Hampden-Wilbraham Regional School District
Staff Member: Mike Netkovick
Course: U.S. History I Timeline: 2 blocks Lesson: Conflict in Colonial New England: The impact of the Treaty of Hartford 1638
Essential Question(s): 1. How do cultural differences impact how groups interact? 2. How does past experience impact current and future actions?
Lesson Objectives and Goal(s) (Students will know…): 1. Students will be able to explain the terms of the Treaty of Hartford and the impact it had on Puritan/native relations. 2. Students will be able to analyze Edward Randolph’s report to identify historical perspective, bias and motivation. 3. Students will be able to explain how the Treaty of Hartford contributed to the outbreak of King Philip’s War 40 years later.
Instructional Strategies (Examples: homework, lecture, research, group work): 1. Lecture, group work, discussion, homework
Materials: 1. Background information sheets, copies of documents, map, white board
Learning Activities: 1. Begin class with an open discussion of what students know/think they know about natives in New England. Prompts include: Name tribes from the region? What was life like in New England before 1620? Do natives still live in New England? How do you know? Look at map provided of New England in 1636. 2. Have students read historical background handout on the Pequot War on their own then discuss as a class. Discussion should focus on student comprehension of topics: (Note: students have already studied basic tenets of Puritanism and why Puritans left England as well as the Columbian Exchange). What role did disease play in New England prior to Puritan arrival? How did the Puritans view it? How do you think natives viewed it? Where were the Pequots located? What role did they play in the region with regards to both their native neighbors and Europeans? Why did the Puritans attack Mystic? Why was the attack so shocking? 3. Students will read the Treaty of Hartford in small groups and answer accompanying questions. Class discussion of questions will follow. 4. Closing question for day one: What message was sent to the rest of the native population in New England following the Pequot War? How do you think it was received? Why? Homework: Read historical background sheet on King Philip’s War 5. Students will read Edward Randolph’s account of the causes of King Philip’s War then answer accompanying questions. Students will then discuss their answers with a partner then report out to the larger group. 6. Closing Writing Prompt: Citing specific events (at least 3), explain how the Treaty of Hartford impacted the relationship between the Puritans and the native population of New England and contributed to the cause of King Philip’s War?
Assessment Techniques:
1. Formative: Student responses to questioning, student written answers to document analysis sheets. 2. Summative: Student written responses to closing prompt.
Massachusetts State Frameworks: USI1B: how freedom from European feudalism and aristocracy and the widespread ownership of property fostered individualism. USI12: Explain and provide examples of different forms of government, including democracy, monarchy, oligarchy, theocracy, and autocracy.
Common Core References: History/Social Studies grade 11/12:
• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.11-12.1 Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of primary and secondary sources, connecting insights gained from specific details to an understanding of the text as a whole.
• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.11-12.2 Determine the central ideas or information of a primary or secondary source; provide an accurate summary that makes clear the relationships among the key details and ideas.
• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.11-12.3 Evaluate various explanations for actions or events and determine which explanation best accords with textual evidence, acknowledging where the text leaves matters uncertain.
• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.11-12.5 Analyze in detail how a complex primary source is structured, including how key sentences, paragraphs, and larger portions of the text contribute to the whole.
• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.11-12.7 Integrate and evaluate multiple sources of information presented in diverse formats and media (e.g., visually, quantitatively, as well as in words) in order to address a question or solve a problem.
• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.11-12.8 Evaluate an author’s premises, claims, and evidence by corroborating or challenging them with other information. • CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.11-12.9 Integrate information from diverse sources, both primary and secondary, into a coherent understanding of an idea or event, noting discrepancies among sources.
Treaty of Hartford
With your group, read the treaty and answer the following questions.
1. Who is signing the treaty? Name all 3 groups involved. 2. When was the treaty signed? Put the treaty into the proper historical context: what was occurring in the region at the time? What dispute is it solving? 3. What do the signees agree to? Quote 2 examples from the treaty 4. What does the treaty say with regards to the Pequot? What happens to the survivors? 5. What is the overall message that this treaty sent to the natives of New England (both allies and potential enemies)?
Document available digitized and transcribed at: http://cslib.cdmhost.com/cdm/ref/collection/p128501coll11/id/3860
Edward Randolph’s Report on King Philip’s War
Read Edward Randolph’s report and answer the following questions.
1. Edward Randolph’s report was written 10 years after King Philip’s War. How might the time difference impact what he writes? How might his motivation for writing the report (as a royal official) impact what he writes? Think about the context: what has happened in the relationship between New England and England over the previous 50 years. 2. Give 3 examples of Randolph’s theories about the contributing causes of the war. 3. What were the terms of peace agreed upon to end the war? 4. Do you think Randolph felt that King Philip’s War could have been avoided? Why? Who does he place at fault? 5. The terms of the Treaty of Hartford (the elimination of the Pequots as a people) proved impossible and were acknowledged to those ends as such in 1666 with the creation of the Pequot reservation. Do you think this may have factored into the Wampanoag taking up arms in 1675? Explain.
Full document available at: http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/bdorsey1/41docs/45-ran.html
Excerpts on next page:
Edward Randolph's Description of King Philip's War (1685).
[Edward Randolph was an emissary of King James II, sent to colonies to investigate the violations of the Crown's colonial laws (i.e., the Navigation Acts) and the overall state of colonial affairs, especially in New England. The selection below is Randolph's account of the war between the New England colonists and the American Indians in that region, led by Metacom (or Metacomet, who was called King Philip by the English).]
Eighth Enquiry. What hath been the original cause of the present war with the natives. What are the advantages or disadvantages arising thereby and will probably be the End?
Various are the reports and conjectures of the causes of the present Indian war. Some impute it to an imprudent zeal in the magistrates of Boston to christianize those heathen before they were civilized and injoyning them the strict observation of their lawes, which, to a people so rude and licentious, hath proved even intolerable, and that the more, for that while the magistrates, for their profit, put the lawes severely in execution against the Indians, the people, on the other side, for lucre and gain, entice and provoke the Indians to the breach thereof, especially to drunkenness, to which those people are so generally addicted that they will strip themselves to their skin to have their fill of rum and brandy, the Massachusets having made a law that every Indian drunk should pay 10s. or be whipped, according to the discretion of the magistrate. Many of these poor people willingly offered their backs to the lash to save their money; whereupon, the magistrates finding much trouble and no profit to arise to the government by whipping, did change that punishment into 10 days worke for such as could not or would not pay the fine of 10s. which did highly incense the Indians.
Some believe there have been vagrant and jesuiticall priests, who have made it their businesse, for some yeares past, to go from Sachim to Sachim, to exasperate the Indians against the English and to bring them into a confederacy, and that they were promised supplies from France and other parts to extirpate the English nation out of the continent of America. Others impute the cause to some injuries offered to the Sachim Philip; for he being possessed of a tract of land called Mount Hope, a very fertile, pleasant and rich soyle, some English had a mind to dispossesse him thereof, who never wanting one pretence or other to attain their end, complained of injuries done by Philip and his Indians to their stock and cattle, whereupon Philip was often summoned before the magistrate, sometimes imprisoned, and never released but upon parting with a considerable part of his land.
But the government of the Massachusets (to give it in their own words) do declare these are the great evills for which God hath given the heathen commission to rise against the: The wofull breach of the 5th commandment, in contempt of their authority, which is a sin highly provoking to the Lord: For men wearing long hair and perewigs made of women's hair ; for women wearing borders of hair and for cutting, curling and laying out the hair, and disguising themselves by following strange fashions in their apparell: For profaneness in the people not frequenting their meetings, and others going away before the blessing be pronounced: For suffering the Quakers to live amongst them and to set up their threshholds by Gods thresholds, contrary to their old lawes and resolutions.
With many such reasons, but whatever be the cause, the English have contributed much to their misfortunes, for they first taught the Indians the use of armes, and admitted them to be present at all their musters and trainings, and shewed them how to handle, mend and fix their muskets, and have been furnished with all sorts of armes by permission of the government, so that the Indians are become excellent firemen. And at Natick there was a gathered church of praying Indians, who were exercised as trained bands, under officers of their owne; these have been the most barbarous and cruel enemies to the English of any others. Capt. Tom, their leader, being lately taken and hanged at Boston, with one other of their chiefs. That notwithstanding the ancient law of the country, made in the year 1633, that no person should sell any armes or ammunition to any Indian upon penalty of £10 for every gun, £5 for a pound of powder, and 40s. for a pound of shot, yet the government of the Massachusets in the year 1657, upon designe to monopolize the whole Indian trade did publish and declare that the trade of furrs and peltry with the Indians in their jurisdiction did solely and properly belong to their commonwealth and not to every indifferent person, and did enact that no person should trade with the Indians for any sort of peltry, except such as were authorized by that court, under the penalty of £100 for every offence, giving liberty to all such as should have licence from them to sell, unto any Indian, guns, swords, powder and shot, paying to the treasurer 3d. for each gun and for each dozen of swords; 6d. for a pound of powder and for every ten pounds of shot, by which means the Indians have been abundantly furnished with great store of armes and ammunition to the utter ruin and undoing of many families in the neighbouring colonies to enrich some few of their relations and church members…
… The government of Boston have concluded a peace upon these terms.
1. That there be henceforward a firme peace between the Indians and English.
2. That after publication of the articles of peace by the generall court, if any English shall willfully kill an Indian, upon due proof, he shall dye, and if an Indian kill an Englishman and escape, the Indians are to produce him, and lie to passe tryall by the English lawes.
That the Indians shall not conceal any known enemies to the English, but shall discover them and bring them to the English.
That upon all occasions the Indians are to aid and assist the English against their enemies, and to be under English command.
Source: Albert Bushnell Hart, ed., American History Told by Contemporaries (New York, 1898), volume 1, 458-60. Found at: http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/bdorsey1/41docs/45-ran.html
Historical Background to the Pequot War
Connecticut Colonists The Great Migration- 40,000 English Puritans came to New England between 1620 and 1640 fleeing religious and financial persecution in England and hoping to settle where they could practice their particular interpretation of Calvinism unmolested by the Anglican Church. When they arrived in New England, they found a landscape that was in the midst of an epidemic that would wipe out a significant portion of the native population and leave much of coastal New England seemingly uninhabited to Puritan eyes. To the Puritans, this was a sign that God was clearing the land for them to live on. The Puritans sought to create a settlement based on their religious ideals, and initially lived in peace with their native neighbors.
The Pequots The Pequots controlled much of the Connecticut shoreline from the Connecticut River east towards Rhode Island. Through diplomacy, war and political marriages the Pequots were able to establish their dominance upon neighboring people such as the Mohegans and Narragansetts to control trade with Europeans in the region. Their control of the coast gave them a firm control on the production of wampum, beaded jewelry made from quahog shells that European traders used as currency. After initially dealing with Dutch traders, the Pequots began to deal more prominently with the English in the 1630s who recognized them as a major player in southern New England.
Cultural Differences Culturally, the Puritans and Pequots could not have been more different. The Puritans arrived in New England with the intention of establishing their own religious community based around their strict ideals of Calvinism. Calvinism lead the Puritans to a tightly-controlled patriarchy, with no separation of religious and secular control. The Puritans viewed themselves as God’s chosen people and were unwelcoming to non-beleivers regardless of race. The Pequots lived in a matrilineal society where women played an important role. They did not practice a religion that was discernible in the European frame of reference, and certainly in the 1630s were not practicing Calvinists. Pequots did not practice individual land ownership, and the division of labor within Pequot society had women undertaking what Puritans saw as men’s work, especially farming. The two groups were able to peacefully co-exist for the first few years of English colonization of southern New England, however as more and more English Puritans arrived to begin their lives in what they envisioned as their territory, the less willing they were to remain bit players in the region.
The Pequot War The War between the English and Pequots began when the Pequots refused to deliver a member whom the English suspected in the deaths of English traders. The Pequots argued that the individuals the English sought were not responsible for the deaths, and that blame actually lay with neighboring tribes. This refusal gave the English what they determined to be a justified cause to go war with the Pequots. The most noted event of the Pequot War was the English destruction of the Pequot village in Mystic, CT in May of 1636. The English, along with their Narragannsett and Mohegan allies attacked the Pequot village during the night, killing approximately 400 men, women and children and burning the village. This style of total war was not practiced by natives, and was worrisome to the Mohegan and Narragannsett. The Pequot War was formally ended by the Treaty of Hartford. The treaty was essentially voided when Connecticut created a reservation for the Pequots in 1666, thereby acknowledging their existence and returning some land to their control.
Historical Background for King Philip’s War
King Philip, also known as Metacom or Metacomet, was the son of Massasoit and the leader of the Wampanoag. During the 1670s tensions began to mount between the Puritans throughout New England and the Wampanoag and other native people including the Narragannsett and Nipmuc. As Randolph’s report suggests, the Puritans sought to extend their control of New England and its inhabitants following the Pequot War of 1636 through legislation, imposition of religion and control of trade.
In 1675 John Sassamon, a Wampanoag who had converted to Christianity, informed the Puritans that Metacom was planning a military assault on the English in an attempt to drive them out and reclaim control of New England. When Sassamon was killed, 3 Wampanoag were accused of the crime, convicted and executed. The resulting attacks and retaliatory attacks had a devastating effect on all people of New England, ultimately ending with Metacom’s head on a pike at Plymouth,MA and the Puritans in complete control of New England. The war ended with the agreements of the Treaty of Casco (1678) which saw native combatants who had not been killed in battle enslaved or driven from the region.
Response
Citing specific events (at least 3), explain how the Treaty of Hartford impacted the relationship between the Puritans and the native population of New England and contributed to the cause of King Philip’s War?
Annotated Bibliography
Primary Sources:
Randolph, Edward. “Report on King Philip’s War.” Albert Bushnell Hart, ed., American History Told by Contemporaries (New York, 1898), volume 1, 458-60. Web. http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/bdorsey1/41docs/45-ran.html This is Edward Randolph’s official report to the King about the state of affairs in colonial New England. His report is skewed towards casting the Puritans in a negative light and justifying the need for royal takeover of the colonies. It is heavily influenced by the political and religious landscape of England in 1685.
Treaty of Hartford 1638. Digital image. Connecticut State Library. State of Connecticut, n.d. Web.
Secondary Sources
Cave, Alfred A. The Pequot War. Amherst: University of Massachusetts, 1996. Print
This book analyzes the Pequot War through the lens of cultural conflict. Cave argues that the Pequot War was a struggle for who Print.would be dominant force in southern New England, and that the difference in culture is what allowed the Puritans to justify in their own minds their policy towards the Pequots.
---. "Who Killed John Stone? A Note on the Origins of the Pequot War." The William and Mary Quarterly. Third 49.3 (1992): 509-21.
This article discusses the causes of the Pequot War and examines different perspectives. It also gives a small historiographical explanation of the study of the Pequot War.
Http://pequotwar.org
This website is the official website of the battlefield of the Pequot War preservation project. It is sponsored by the Mashantucket Pequots frequently updates with the archaeological process of the project. It also contains a historical explanation of the Pequot War through the current Pequot point of view.
Massacre at Mystic. Dir. James Moll. The History Channel, 2006. DVD.
This documentary is part of the History Channel’s “10 Days that Changed America” series. History.com has ancillary materials to help teach the film. It is useful to show multiple perspectives (historians, anthropologists, current tribal leaders and absentee members) on the war and its impact. The documentary concludes with an explanation of the status of the Pequots in 2006.
Ranlet, Philip. “Another Look At the Causes of King Philip’s War.” The New England Quarterly. 61.1 (1998):79-100. This article re-examines traditional explanation of the causes of King Philip’s War by re-examining primary sources of the day. It concludes that the causes of war should be more closely interpreted as pointing to the Puritans as aggressors than has been traditionally interpreted.
Rowlandson, Mary White, and Neal Salisbury. The Sovereignty and Goodness of God: Together with the Faithfulness of His Promises Displayed : Being a Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson and Related Documents. Boston: Bedford, 1997. Print.
This book is an account of the captivity of Mary Rowlandson, a Englishwoman captured by the natives during King Philip’s War. The source itself gives insight into Puritan views and expectations of natives, but the introduction by Neal Salisbury gives a wonderful historical context to the source by explaining the relevant background to the social, geographic, religious landscape as well as an explanation of the war itself.