Читать книгу Seeking a Revival Culture - Allen M. Baker - Страница 17

And you were dead in your trespasses and sin.

Ephesians 2:1

One does not live long in Connecticut before hearing the founder of Hartford, the Puritan Thomas Hooker, severely maligned for his handling of the Pequot Indian massacre in 1637. The party line in Connecticut is that Hooker was culpable in the slaughter and annihilation of the Pequot tribe, which lived near Old Saybrook. I have done a fair amount of reading on the issue, and it appears to be a classic “tit for tat” situation. Hooker, with one hundred or so of his church members came to the Massachusetts Bay Colony from England in the early 1630’s. He soon petitioned John Winthrop to allow his people to remove themselves from Roxbury, just outside Boston. They desired to settle in the Connecticut River valley, which was far more suitable for farming. Hooker and his people settled Hartford in 1636, and during this time a few men from Boston made a raid on the Pequots near Old Saybrook. Some say the Pequots started it, and others say the Puritans did. We know that the Niantic tribe, living on Block Island, killed a trader named John Oldham, and John Endicott was directed by the General Court in Boston, in August 1636 to retaliate. He did so, raiding Block Island and burning down their dwellings. Later several raids were made by the Pequots on English settlers, first in Old Saybrook but then further inland, reaching Wethersfield, only a few miles from Hartford. They killed nine settlers and kidnapped two young girls. This was unnerving to the settlers, and the General Court in Hartford commissioned John Mason and an army of ninety-nine, including Mohegan and Narragansett Indians as allies (these tribes were having their own problems with the Pequots). They were to take care of the Pequots. Hooker’s only involvement in the affair was to preach a sermon stressing their just cause. He also prayed for God to give the army victory over their enemies. The consequent raid on a Pequot fort killed five hundred, including women and children. Only five or six survived the attack. Certainly this act was not a pretty sight, but it was the way warfare was done in the seventeenth century. It is clear that Hooker was not responsible for initiating the battle.5

I bring up this event because it appears that Thomas Hooker was falsely accused. Have you ever been falsely accused? Let’s be honest, for most of us the false accusations we have experienced always bear some resemblance to the facts. In other words, most of us are culpable in some way. But even if we are not, how should we handle these things?