[Sidenote:  Destruction of the Pequods, 1637.]

52.  The Pequod War, 1637.—­The Pequod Indians were not so ready as the Dutch to admit that resistance was hopeless.  They attacked Wethersfield.  They killed several colonists, and carried others away into captivity.  Captain John Mason of Connecticut and Captain John Underhill of Massachusetts went against them with about one hundred men.  They surprised the Indians in their fort.  They set fire to the fort, and shot down the Indians as they strove to escape from their burning wigwams.  In a short time the Pequod tribe was destroyed.

[Illustration:  JOHN WINTHROP, JR.]

[Sidenote:  The Connecticut Orders of 1638-39.]

53.  The First American Constitution, 1638-39.—­The Connecticut colonists had leisure now to settle the form of their government.  Massachusetts had such a liberal charter that nothing more seemed to be necessary in that colony.  The Mayflower Compact did well enough for the Pilgrims.  The Connecticut people had no charter, and they wanted something more definite than a vague compact.  So in the winter of 1638-39 they met at Hartford and set down on paper a complete set of rules for their guidance.  This was the first time in the history of the English race that any people had tried to do this.  The Connecticut constitution of 1638-39 is therefore looked upon as “the first truly political written constitution in history.”  The government thus established was very much the same as that of Massachusetts with the exception that in Connecticut there was no religious condition for the right to vote as there was in Massachusetts.

[Sidenote:  The New Haven settlers.]

[Sidenote:  New Haven founded, 1638. Higginson, 72-73.]

54.  New Haven, 1638.—­The settlers of New Haven went even farther than the Massachusetts rulers and held that the State should really be a part of the Church.  Massachusetts was not entirely to their tastes.  They passed only one winter there and then moved away and settled New Haven.  But this colony was not well situated for commerce, and was too near the Dutch settlements (p. 41).  It was never as prosperous as Connecticut and was finally joined to that colony.

[Sidenote:  Reasons for union.]

[Sidenote:  Articles of Confederation, 1643.]

[Sidenote:  New England towns. Higginson, 47-79.]

55.  The New England Confederation, 1643.—­Besides the settlements that have already been described there were colonists living in New Hampshire and in Maine.  Massachusetts included the New Hampshire towns within her government, for some of those towns were within her limits.  In 1640 the Long Parliament met in England, and in 1645 Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans destroyed the royal army in the battle of Naseby.  In these troubled times England could do little to protect the New England colonists, and could do nothing to punish them for acting independently.  The