Historiography of the Pequot War 

Scholars gathered together at the Pequot Museum (www.pequotmuseum.org) on Friday & Saturday, October 18 & 19, to reexamine the complexity of a changing cultural landscape and the consequences of colonization and warfare. Kevin McBride, research director of the Mashantucket Pequot Museum, presents "Historiography of the Pequot War", read at the "17th Century Warfare, Diplomacy, & Society in the American Northeast" Academic Conference at the Mashantucket Pequot Museum & Research Center on October 19, 2013. This paper examines the written primary and secondary sources of the Pequot War (1636-1637) used to most recently guide archaeological research strategies and interpret and contextualize recovered battle-related artifacts recovered from battlefields associated from the Pequot War. Battlefields of the Pequot War (1636-1637) is a long term collaborative project between the Mashantucket Pequot Museum & Research Center and the University of Connecticut and supported by the National Park Service American Battlefield Protection Program. Even four hundred years after the conclusion of the Pequot War, it remains one of the most controversial and significant events in the Colonial and Native history of America resulting in hundreds of articles, monographs, books, and pamphlets in American and Europe. The analysis has been multi-focused on the political, social and economic causes and consequences of the war, including the complexity of intertribal, inter-Colonial, and Native-Colonial relations of the period. Learn more about the Battlefields of the Pequot War project at www.pequotwar.org.