10 Days That Unexpectedly Changed America

“As God’s ‘chosen people,’ the Puritans felt entitled to the land occupied by native tribes, often using scripture to justify the outright seizure of territory. The new land was an untamed wilderness and their job was to subdue it for the glory of their God.”

In Chapter 1, Gillon details the massacre of hundreds of Pequots when Puritan settlers attacked and burned their fort. Major John Mason, who led the attack, considered his actions to be righteous because the English settlers viewed the conflict with native people as one of civilized peoples versus pagan savages. Mason even argued that the scripture sometimes “declareth that women and children must perish with their parents” (9).

“The Pequot War set up the tragic irony of American history; a nation founded on the highest ideals of individual liberty and freedom was built on slaughter and destruction of epic proportions.”

Gillon finds that the slaughter of Native Americans after the arrival of the English foreshadows the US being founded on and existing for nearly a century with the institution of slavery. The Pequot War set the precedent of conquest and repression that white settlers would use against Native Americans for years to come; similar justifications would later sanction enslavement.

“From the Great Lakes to the Mississippi Delta, and eventually to the Pacific Ocean and beyond, all Native American people—as individuals, as families, as nations—confronted waves of immigrants who sought to divest them of land rights and eradicate their cultural heritage.”

The straightforward reality of what took place between Native Americans and white settlers in America ironically underscores that much contemporary anti-immigration rhetoric was far more applicable to the incoming Europeans.