nearly all its
fighting force. It began in June, 1637, with the successful attack by
Captain John Mason on the Pequot fort near Groton, and was brought to an
end by the battle of Fairfield Swamp, July 13, where the surviving
Pequots made their last stand. Sassacus, the Pequot chieftain, was
murdered by the Mohawks, among whom he had sought refuge; and during the
year that followed wandering members of the tribe, whenever found, were
slain by their enemies, the Mohegans and Narragansetts. An entire Indian
people was wiped out of existence, an achievement difficult to justify
on any ground save that of the extreme necessity of either slaying or
being slain. The relentless pursuit of the scattered and dispirited
remnants of these tribes admits of little defense.

The overthrow of the Pequots opened to settlement the region from
Saybrook to Mystic and led to a treaty in 1638 with the Mohegans and
Narragansetts, according to which harmony was to prevail and peace was
to reign. But the outcome of this impracticable treaty was a five years'
struggle between the Mohegan chieftain, Uncas, actively allied with the
colony of Connecticut, and Miantonomo, sachem of the Narragansetts,
which involved Connecticut in a tortuous and often dishonorable policy
of attempting to divide the Indians in order to rule them--a policy
which led to many embarrassing negotiations and bloody conflicts and
ended in the murder of Miantonomo in 1643, by the Mohegans, at the
instigation of the commissioners of the United Colonies. This alliance
between Uncas and the colony lasted for more than forty years. It placed
upon Connecticut the burden of supporting a treacherous and grasping
Indian chief; it created a great deal of confusion in land titles in the
eastern part of the colony because of indiscriminate Indian grants; it
started the famous Mohegan controversy which agitated the colony and
England also, and was not finally settled until 1773, one hundred and
thirty years later; and it was, in part at least, a cause of King
Philip's War, because of the colony's support of the Mohegans against
their traditional enemies, the Narragansetts and Niantics.

The presence of the Indians in and near the colonies rendered frequent
dealings with them a matter of necessity. The English settlers generally
purchased their lands from the Indians, paying in such goods or
implements or trinkets as satisfied savage need and desire. In so doing
they acquired, as they s