. A letter addressed to the colonists and signed by thirteen of the merchants recited these facts and urged acceptance of the new comers on the specified terms." The new arrivals were alloted land in the area of the Eel River, known as Hobs Hole, which became Wellingsley, a mile south of Plymouth Rock.

In September 1623, another ship carrying settlers destined to refound the failed colony at Weymouth arrived and temporarily stayed at Plymouth. In March 1624, a ship bearing a few additional settlers and the first cattle arrived. A 1627 division of cattle lists 156 colonists divided into twelve lots of thirteen colonists each.^[54] Another ship also named the Mayflower arrived in August 1629 with 35 additional members of the Leiden congregation. Ships arrived throughout the period between 1629 and 1630 carrying new settlers; though the exact number is unknown, contemporary documents claimed that by January 1630 the colony had almost 300 people. In 1643 the colony had an estimated 600 males fit for military service, implying a total population of about 2,000. By 1690, on the eve of the dissolution of the colony, the estimated total population of Plymouth County, the most populous, was 3,055 people.^[48] It is estimated that the entire population of the colony at the point of its dissolution was around 7,000.^[55] For comparison it is estimated that between 1630 and 1640, a period known as the Great Migration, over 20,000 settlers had arrived in Massachusetts Bay Colony alone, and by 1678 the English population of all of New England was estimated to be in the range of 60,000. Despite the fact that Plymouth was the first colony in the region, by the time of its annexation it was much smaller than Massachusetts Bay Colony.^[56]

Military history[link]

Myles Standish[link]

From the beginning, Myles Standish was the military leader of Plymouth Colony. He organized and led the first party to set foot in New England, an exploratory expedition of Cape Cod upon arrival in Provincetown Harbor. On the third expedition, which he also led, Standish fired the first recorded shot by the Pilgrim settlers, in an event known as the First Encounter. When they finally arrived at Plymouth, it was Standish, with training in military engineering from the University of Leiden, who decided the defensive layout of the settlement. Standish also organized the able-bodied men into military orders in February of the first winter. During the second winter, he helped design and organize the construction of a large palisade wall surrounding the settlement. Standish led two early military raids on Indian villages: the unsuccessful raid to find and punish Corbitant for his attempted coup; and the brutal massacre at Wessagussett called "Standish's raid". The former had the desired effect of gaining the respect of the local Indians, the latter only served to frighten and scatter them, resulting in loss of trade and income.^[57]

Pequot War[link]

The first major war in New England was the Pequot War of 1637. The war's roots go back to 1632, when a dispute over control of the Connecticut River Valley near modern Hartford, Connecticut arose between Dutch fur traders and Plymouth officials. Representatives from the Dutch East India Company and Plymouth Colony both had deeds that claimed they had rightfully purchased the land from the Pequot. A sort of land rush occurred as settlers from Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth colonies tried to beat the Dutch in settling the area; the influx of English settlers also threatened the Pequot. Other confederations in the area, including the Narragansett and Mohegan, were the traditional enemies of the Pequot and sided with the English. The event that sparked the start of formal hostilities was the capture of a boat and the murder of its captain, John Oldham, in 1636, an event blamed on allies of the Pequots. In April 1637, a raid on a Pequot village by John Endicott led to a retaliatory raid by Pequot warriors on the town of Wethersfield, Connecticut where some 30 English settlers were killed. This led to a further retaliation, where a raid led by Captain John Underhill and Captain John Mason burned a Pequot village to the ground near modern Mystic, Connecticut, killing 300 Pequots. Plymouth Colony had little to do with the actual fighting in the war.^[58]

When it appeared the war would resume, four of the New England colonies (Massachusetts Bay, Connecticut, New Haven, and Plymouth) formed a defensive compact known as the United Colonies of New England. Edward Winslow, already known for his diplomatic skills, was the chief architect of the United Colonies. His experience in the United Provinces of the Netherlands during the Leiden years was key to organizing the confederation. John Adams later considered the United Colonies to be the prototype for the Articles of Confederation, which was the first attempt at a national government.^[59]

King Philip's War[link]

Portrait of King Philip, by Paul Revere, illustration from the 1772 edition of Benjamin Church's The Entertaining History of King Philip's War

Also known as Metacomet and other variations on that name, King Philip was the younger son of Massasoit, and the heir of Massasoit's position as sachem of the Pokanoket and supreme leader of the Wampanoag. He became sachem upon the sudden death of his older brother Wamsutta, also known as Alexander, in 1662.^[60]