Relation of the Pequot War

Author: Lt. Lion Gardener
From the edition of: 1660, published at London, England
This edition: Copyright 2011, Norman P. Burdett
Pages: 45
Format: PDF

The English colonists in Massachusetts Bay proposed to plant a new settlement at the mouth of the Connecticut River and name it Saybrook.

Governor John Winthrop hired Lion Gardener, a military engineer, to come over from England to build a fort at the site for protection. The Pequot Indians in the area had a reputation as a warlike people.

Scarcely had Gardener arrived with his new young wife, when there was an incident on the river nearby where one Captain Stone, a man accustomed to trade with the Indians was attacked and killed, along with a number of his crewmen.

Massachusetts demanded that the Pequots surrender the parties guilty of the murder of Captain Stone and his men to stand trial, but the Pequots said that the guilty parties were unavailable.

After much threatening by the English, and excuse making by the Pequots, a contingent of troops from Massachusetts showed up at Saybrook to show the Pequots the power of the colony.

Young Lt. Gardener begged them not to stir up the Indians, since the fort was incomplete. He feared that after the troops were gone, he and his people would pay dearly for their actions.

Read Gardener´s firsthand account of this crisis and enjoy his wry common sense attitude as his small band weathered the wrath of the angry Pequots once the soldiers had all sailed back to Boston.

Books in the Connecticut series:

1637
History of the Pequot War
Captain John Underhill

1660
Relation of the Pequot War
Lt. Lion Gardener

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