(c. 1588-c. 1682), Mohegan Indian sachem. Uncas is probably more famous as a character in James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans than as a real-life person. But he is significant in the context of seventeenth-century New England history.
Uncas was a member of the Mohegans, a splinter community of the Pequot Indians. He played a leading role in the Mohegan effort to avoid domination by the Pequot sachem Sassacus. The colonists, to be sure, encouraged such separatism, because a divided group of Indian nations naturally was to their advantage. At the same time, groups like the Mohegans seized upon the English presence as an opportunity to rid themselves of powerful Indian foes.
Uncas thus sided with the English in the bloody Pequot War of 1637. Indeed, he helped precipitate the conflict, realizing he would gain politically from its predictable outcome--the whites' victory. As part of the overall campaign, Uncas led seventy Mohegans and other Indians against Sassacus and his Pequot followers. (Sassacus lost only a few men in the battle, but soon thereafter he was killed in a clash with Mohawks.) The war destroyed the Pequots as a force in the region and transformed Uncas from a leader of a small band of dissidents to a commander of hundreds.
But a Pequot ally, the Narragansett sachem Miantonomi, then decided to fight Uncas, first obtaining formal English permission to do so. In the ensuing struggle, the Narragansett leader was captured by Mohegan forces. Members of his tribe offered a ransom of wampum if Miantonomi were handed over to the colonial authorities, who, they assumed, would release him. The authorities, however, concluded, as John Winthrop said, "that it would not be safe to set him at liberty, neither had we sufficient ground for us to put him to death."
The English thus allowed Uncas to take Miantonomi outside of English jurisdiction and with "justice and prudence" execute him. Although they did not doubt Uncas's intentions, they insisted "that some discreet and faithful persons of the English accompany" him to "see the execution for our more full satisfaction." Knowing that the Mohegans would feel the wrath of Miantonomi's people, they also pledged "a competent strength" of men to defend Uncas "against any present fury or assault." Uncas carried out the execution and in so doing removed a major obstacle to English hegemony in the region.
At the outbreak of King Philip's War in 1675, Uncas again allied with the whites and helped ensure the demise of the Wampanoag king. By then an old man, he was willing for younger Mohegans to do the fighting. He died a stubborn adherent to his particular agenda but an Indian whose actions had expedited the domination of New England by the white settlers.
Bibliography:
Francis Jennings, The Invasion of America: Indians, Colonialism, and the Cant of Conquest (1975); Neal Salisbury, Manitou and Providence: Indians, Europeans, and the Making of New England, 1500-1643 (1982).
Author:
Peter Iverson
See also Colonial Wars; Indians; King Philip's War.
