Changes

==Quest for American Supremacy: Destroying the Pequots, 1637==

==Quest for American Supremacy: Destroying the Pequots, 1637==

The elaborate European rituals of capitulation, parole and ransom were followed when white fought white, but not when Indians were involved. Both sides used systematic massacre as a standard tactic, even after surrenders. There were no "innocent civilians" on the frontier. The reason was that peoples were fighting each other for survival, not to help some governments gain some diplomatic leverage. More important than particular massacres was the determination to win a total victory over the enemy. The Indians sometimes achieved this, as when the Iroquois, armed with Dutch firearms, virtually exterminated 20,000 Huron Indians in Canada and New York in the 1640s and 1650s. Of more direct relevance to the American way of warfare was the Puritan experience in New England. In 1637 Puritans were enraged when the Pequot Indians refused to acknowledge British sovereignty, and then scalped thirty settlers. Captain John Mason with 40 militia (and some Narragansett allies) surprised the Pequots at Mystic River in Connecticut. They burned the town and killed nearly every inhabitant. The remaining Pequots were hunted down and given as slaves to the Indian allies, or sold into brutal slavery in the West Indies. The Pequots thought of warfare as a small-scale calculus of feuds and revenge. They never realized that the Europeans used warfare to control the whole destinies of peoples and continents Once aroused, the Puritans mobilized all their resources and made sure they struck first. The first principles of sovereignty to the European mind were that only the state was allowed to use violence, and that all groups living in a specified territory had to acknowledge the authority of the government. Anyone who could not abide these rules had to be destroyed. Puritans were grim soldiers who believed fervently that God was behind them. They saw the "savages" as heathens outside God's protection--their warpaint, stone age culture, and casual use of torture indicated they were at best tools of the devil, and at worst wild animals. "They act like wolves and are to be dealt withall as wolves," pronounced the Rev. Solomon Stoddard.  

 

The elaborate European rituals of capitulation, parole and ransom were followed when white fought white, but not when Indians were involved. Both sides used systematic massacre as a standard tactic, even after surrenders. There were no "innocent civilians" on the frontier. The reason was that peoples were fighting each other for survival, not to help some governments gain some diplomatic leverage. More important than particular massacres was the determination to win a total victory over the enemy. The Indians sometimes achieved this, as when the Iroquois, armed with Dutch firearms, virtually exterminated 20,000 Huron Indians in Canada and New York in the 1640s and 1650s. Of more direct relevance to the American way of warfare was the Puritan experience in New England. In 1637 Puritans were enraged when the Pequot Indians refused to acknowledge British sovereignty, and then scalped thirty settlers. Captain John Mason with 40 militia (and some Narragansett allies) surprised the Pequots at Mystic River in Connecticut. They burned the town and killed nearly every inhabitant. The remaining Pequots were hunted down and given as slaves to the Indian allies, or sold into brutal slavery in the West Indies. The Pequots thought of warfare as a small-scale calculus of feuds and revenge. They never realized that the Europeans used warfare to control the whole destinies of peoples and continents Once aroused, the Puritans mobilized all their resources and made sure they struck first. The first principles of sovereignty to the European mind were that only the state was allowed to use violence, and that all groups living in a specified territory had to acknowledge the authority of the government. Anyone who could not abide these rules had to be destroyed. Puritans were grim soldiers who believed fervently that God was behind them. They saw the "savages" as heathens outside God's protection--their warpaint, stone age culture, and casual use of torture indicated they were at best tools of the devil, and at worst wild animals. "They act like wolves and are to be dealt withall as wolves," pronounced the Rev. Solomon Stoddard.

==Alliances and counterattacks==

==Alliances and counterattacks==