uots sent messengers to patch up peace with their enemies, the
Narragansetts, and tried to induce them to take up arms against the
English. They would have probably succeeded but for the influence of
Roger Williams with the Narragansett chiefs. In this crisis the
friendship of Governor Vane for the banished champion of religious
liberty was used to good effect. To gratify the governor and his
council at Boston, Williams, at the risk of his life, sought the
wigwams of Canonicus and Miantonomoh, and "broke to pieces the Pequot
negotiations and design."[5] Instead of accepting the overtures of the
Pequots, the Narragansetts sent Miantonomoh and the two sons of
Canonicus to Boston to make an alliance with the whites.[6]

In the spring of 1637 the war burst with fury. Wethersfield was first
attacked at the instance of an Indian who had sold his lands and could
not obtain the promised payment. In revenge he secretly instigated the
Pequots to attack the place, and they killed a woman, a child, and
some men, besides some cattle; and took captive two young women, who
were preserved by the squaw of Mononotto, a Pequot sachem, and,
through the Dutch, finally restored to their friends.[7]

By May, 1637, when the first general court of Connecticut convened at
Hartford, upward of thirty persons had fallen beneath the tomahawk.
The promptest measures were necessary; and without waiting for the
assistance of Massachusetts, whose indiscretion had brought on the
war, ninety men (nearly half the effective force of the colony) were
raised,[8] and placed under the command of Captain John Mason, an
officer who had served in the Netherlands under Sir Thomas Fairfax.
The force sailed down the river in three small vessels, and were
welcomed at Fort Saybrook by Lieutenant Gardiner.

The Indian fort was situated in a swamp to the east of the Connecticut
on the Mystic River; but instead of landing at the Pequot River, as he
had been ordered, Mason completely deceived the Indian spies by
sailing past it away from the intended prey. Near Point Judith,
however, in the Narragansett country, Mason disembarked his men; and,
accompanied by eighty Mohegans and two hundred Narragansetts, turned
on his path and marched by land westward towards the Pequot country.
So secretly and swiftly was this movement executed that the Indian
fort was surrounded and approached within a few feet before the
Indians took alarm.[9]

The victory of Mason was a massacre, t