The Pequots were greatly embarrassed at the time by threatened hostilities with the Narragansetts and the Dutch, and in November, 1634, they became reduced to the necessity of seeking the alliance of the Massachusetts colony.  That authority inopportunely revived the question of Stone’s death and required the Pequots to deliver annually a heavy tribute of wampum as the price of their forgiveness and protection.[2] Had the object of the Massachusetts people been to promote bad feeling, no better method than this could have been adopted.

In July, 1636, John Oldham, who had been appointed collector of the tribute from the Pequots, was killed off Block Island by some of the Indians of the island who were subject to the Narragansett tribe.[3] Although the Pequots had nothing whatever to do with this affair, the Massachusetts government, under Harry Vane, sent a force against them, commanded by John Endicott.  After stopping at Block Island and destroying some Indian houses, he proceeded to the main-land to make war on the Pequots, but beyond burning some wigwams and seizing some corn he accomplished very little.

The action of Massachusetts was heartily condemned by the Plymouth colony and the settlers on the Connecticut, and Gardiner, the commander of the Saybrook fort, bluntly told Endicott that the proceedings were outrageous and would serve only to bring the Indians “like wasps about his ears.”  His prediction came true, and during the winter Gardiner and his few men at the mouth of the river were repeatedly assailed by parties of Indians, who boasted that “Englishmen were as easy to kill as mosquitoes."[4]

Danger was now imminent, especially to the infant settlements up the river.  For the moment it seemed as if the English had brought upon themselves the united power of all the Indians of the country.  The Pequots sent messengers to patch up peace with their enemies, the Narragansetts, and tried to induce them to take up arms against the English.  They would have probably succeeded but for the influence of Roger Williams with the Narragansett chiefs.  In this crisis the friendship of Governor Vane for the banished champion of religious liberty was used to good effect.  To gratify the governor and his council at Boston, Williams, at the risk of his life, sought the wigwams of Canonicus and Miantonomoh, and “broke to pieces the Pequot negotiations and design."[5] Instead of accepting the overtures of the Pequots, the Narragansetts sent Miantonomoh and the two sons of Canonicus to Boston to make an alliance with the whites.[6]

In the spring of 1637 the war burst with fury.  Wethersfield was first attacked at the instance of an Indian who had sold his lands and could not obtain the promised payment.  In revenge he secretly instigated the Pequots to attack the place, and they killed a woman, a child, and some men, besides some cattle; and took captive two young women, who were preserved by the squaw of Mononotto, a Pequot sachem, and, through the Dutch, finally restored to their friends.[7]