Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Mason, John (1600-1672)
MASON, JOHN (1600–1672), New England commander, was born in England in 1600. His parentage and place of birth are unknown, but he is believed to have been related to his namesake, the founder of New Hampshire (Prince). After serving in the Netherlands under Sir Thomas Fairfax [q. v.], who is stated upon the outbreak of the civil war in England to have urged his speedy return, Mason went to Dorchester, Massachusetts, soon after its first settlement in 1630. He seems to have obtained military command as early as 1633, when an ensign was chosen to serve under him, and soon afterwards he was employed upon the fort at Boston. In 1635 he assisted the majority of the Dorchester settlers in their migration to Windsor in Connecticut. Their new home was thickly peopled with Indians, and collision was inevitable between the new-comers and the more powerful of the tribes in possession. Several parties of English settlers were cut off by the natives during 1635–6, and a series of outrages (hardly unprovoked) culminated in the Indians roasting alive an old minister named Mitchell, and scalping a party of nine colonists while at work in the fields near Wethersfield (23 April 1637). A preliminary expedition under John Endecott [q. v.] only served to exasperate the Indians. The most formidable of these were a tribe named Pequots, and at a general court of the colony held on 1 May 1637 it was resolved to exterminate the Pequots at all costs. Mason was put at the head of the new expedition, which left Hartford on 10 May, and dropped down the river in ‘a pink, a pinnace, and a shallop.’ Wisely disregarding the letter of his instructions, Mason sailed past the Pequot forts and landed his men some sixty miles further east, in Narragansett Bay, near Point Judith, thus securing the co-operation of two hundred of the tribe which hemmed in the Pequots on the east. His plan was to fall upon the latter unawares after a retrograde march along the coast, augmenting his force as he went along from the friendly Indians. Chief among these was the Mohegan sachem, Uncas, who had recently revolted from the Pequot hegemony (Niles, History of the Indian and French Wars, ap. Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll. 3rd ser. vi. 155–76). The nearest Pequot fort was surprised at dawn on 26 May. The resistance was slight, and having once penetrated the stockade Mason forthwith set fire to the whole fort, forming his men in a circle outside to prevent escape. Some five hundred friendly Indians formed a larger circle in the rear. Out of about seven hundred Pequots only seven escaped butchery. The English loss was two killed and twenty wounded. Joined by a detachment from Massachusetts, Mason pursued the remnant of the offending tribe towards New York, killing and capturing a great number. The lands and persons of the few who survived in Connecticut he divided between his allies, stipulating that the very name of Pequot should become extinct. ‘By these prompt measures, a handful of whites was within a few weeks enabled to annihilate a powerful native tribe, and to secure a general peace with the Indians, which remained unbroken for forty years.’
After the war Mason settled at Saybrook, on the mouth of the Connecticut river, whence in 1659 he removed to Norwich. He was elected one of the six Connecticut magistrates on 16 April 1642, and was major-general of the colonial forces from 1638 until 1670. He undertook several diplomatic missions among the Indians. On 17 May 1660 he was elected deputy governor of Connecticut, and the choice was ratified by Charles II in 1662. He was also chief judge of the colonial county court from its organisation in 1664 until his retirement from all his offices in 1670. He died at Boston in the early part of 1672, leaving three sons and four daughters.
At the request of the general court Mason prepared a ‘Brief History of the Pequot War,’ which was embodied by Increase Mather in his ‘Relation of Trouble by the Indians,’ 1677, and was republished by the Rev. Thomas Prince, with an introduction (Boston, 1736).
[Mason's Brief History of the Pequot War, ed. Prince; Life by George F. Ellis in Sparks's Library of Amer. Biog. xiii. 311–438; Trumbull's Hist. of Connecticut, i. 337 sq.; Winthrop's Hist. of New England, 1630–1649, ed. 1825, i. 104, 223, 233, 267, ii. 311; Massachusetts Hist. Soc. Coll. 2nd ser. viii. 122 sq.; Appleton's Cyclop. of American Biog. iv. 244; Allibone's Dict. of English Literature.]