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Mystic Fiasco How the Indians Won the Pequot War

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For many decades after the 1637 Pequot War between Puritan colonists and the Pequot Indians of Connecticut, the event was seen as a great foundation event of white America, a heroic victory over a powerful, aggressive enemy that threatened to destroy the New England colonies, and the successful surprise attack by settlers and their Indian allies against a fortified Pequot village at Mystic, CT, in which several hundred Pequot men, women, and children were killed was seen as a near miracle. Later, the general view of the Pequot War was reversed, with now the Pequots seen as victims of an aggressive European invader, greedy for Indian land. Especially abhorred was that "Mystic Massacre". But today the Pequot War is remembered mostly only as local history in southern New England, its formerly perceived significance forgotten.

In "Mystic Fiasco" David Wagner and Jack Dempsey contend that the "Mystic Massacre", whether in the form of a Puritan miracle or as an act of incredible violence against an innocent foe, simply did not happen in the way long thought. The authors argue that the Indian allies of the English colonists had in fact allowed word of the impending assault to to leak to the Pequots, permitting them to mostly escape the wrathful blow of the English force, and to hide away, then later to a great extent be adopted into the ally tribes ("tribal" identity was highly fluid, with all the "tribes" in southern New England basically speaking one language and sharing a common culture, united by generations of intermarriage). The white commanders, having launched a surprise attack against a village from which the women and children had been withdrawn and which was defended by a decoy force of warriors, then fabricated reports of a great victory and horrendous slaughter to win the approval of colonial leaders and fellow settlers. The Pequots, so the authors contend, kept mum about their escape and for a lengthy period either removed themselves from their homelands or quietly disappeared into the "allied" Indian tribes, such as the Mohegans and the Narragansetts.

The authors' arguments are presented in a lively fashion with numerous primary source citations, but I am not (or at least not yet) convinced of their total validity. I am more inclined to view the claims of huge Pequot casualties to be the product of green military commanders' sanguine habit of overly estimating the effectiveness of their operations rather than deliberate falsifications.

For readers wanting to evaluate for themselves the force of the arguments presented in "Mystic Fiasco", I suggest they also read Alfred A. Cave's "The Pequot War" for a scholarly, conventional interpretation of events.

The vividness of "Mystic Fiasco" is much enhanced by many excellent (and authentic) paintings by Wagner distributed thoughout the text. Unfortunately, the printed book reproduces these paintings only in black-and-white (but they can be found in color on the Internet on Dempsey's website).

Wagner, David R., and Jack Dempsey, "MYSTIC FIASCO: How the Indians Won The Pequot War." (Scituate MA: Digital Scanning 2004; ISBN 1-582-18775-4). 245pp., 7 chapters, Annotated Chronology of events, index, maps and 50 illustrations of each major participant and episode. SUMMARY: Traditional understanding of The Pequot War (by both Native and Colonial sides, including Alfred E. Cave's "The Pequot War")is not informed or qualified by the simple act of historians' ACTUALLY WALKING THE LANDSCAPE of this fundamental conflict, which hard-wired the American psyche in relation to land, "foreigners" and war itself. "MYSTIC FIASCO" is the most comprehensive, detailed and documented study of The Pequot War from its beginnings to its aftermath up through today. Document by document, place by place, it follows Captains Mason and Underhill, their untested planter-soldiers and their very uncertain Mohegan "allies," as they take up the farcically-impossible task of marching unseen across Connecticut to "surprise" Mystic Fort and Village. In the facts, what you discover is an astonishing Native American victory built upon intimate knowledge of the landscape, of intertribal relationships, and of New World combat. For the Colonists, in their own words, had no idea how to actually locate or approach their targets; no idea how to tell a "Pequot" from any other of their intimate tribal cousins of Native New England; and no idea that their Mohegan "allies" were thoroughly intermarried and working with enemy-Pequots (for example, the Mohegan leader Uncas was a brother-in-law of Mamoho, the Sachem of Mystic). Instead, the Pequots and Mohegans used these blindspots to guide the English into a trap, used the evacuated Mystic Village as a decoy-target, and then drove Mason's and Underhill's men into the Atlantic Ocean miles from their intended destination. The only eyewitness-accounts come from those two captains, and the land and Native realities give the lie to their every claim. Because of the Christian colonies' willful refusals to listen and learn, they denied themselves any means of ever knowing for certain what effects their appalling violence was having on the peoples they had determined to "remove" in order to take their wealth. As some of the Pequots migrated to other tribal homelands, as more of them melted into other local, ethnically-fluid Native groups, this Colonial anxiety---or rather, this for-once correct perception!---drove their hopeless, inept and unsuccessful extermination-campaign in the aftermath of Mystic. (For one example, what English colonist could possibly verify that a certain scalp of hair had belonged to Pequot Sachem Sassacus? No colonist ever saw Sassacus---in fact the English had to rely on "Native reports" for every thing they thought they knew.) In this book you'll watch unexamined fantasies turn with time, "traditional scholarship" and education into holy fact: the growth of a tradition based on exactly the same ignorance of the land, Native Americans, and war, that still bedevils American foreign policy. You can see full-color versions of David Wagner's groundbreaking illustrations, an overview and a SAMPLE CHAPTER of "Mystic Fiasco" at the authors' website called ancientgreece-earlyamerica (dotcom).

The authors of this book have traveled in person to the Mystic site and examined carefully what has been written in old historical documents. David Wagner is a knowledgeable archaeologist and Jack Dempsey is one of the most intellectual persons of integrity that I have ever met. When they combine their talents to research history, one cannot easily dismiss their findings. History comes alive for the reader. Mysteries of Mystic????

Jack and David have proven to themselves that what is recorded never could have happened as recorded. This does not mean, however, that the holocaust never happened - at least, to my mind. The holocaust is consistent with the ethnic cleansing practiced against all First Nations across these continents. If it did not happen at Mystic as described in the documents the authors studied, it did happen at other sites. The authors recognize that what was written down as history was what the European immigrants wanted to happen.

I wrote the poem which the authors have used as a CODA for this book. They could not have used my poem had they not viewed the ethnocentricity of the European immigrants as accurate historical fact. The book only goes to show how erroneous historical documents can be, so it should be studied by anyone interested in a new perspective of early American history.

Dr. Dempsey is a PhD and a professor, with tremendous knowledge of the early American history which entrenched itself on this continent in the area where he currently resides. Dr. Dempsey is a man of integrity, who has done extensive research among Native Americans, past and present, and who deeply respects the traditional values of all First Nations. With an understanding of human nature and satirical wit, Dr. Dempsey presents a new look at an old historical event.