Interactions with natives and a solid foundation

The story of early Connecticut was unique to the colonies incorporated under the Great Seal of the English monarchy. Two cultures collided when Puritans from the Massachusetts Bay colony pushed westward into the Connecticut River Valley. These Puritans met a myriad of native tribes, ranging from the Pequots and their offshoot the Mohegans, to the Narrangansetts who traversed the border of Connecticut and Massachusetts. These were all tribes under the umbrella term of Algonquian, which the colony’s namesake was kept from. “Quanet-ta-cut”, meaning “on the long tidal river” was transliterated into the English “Connecticut”.

The intermingling of the Indians and English met both amicably and with opposition. A more latent account would be the Pequot War in 1637, a delayed colonial response to the murder of a Virginian captain, John Stone. The Pequot were aggressive and savage people, not able to make allies with even other Indians because of their acquisitional desires for land and power. They helped formulate a negative stereotype of Indians for the Puritan colonists. Pequot is an Algonquian term that means “destroyers of men”. The English did have interlopers that labored on their behalf, if only in part.

Uncas was sachem of the Mohegan tribe that had seceded from the Pequots and also was a brother-in-law to the Pequot sachem Sassacus. Scholar Robert Erwin states that Uncas was a consummate statesman and befriended several colonial Connecticutians of prominent postitions. These men included military savvy Captain John Mason, and Thomas Hooker who led the initial migration west from Massachusetts. His espionage and counter-surveillance against the Pequot tribe aided an English victory and secured footing for further towns to flourish there. It is recorded however, that Uncas was quoted as saying “I am no little dog of the English”. This was in response to expectations of his succor on behalf of his new English allies. The Uncas situation was a big part of an even larger picture that explains a thriving English colony in Connecticut.

The first 25 years of the infant colony were spent as an autonomous civic venture, operating under the auspices of the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut. The Fundamental Orders were for all intents and purposes a constitution for the towns that made up Connecticut. It had not authority of even legal allegiance to the crown or the Massachusetts Bay Colony. This was an assembly at first of people from the Massachusetts towns of Dorchester, Watertown and Newton. Thomas Hooker directed the mini-migration west and out of the Massachusetts towns, established Windsor, Wethersfield and Hartford. The town names are certainly indicative of the nostalgic ties to England.

Along with resonating names brought over from the motherland, Connecticutians also brought the civic structural idea of parishes, where a town was localized around a church body, which in turn was the ancillary governing body. The difference in the colony was that the church was not subordinate to any authority, except God and His word. These churches became congregational in their modus operandi. More on governmental and church structure later. The colony did eventually became an ancillary to the crown in 1662, and by then the town/church infrastructure had successfully be able to facilitate a viable and growing community.

Sources:

Erwin, Robert. "Uncas the Mohegan: No Little Dog of the English." The Antioch Review 65 no. 2 (2007): 352-361.

Hull, Moran, Brooks B., Gerald F. . "The Churching of Colonial Connecticut: A Case Study." Review of Religious Research 41 no. 2 (1999): 165-183.

Jones, Mary Jeanne Anderson. Congregational Connecticut, 1636-1662. Middletown. Wesleyan University Press. 1968.