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Updated: May 10, 2025
What he did in the nineteen years of his residence at Windsor and Fairfield is epitomized in a brief summary of the duties and honors to which he was called by his fellowmen: Chief of the Massachusetts commission and the first Governor, de facto; organizer and chief magistrate of the first court; writer of the earliest laws; president of the court which declared war against the Pequots; framer of the Fundamental Orders the Constitution of 1639 which embodied the great principles of government by the people propounded and elucidated by the illustrious Thomas Hooker, in his letter to Governor Winthrop, and in his famous sermon; compiler, at the request of the General Court, of the Body of Lawes, the Code of 1650; commissioner on important state matters; commissioner for the United Colonies; founder and defender of Fairfield; patriot, jurist, statesman.
The latter part of June, four weeks after the destruction of the forts there, these two bodies met, in strong martial array, upon the ruins of the empire of Sassacus, resolved to prosecute the war to the utter extermination of the Pequots. The despairing fugitives had retired into the wilderness toward the west.
The Pequots refused to believe him until the boat was actually under way and sailing down the river; then at last they yielded, gave up the two English girls, and received the seven Indians in return. These two poor little girls reached Saybrook in a sad condition, worn out and frightened.
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.
The fiery-spirited young sachem, hating the Pequots, and eager for a fight with them in conjunction with such powerful allies as the English, cordially received Captain Mason, granted him a passage through his country, and immediately called out a re-enforcement of two hundred men to join the expedition.
Thereupon Winthrop desisted, and referred the matter to the Virginia authorities. In 1634, when the settlements were forming on the Connecticut, a fresh irritation was caused by the course of the emigrants in negotiating for their lands with the Mohegan chiefs instead of with the Pequots, the lords paramount of the soil.
"Sassacus trusts his young white brother," said the Indian, "He hears Neebin singing by the river of the Pequots." "We part here, and perhaps forever," said Arundel. "Farewell, Sagamore. A nobler heart than thine never beat in savage or Christian bosom. I will never forget you." He wrung the hand of the chief, and, turning, was instantly lost in the darkness.
One shot just grazed the bow of the boat in which were the two young English girls. The Indians passed safely and carried their captives with them to the Pequot country. The Connecticut men now determined to put a stop to the depredations of the Pequots.
Why again, he thought, is the chief of a distant tribe lurking in these woods? He surely can cherish no evil design against the colony, for there is no misunderstanding betwixt the English and the Pequots. His thoughts then dwelt upon the Knight, and upon his connection with the savage.
They found the Pequots within a circular stockade near the present town of Stonington, where of 400 warriors all save five were killed. King Philip's War.% During nearly forty years not a tribe in all New England dared rise against the white men. But in 1675 trouble began again. The settlers were steadily crowding the Indians off their lands.
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