Background
Uncas was born in 1588 and was the son of Oweneco, a Pequot sachem, and of Meekunump, daughter of another Pequot sachem.
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Chief Uncas
Edit ProfileCareer
Rebelling against Sassacus, Uncas was defeated and banished.
He fled to the Narragansetts, but later made his peace with his kinsmen and returned to the Pequots.
On his final revolt the Pequot territory was divided, and Uncas became ruler of the western part, called Moheag, his tribe becoming known as the Mohegans.
He courted the favor of the English and in May 1637, with Miantonomo, chief sachem of the Narragansetts, joined them in war on the Pequots.
Later that year he signed a treaty of peace with Miantonomo and with the English at Hartford.
In 1643 he complained to the Commissioners of the United Colonies that Miantonomo had hired a Pequot to kill him, and that some of the followers of Sequasson, an undersachem of the Narragansetts, had shot at him as he was going down the Connecticut.
The peace agreement made in September 1644 was of short duration, however, and in the spring of 1645 Uncas was besieged in his stronghold on the Connecticut by the Narragansett sachem Pessacus and almost forced to surrender, but was saved by the English under Thomas Leffingwell, to whom he gave a grant of the lands forming the site of the present Norwich.
Another agreement between the hostile tribes was reached but soon Uncas undertook to chastise a Narragansett sachem for an alleged offense, and thus created further trouble.
Ordered to appear before the English at New Haven to answer for his conduct, he acknowledged himself guilty on some points and was released.
In 1661, however, when he made war without cause on Ousamequin or Massasoit, the good friend of the Massachusetts colony, the English forced him to give up his captives and stolen goods, and in 1675 he was ordered to appear in Boston to surrender his arms and to leave two of his younger sons as hostages to secure his neutrality or cooperation in King Philip's War.
Achievements
Personality
Uncas was tricky, untrustworthy, and dissolute. He was a wilful man, a drunkard, and otherwise very vicious; who has always been an opposer and underminer of praying to God
Quotes from others about the person
Daniel Gookin, governor of the "praying Indians":" He is an old and wicked, wilful man, a drunkard, and otherwise very vicious; who has always been an opposer and underminer of praying to God".
Connections
In 1626 he married a daughter of Sassacus, chief sachem of the Pequots, and later a daughter of Sebequanash, a Hammonassett sachem.
