8/16/2022: Happy Birthday to Me!
That fateful night, my friends and I massacred the natives. I don’t care what they say; we committed straight genocide, and I feel very guilty. I don’t really know why we did it, anyway. Sure, there’d been some attacks from the Pequots, and they’d deserved what was coming at them, but a looting and murder would’ve been enough to scare them. But no, we raided an entire Pequot fort and killed hundreds of them, warriors, elderly, women, and children alike. Their bodies almost covered all of the land inside of their walls.
That night, we’d made an alliance with the Narragansett and the Mohegan tribes, other Indian tribes nearby. We slithered through a hole in the fortress’ walls, and opened fire. Someone later thought to use a torch to set fire to the little huts, and the entire village burned. Only five of the Pequot survived, I heard.
At the town meeting, we discussed doing the same kind of attacks on other Indian forts. The vast majority agreed, but I couldn’t help feeling a bit sorry. Those who hadn’t died had been enslaved, and this felt like a difficult future for some who’d been innocent. But, you know what they say. The innocent are in the same boat as the criminals, as long as they’re the same group of people. Everyone is responsible for the actions of those in their community. Your brother commit a crime? Your whole household is responsible. And so on and so forth.
It was a real bad economic decision to mass murder the Pequots, too. We’d been trading European cloth for wampum (a sort of bead made out of a shell which can be used for trade) and furs. I know, we had plenty of trade between us and other native tribes, but it’s good to have economic and trade connections to people all over. The Pequots were really prominent, so it was a smart move to befriend them and trade with them. But, to convince the other Indians, we told them by taking out the Pequots it’d help them to become more prominent themselves, so we didn’t lose much.
The whole massacre has made Captain Mason a real important figure in our colony. He’d already been important enough to lead the whole massacring, but he’s on a different level now. Women regard him as savior and hero, seeing as he led a movement to end a tradition of offenses against Connecticut women. Men regard him as some omnipotent god who can do well in combat and do no wrong anywhere else. I respect him, but there was something sinister about his enthusiasm in killing so many Pequot warriors. You know, most people don’t call them the Pequot, just the Indians or natives. Maybe savages. Most people probably don’t respect them enough to call them by name.
That’s really all I have to say. I know it isn’t might manly to be journaling about my feelings and anxieties and whatnot, but it’s truly comforting. I wish massacring will never exist in the future.