This portion of our guide to the American Indian people focuses on the Pequot people, who were native to what is now Connecticut.

The Pequot practiced agriculture, raising corn, beans, squash, and tobacco. Hunting and fishing also played important roles in their diet. Their clothing was made of buckskin, and they lived in semi-permanent villages that included longhouses and wigwams.

The Pequot were highly organized, aggressive, and warlike. Although they weren't significantly larger than neighboring tribes, their strong central authority gave them a military advantage. Most of their villages were also fortified, and placed for mutual protection.

While histories often portray American Indians as nomadic, which some were, frequent migration was the exception to the rule until European colonization displaced the Eastern tribes. The Pequots were an exception, however, as they originally inhabited the Hudson Valley, where they may have been part of the Adirondack before the formation of the Iroquois League, which defeated the Adirondack.

The Pequot and the Mohegan were once a single group, but the tribe split in the 17th century, with one faction turning against the other at a critical time, forming the Mohegan.

Warfare related to the French fur trade in the Canadian Maritimes made its way south at the same time the epidemics among the Wampanoag and Massachuset depopulated much of the Native population of New England. The Pequot and the Narragansett found themselves as rivals in the late 1610s.

The Pequots had very little contact with Europeans until 1614 when Dutch traders expanded their operations east along the Long Island Sound beyond the Connecticut River. The Pequot and the Narragansetts competed for trade with the Dutch, and the Pequot had the advantage of controlling the lower Connecticut River, the main trade route to the beaver areas.

While the Dutch were willing to trade with any of the local tribes, the Pequots wanted to dominate the trade, so they attacked the Narragansett and moved to tighten their control over the Nipmuc and Mattabesic tribes.

Angry with the Pequot efforts to monopolize the fur trade, a trader with the Dutch West India Company took Tatobem, a Pequot sachem prisoner, threatening to kill him unless the Pequot quit harassing the other tribes. When the Pequot offered payment in wampum rather than beaver, the trader killed Tatobem. In retaliation, the Pequot burned the trading post.

As the trade was important, the Dutch West India Company rebuilt the trading post and appointed a trader trusted by the Pequot. The company also quit trying to prevent the Pequot from dominating the other tribes and began accepting wampum in payment for goods.

Entering the fur trade business, the English used steel drills to manufacture wampum in large quantities, flooding the market.

Tensions between the Dutch and the English resulted in a split among the Pequots into pro-Dutch and pro-English factions.

This division had its roots in a personal rivalry between Sassacus and his son-in-law, Uncas. As sub-sachems, both hoped to succeed the grand sachem, Wopigwooit, when he died in 1631. When the Pequot council selected Sassacus, Uncas was angered, leading to bitter disputes over the fur trade, with Sassacus favoring the Dutch, while Uncas favored the English.

Uncas eventually left to form his own village, joined by other Pequot and some of the Mattabesic people, thus forming the Mohegan.

In 1637, soldiers from the English Puritan colony attacked a Pequot village, burning it and stealing their corn.

This began the Pequot War, which lasted from 1636 to 1638, pitting the Pequot tribe against an alliance of colonists from the Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, and Saybrook colonies and allies from the Narragansett and Mohegan tribes. The war ended in the devastating defeat of the Pequot. Seven hundred Pequots were killed or taken captive, with hundreds of Pequot prisoners sold into slavery in Bermuda or the West Indies, or made captives of the tribes allied with the English.

The Pequot tribe was no longer a viable entity in New England. Declared extinct by colonial authorities, survivors who remained in the area were absorbed into other local tribes.

Small numbers of Pequots came together in Connecticut to receive a reservation at Mashantucket in 1666, and at the Pawcatuck River in 1683. During the 18th century, Christian Pequots joined members of several other tribes to form the Brothertown Indians in New Hampshire, who later moved to New York, and then to Wisconsin, where they were given a reservation. The Mashantucket Pequot Tribe was given federal recognition in 1983, while the Pawcatuck River Pequot formed the Eastern Pequot Tribal Nation, which is recognized by the State of Connecticut but not the federal government. Other Pequots are enrolled in other recognized tribes.

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