Raising silenced voices: 'Hope Leslie' and Gov. John Winthrop's war against the Pequot Tribe

The Pequot tribe of Mystic, Connecticut, was nearly eradicated in the Pequot War that took place in the seventeenth century. Governor John Winthrop was responsible for the welfare of the settlers in the Massachusetts Bay Colony and the settlements in Connecticut. Winthrop and his magistrates declared war against the Pequot tribe residing along the fertile land of the Connecticut River. The Pequot tribe were accused of a conspiracy to unite the tribes and push the English settlers out of New England entirely. By ordering a decisive and vicious pre-dawn raid on a local Pequot village that took the lives of hundreds of women, children, and elderly, Winthrop declared the threat removed. Catharine Maria Sedgwick retold the events of the Pequot war in her work of fiction Hope Leslie (1827), but she kept Winthrop's character, behavior, and influence intact. In the same stroke she created an enjoyable, gripping novel, and educated her widespread readership about the horrors of the Pequot War in a way that subtly undercut Winthrop's fame. Sedgwick's manipulation of Winthrop was slight despite what critical scholars may assert, and her representation of him in Hope Leslie was accurate: He instigated the Pequot War, and he should not be used as an example of how to approach Native American relations in any century. Hope Leslie remains a cautionary tale that does more than provide readers with a historical action story: It teaches us to listen, to learn, and to help raise silenced voices.