Waterbird's Nest: May 25, 1637: About one thousand Pequot men, women, and children are massacred by the English of Plymouth colony

Dale Auger

Dale Auger: On Art, Blood and Kindred Spirits
by Terri Mason

Defining Dale Auger in one sentence is akin to releasing the colours of a diamond in one cut. It can’t be done. It’s the many facets that release a diamond’s true brilliance, as it is the many facets of Auger’s life, education, ancestry, experiences and beliefs that have shaped and polished his work into the internationally acclaimed and collected artist that he is today.

Born a Sakaw Cree from the Bigstone Cree Nation in northern Alberta, Auger’s education began as a young boy when his mother would take him to be with the elders. “I used to say to myself, ‘Why is she leaving me with these old people?’ – but today I see the reason; I was being taught in the old way.”

Auger’s respect for traditional teachings led him on a journey to study art, opening the door to a doctorate in education. He is a talented playwright, speaker and visual artist whose vividly coloured acrylics have captured the attention of collectors that reads like an international ‘Who’s Who’ spanning English to Hollywood royalty. The essence of his work is communication, and now Dr. Auger has come full circle, interpreting the life of his culture – from the everyday to the sacred - through the cross-cultural medium of art.

Read the rest here:

http://www.daleauger.com/printversionbio.cfm

Monday, May 26, 2008

May 25, 1637: About one thousand Pequot men, women, and children are massacred by the English of Plymouth colony

The two hundred survivors are sold into slavery.

Various Algonquian tribes inhabited the area prior to European settlement. The Dutch were the first Europeans in Connecticut. In 1614 Adriaen Block explored the coast of Long Island Sound, and sailed up the Connecticut River at least as far as the confluence of the Park River, site of modern Hartford, Connecticut. By 1623, the new Dutch West India Company regularly traded for furs there and ten years later they fortified it for protection from the Pequot Indians as well as from the expanding English colonies. They fortified the site, which was named "House of Hope" (also identified as "Fort Hoop", "Good Hope" and "Hope"), but encroaching English colonization made them agree to withdraw in the Treaty of Hartford, and by 1654 they were gone.

The first English colonists came from the Bay Colony and Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts, and they settled at Windsor in 1633, Wethersfield (1634), and, led by Thomas Hooker, Hartford (1636). The Bay colony also built Fort Saybrook at the mouth of the River in 1636. Another Puritan group started the New Haven Colony in 1637. The Massachusetts colonies did not seek to absorb their progeny in Connecticut and Rhode Island into the Massachusetts governments. Communication and travel was too difficult, and it was also convenient to have a place for nonconformists to go.

The English settlement and trading post at Windsor especially threatened the Dutch trade, since it was upriver and more accessible to the Indians from the interior. That fall and winter the Dutch sent a party upriver as far as modern Springfield, Massachusetts spreading gifts to convince the Indians to bring their trade to the Dutch post at Hartford. Unfortunately, they also spread smallpox and, by the end of the 1633-34 winter, the Indian population of the entire valley was reduced from over 8,000 to less than 2,000. This left the fertile valley wide open to further settlement.

The Pequot War was the first serious armed conflict between the indigenous peoples and the settlers in New England. The ravages of disease, coupled with trade pressures invited the Pequots to tighten their hold on the river tribes. Additional incidents began to involve the colonists in the area, in 1635, and next spring their raid on Wethersfield prompted the three towns to meet. Following the raid on Wethersfield, the war climaxed when 1000 Pequot men, women, and children were burned out of their village, hunted down and massacred.

On May 1, 1637, they each sent delegates to the first General Court held at the meeting house in Hartford. This was the start of self government in Connecticut. They pooled their militia under the command of John Mason of Windsor, and declared war on the Pequots. When the war was over, there were officially no more Pequots. The Treaty of Hartford in 1638 reached agreements with the other tribes that gave the colonists the Pequot lands.