Pequot Fort: The Palisade on the Hill

Before the English arrived, this hillside above the Mystic River was the center of a functioning Pequot world. The structure that stood here in sixteen thirty-seven was not a military fortification in the European sense. It was a village, protected by a palisade: tree trunks sunk into the earth with sharpened tops, enclosing a village of wigwams that housed several hundred people.

The Pequot were the dominant Native power in southern New England in the early sixteen hundreds. They controlled the trade routes along the Connecticut coast and commanded tribute from smaller neighboring peoples. Sassacus, their principal sachem, was based at the other main Pequot town, while the palisade village here, sometimes called Mystic Fort, was one of the two main Pequot towns in the region.

The design of the fort was practical and well understood. The palisade had only two openings, both reinforced, what English observers called sallyports. Within the enclosure, the density of the wigwams made the space difficult for outsiders to navigate, a defense in itself against small raiding parties.

What it was not designed to stop was a surrounding force that chose not to fight its way in but to burn from the outside. When Captain John Mason's expedition arrived before dawn on May twenty-sixth, sixteen thirty-seven, the palisade became a trap rather than a shield.

Today, the site of Pequot Fort is marked and preserved near the Mystic River. Archaeological work has confirmed the general location, though the exact footprint of the palisade remains a subject of ongoing study. What can be said with certainty is that a sophisticated, populous community lived and thrived on this hill, and that the events of one morning in sixteen thirty-seven ended it.