The History of the Pequot People
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The Mashantucket Pequot Nation has called Southeastern Connecticut their ancestral land for thousands of years. The Pequot people have lived in an area between the Thames and Pawcatuck rivers, an area of about two hundred and fifty miles . The nation's language draws on the Algonquian language family, making it very similar to other southern New England tribes.

Before devastating diseases wiped out much of the tribe they numbered between ten and fifteen thousand people. The Pequots lived primarily along bays and tidal marshes of Long Island Sound and the estuaries of the Thames, Mystic, and Pawcatuck Rivers. They took advantage of their proximity to water by creating an economy based on fishing, shellfish, and hunting. They also employed the cultivation of corn, squash, and tobacco as means to survival. The Pequot proximity to the previously mentioned waterways brought them easily into contact with European traders. Because of this, Pequots rose to economic and political control offer the region by controlling the Europeans access to such things as furs and Wampum. Wampum was used originally by Native Americans for social, ceremonial, and political purposes was then transformed into a European form of currency. Wampum became a factor in the growing competition and conflict with Europeans and Natives.

In the fall of 1636, war was declared on the Pequot people. A military force from the Massachusetts Bay Colony burned two Pequot villages along the Thames River. The reasons for the attack by the English were numerous. First, the Pequots refused to turn in the man involved in the killing of an English trader by the name of John Stone. The Pequots also refused to give a large payment of Wampum in payment for the killing nor would they supply hostages to the English to ensure compliance for their demands.

After this conflict, measures by the English were taken to subdue the adversity. The English attempted to force assimilation upon them, however this was not successful. The Pequot were split into two groups; the Mashantucket. Pequot were forced to live under Uncas and Mohegans and the Pawcatuck Pequot were placed under the control of the Naragansetts. Before the Pequot war, nearly half of the Pequot people as a result of small pox, plague, and other European diseases, and by the end of the war, only about 2,500 were left. After the Pequot war, the Mashantucket Pequot, with help from Connecticut Governor John Winthrop, were granted the right to return the Pequot land.

In 1638, the treaty of Hartford was signed. It divided the surviving Pequots among the mohegan and Narragansett tribes and forbid the survivors from returning to their land and forbid them from ever again being called "Pequot." This attempt to force the assimilation of Pequots into other tribes was not successful. The Pequots managed to retain their cultural identity in spite of European attempts to the contrary (Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Literature 1997).

Often, the poverty stricken tribe sold land for just subsistence money, or its state appointed overseers sold plots without tribal approval. By 1865 just 214 acres of reservation land were left. From the 17th century through the 1970's, the Pequots struggled to preserve their values and traditions in the face of disease, poverty and hostility from the government. The Tribe also separated into the Mashantucket and Pawcatuck Pequots, a division that remains today despite their common heritage. Only the resilient spirit of the Mashantucket Pequots prevented the complete annihilation of the Tribe through assimilation, neglect and government appropriation of Tribal lands (Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Literature 1997).

The Mashantucket Pequots suffered almost complete annihilation in the 1970's, when the only residents of the Tribal landds were two sisters, Elizabeth George Plouffe and Martha Langevin Ellal. Following the deaths of the two sisters, groups of Tribal members from around the country began to return to the reservation. The Mashantucket Pequots were recognized by Congress in 1983, and were awarded funds to buy back eight hundred acres of Tribal land. When the Supreme Court ruling in 1987 granted sovereign tribes the right to operate casinos on their land, the Pequots began construction of Foxwoods. The casino is now the largest gaming operation in the Western Hemisphere (Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation Literature 1997).

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