on the continent, as was illustrated in the remarkable military energy and the unshaken financial credit of Connecticut during the Revolutionary War; and in the chief crisis of the Federal Convention of 1787 Connecticut, with her compromise which secured equal state representation in one branch of the national government and popular representation in the other, played the controlling part. [Sidenote:  Connecticut Pioneers] [Sidenote:  The first written constitution]

Before the little federation of towns had framed its government, it had its Indian question to dispose of.  Three years before the migration led by Hooker, a crew of eight traders, while making their way up the river to the Dutch station on the site of Hartford, had been murdered by a party of Indians subject to Sassacus, chief sachem of the Pequots.  Negotiations concerning this outrage had gone on between Sassacus and the government at Boston, and the Pequots had promised to deliver up the murderers, but had neglected to do so.  In the summer of 1636 some Indians on Block Island subject to the Narragansetts murdered the pioneer John Oldham, who was sailing on the Sound, and captured his little vessel.  At this, says Underhill, “God stirred up the hearts” of Governor Vane and the rest of the magistrates.  They were determined to make an end of the Indian question and show the savages that such things would not be endured.  First an embassy was sent to Canonicus and his nephew Miantonomo, chief sachems of the Narragansetts, who hastened to disclaim all responsibility for the murder, and to throw the blame entirely upon the Indians of the island.  Vane then sent out three vessels under command of Endicott, who ravaged Block Island, burning wigwams, sinking canoes, and slaying dogs, for the men had taken to the woods.  Endicott then crossed to the mainland to reckon with the Pequots.  He demanded the surrender of the murderers, with a thousand fathoms of wampum for damages; and not getting a satisfactory answer, he attacked the Indians, killed a score of them, seized their ripe corn, and burned and spoiled what he could.  But such reprisals served only to enrage the red men.  Lyon Gardiner, commander of the Saybrook fort, complained to Endicott:  “You come hither to raise these wasps about my ears; then you will take wing and flee away.”  The immediate effect was to incite Sassacus to do his utmost to compass the ruin of the English.  The superstitious awe with which the white men were at first regarded had been somewhat lessened by familiar contact with them, as in Aesop’s fable of the fox and the lion.  The resources of Indian diplomacy were exhausted in the attempt to unite the Narragansett warriors with the Pequots in a grand crusade against the white men.  Such a combination could hardly have been as formidable as that which was effected forty years afterward in King Philip’s war; for the savages had not as yet become accustomed to firearms, and the English settlements did not present