Colonial Encounters and Colonial Economics: Entangled Pequot role shifting in 1620-1770 New England

Summary

Recent scholarship has revealed that colonial entanglements starting in the early seventeenth century forced New England’s indigenous polities to renegotiate their modes of subsistence in order to maintain their group and individual identities. This paper explores the means by which one particular group shifted their economic strategies to meet new challenges presented them by early encounters with Dutch and English settlers. The Pequots, who in the 1620s dominated much of southern New England, were one of the native groups most significantly affected by the European settlement of Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts. This paper describes and interprets the avenues by which the Pequots mitigated their shrinking land base by broadening their economic strategies and participating in markets both novel and global. An emphasis is placed on the role played by Pequots in the growth and maintenance of regional whaling economies.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Exploitation and Survival: Indigenous Americans and the Commercial Whaling Industry   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2014

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): SYM-11,01