The Legacy of Robin Cassacinamon

NOANK HISTORICAL SOCIETY Presents:

“The Legacy of Robin Cassacinamon”

By Kevin McBride, University of Connecticut

Wednesday, November 20, 2024

7:30 PM, Latham/Chester Store

By the end of the Pequot War (1636-1637) the Pequot tribe lost almost half of their pre-war population of 4,000. Fifteen hundred Pequot were killed during the war and hundreds more were sold into slavery in New England and the Caribbean. The 1638 Treaty of Hartford stipulated that the remaining Pequot were to be divided among the Mohegan and Narragansett and never to be called Pequot again and were never to be allowed to return to their homeland. The goal of the English to eliminate the Pequot as a viable political and social entity was all but achieved. Led by the Pequot sachem Robin Cassacinamon the Mashantucket Pequots managed to reestablish themselves in Noank (and later Mashantucket) as self-governing people only twelve years after the Treaty of Hartford. Cassacinamon achieved this by pursuing a strategy of accommodation and negotiation and by building lasting personal and political relationships with colonial leaders such as John Winthrop Jr.  Cassacinamon was one of the most successful Native leaders of the 17^th Century and his legacy is the thriving Mashantucket Pequot community at Mashantucket.

Kevin McBride is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at UCONN and the former Director of Research at the Mashantucket Pequot Museum & Research Center.  McBride’s research on Colonial & Native American archaeology in the northeastern United States has been published in numerous academic journals that focus on historical archaeology and indigenous studies.