Niantic (people)
The Niantic were Algonquin- speaking Indians of eastern North America who formerly inhabited part of the south coast of New England . They were closely related to the Pequot , Mohegan, and Narraganset , and their culture and way of life differed little from that of their neighbors, with the exception of their greater dependence on seafood. Their tribal identity has expired today.
Residential area and groups
The Niantic inhabited the south coast of New England at the beginning of the 17th century from the mouth of the Connecticut River eastward to southwest Rhode Island including Block Island in Long Island Sound . The Niantic were divided into two geographical groups, separated from each other by the tribal areas of the Pequot and Mohegan:
- Eastern Niantic (in southwest Rhode Island) and
- Western Niantic (in southern, central Connecticut, east of the mouth of the Connecticut River)
history
Dutch and English
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From 1614 to 1617, New England was ravaged by wars and devastating epidemics. To survive the following time, the Western Niantic joined the Pequot, while the Eastern Niantic allied with the Narraganset. This alliance was later reinforced by the marriage of Quaiapen , the sister of the Nianticsachems Ninigret, with the chief son of the Narraganset Mriksah . From 1614 the Dutch traders from the lower Hudson River extended their radius of action to the east, visited the tribes on the south coast of New England and came to the villages of the Narraganset in what is now Rhode Island. The Dutch then claimed the entire area as far as Cape Cod as their colony and called it Nieuw Nederland . The main Dutch settlement areas were on the islands of Manhattan and Long Island and along the Hudson, Delaware and Connecticut rivers . The administrative seat was Nieuw Amsterdam , later New York .
In 1622 a trading post was established near what is now Hartford , from which trade with the tribes on the lower Connecticut River was carried out. However, the English claimed the same area as part of Virginia for themselves and established a settlement on the east coast in 1620, today's Plymouth in Massachusetts. The Dutch did not want a war, but rather to cooperate and in 1627 sent a delegation overland to the English to negotiate with the Pilgrim Fathers in Plymouth. The Dutch congratulated the English on their new, successful colony, and both parties signed a trade agreement giving the Dutch exclusive rights to trade with the Narraganset and other tribes west of the Connecticut River.
The trade deal hardly affected the interests of the colonists at the time, but after 1630 the situation changed significantly with the arrival of large numbers of Puritan immigrants in Massachusetts. They simply ignored the earlier agreement and within a few years the English and the Dutch became competitors in the fur trade on the Connecticut River.
For a while Pequot and Niantic traded with both parties, but intense competition eventually led to a split within Pequot. Two different parties formed and attacks on Dutch and English traders who were unlucky enough to be accompanied by the wrong Pequot group. The dispute within the Pequot escalated. While the larger group under Sachem Sassacus was for the Dutch, the Pro-England group gathered under Sachem Uncas , from which the Mohegan would later emerge. The Western Niantic had to choose a party and chose the Holland supporters under Sassacus.
The Pequot War
Both the Niantic and the Pequot were defensive and quite capable of defending themselves. In 1634, Niantic warriors killed the Boston trader John Stone, who was reputed to be a pirate and slave trader. Despite the fact that Stone had captured Niantic women and children and wanted to sell them as slaves to Virginia , the English demanded that the Pequot, who negotiated in place of the Niantic, surrender his murderers. The request was rejected and was a reason for war for the English. In 1635 the English built Fort Saybrook at the mouth of the Connecticut River, which blocked Dutch access to the river and thus forced the abandonment of the trading post at Hartford. The following year, Thomas Hooker came to the Connecticut Valley with the first English settlers. When the Western Niantic hijacked a Boston trader's boat from Block Island in the summer of 1637 and killed a member of the crew, the Pequot War broke out.
Without warning the English colonists in Connecticut, the Massachusetts Bay Colony sent a 90-man punitive expedition to Block Island under the command of John Endicott . There they were supposed to kill every Niantic warrior and capture women and children who would later be sold as slaves. The English burned 60 wigwams and the corn fields, but the Niantic fled into the nearby dense forests and only 14 of them could be killed. Endicott found the punitive action inadequate and led the expedition back to the mainland. In Fort Saybrook he was able to strengthen his force and drove to the main village of the Pequot at the mouth of the Thames River . There he demanded the extradition of the murderers of John Stone and the other Englishman, plus 1000 fathoms (1 thread = 1.83 m) of wampum as reparation and some children as hostages. Should the Pequot refuse, they would face punishment. Governor John Winthrop later stated that the original intention was to send Endicott's force only to Block Island, and our march to the Pequot was in the hope of getting them to negotiate and bring it to a peaceful end .
Most of the Pequot fled into the woods. Endicott and his people burned the village, but the Pequot and Niantic had recognized some of the soldiers from Fort Saybrook. Niantic warriors then besieged the fort and killed anyone who was seen outside the stockade. The fort was under the command of Lieutenant Lion Gardiner , who was outraged by Endicott's hasty and ineffective search and extermination mission against the Pequot. After Endicott's departure to Boston, the Indians raided remote Connecticut settlements, which suffered the consequences.
The Pequot tried to renew their previous alliance with the Narraganset and to unite with them in the fight against the English. A fortunate coincidence for the British, however, it would be that Roger Williams was able to interrupt a council meeting in which the Pequot and Narraganset wanted to settle their differences, and the Narraganset offered an alliance against their old enemy, the Pequot. The Narraganset followed the English offer and placed themselves under the command of the English, which not only led to the destruction of the Pequot, but possibly also to their own. In winter the Pequot tried to win the Mohegan and Niantic as allies against the English. Only the Western Niantic accepted, while the Mohegan sided with the colonists. The Eastern Niantic remained neutral.
On May 1, 1637, the General Court of the Connecticut Colony at Hartford declared the offensive war against the Pequot and Western Niantic. Both Connecticut and Massachusetts launched campaigns against the Pequot and Western Niantic, each hoping to destroy these nations before the other. Connecticut Captain John Mason marched with 90 English and hundreds of Native American allies to a Pequot village on the Mystic River , which was set on fire and slaughtered all of the residents, most of them women and children. The allied Narragansetts were appalled at the merciless warfare of the English, the killing or enslavement of all surviving Pequot, including some who had voluntarily surrendered to the Narraganset to be accepted into their tribe.
The remaining Pequot and Western Niantic left their villages and fled, hunted by the English and their Indian allies. The prisoners were either executed or sold as slaves to Bermuda and the West Indies . Only about 100 Western Niantics and a number of Pequot were given to the Mohegan for inclusion in their tribe.
Loss of identity
By 1655 the Mohegan Pequot and Western Niantic were doing so badly that the English, usually unimpressed by such things, took Pequot to other locations in eastern Connecticut, and some of the Western Niantic went with them. The Niantic who stayed with the Mohegan went to the Brotherton Indians and left Connecticut in 1788 to live with the Oneida in New York State. The Brotherton moved to Wisconsin in 1834, and many of their descendants still live on the east side of Lake Winnebago today . It appeared that the remaining Western Niantics had risen into the Mohegan, but in the early 19th century some families from this tribe were reported at Lyme and Danbury . Since then, however, there has been no further information, so that the identity of the tribe is considered extinct.
The Eastern Niantic remained under the protection of the Narraganset until King Philip's War (1675–1676). Together with the Narraganset they managed to remain neutral in this war, but the Narraganset were accused of taking in fugitive Wampanoag. The English therefore attacked them in December 1675. In this battle, which as Great Swamp Massacre (Engl. Great Swamp Massacre) became known, the Narragansett lost more than 600 tribal members and 20 sachems.
Of the nearly 5,000 Narraganset before the war, fewer than 500 survived and in 1682 signed a peace treaty with the English. The Eastern Niantic had remained neutral until the end of the war and were given a small reservation near Charlestown in Rhode Island, where the remnants of the Narraganset were also allowed to move. Soon after, the Eastern Niantic lost their identity, as only the Narraganset are mentioned in later reports.
Demographics
Population estimates prior to the arrival of Europeans are problematic because the Niantic were decimated by both disease and war shortly before contact. The epidemics of 1617–1619 in particular hit the Niantic as devastating as their neighbors and many of their villages were completely extinct. It can be assumed that their number was once around 4000 tribal members. When Plymouth was first settled by the English in 1620, their total number was about 1500 Eastern and Western Niantic.
| year | number | annotation | source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1620 | 1,500 | estimated | Dick Shovel |
| 1700 | 200 | 100 each in Rhode Island and 100 Connecticut | NAHDB * |
| 1730 | 985 | Narraganset + West Niantic in Charlestown | John Callender |
| 1833 | 199 | Narraganset in Charlestown | Commissioner on the Narragansett Tribe of Indians |
* Native American Historical Data Base
See also
literature
- Bruce G. Trigger (Ed.): Handbook of North American Indians . Vol. 15. Northeast . Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington DC 1978 ISBN 0-16-004575-4 .