The Land Loss Begins In the early 1700s, a colonial population boom drove English settlers by the thousands into the Connecticut interior.  Their arrival -- and their appetite for land -- would change the lives of the Mashantucket Pequots dramatically. “When the Mashantucket reservation was first established in 1666, there were few, if any European farms in the area,” says Dr. Kevin McBride of the University of Connecticut and the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center.  “By the early 1700s, we see evidence of just a few.  But that appears to change dramatically in the next 10 to 20 years, and by 1730 and 1740, for example, the Pequot reservation is essentially surrounded by European farmsteads.” For the hundreds of farmers settling near Mashantucket, the boundaries of the Pequot reservation were easy to ignore.  “We're literally seeing English building farms on Pequot lands,” says Dr. McBride.  “They're building houses, they're building barns, they're building root cellars, they're fencing, they are plowing.  The majority of the English couldn’t care less about Pequot rights -- they viewed the Pequots as temporary squatters and the Mashantucket reservation as English common land by right of conquest, and by right of use.” The Pequots Defend Their Rights The Pequots tried to defend their rights to the land at Mashantucket in formal grievances brought through proper legal channels,  “And the English courts often found in their favor,” says Dr. McBride.  “But the bottom line was that English settlers and the demands of the English for land took precedent over any of the Pequot concerns.  And ultimately the Pequots always lost.” In 1721 the Pequots were forced to quitclaim Noank as the Connecticut General Assembly had decided that the land at Mashantucket was sufficient for their needs.  Meanwhile, Mashantucket South Hill, a sizeable portion of the reservation, was awarded to Groton residents, leaving the Pequots with only 1,789 acres.  In response to the Pequots’ complaints about colonial encroachments on the western section of the reservation, the General Assembly decided that Pequots and colonists should share this parcel of land, about 860 acres.  But in 1761 the General Assembly decided to give this land to the English outright, leaving the Pequots at the end of the 18th century with only 989 acres of land on which to live. A New Way of Life By 1761, the Pequots had lost close to 3,000 acres of their best reservation land.  A landscape of virgin forest had become a patchwork of English fields and pastures, and the Pequots struggled to adapt to a new way of life. “There's less opportunity to practice traditional horticultural techniques and less opportunity for hunting and gathering,” explains Dr. McBride.  “Your land base is being reduced, so the only option you have in that kind of situation is either to adopt European farming practices -- which the Pequots didn't necessarily have the means or the desire to do -- or you go to work as a laborer on a local colonist’s farm.” By mid-century, Native labor was indispensable to most Connecticut farmers, and it was the only way that many Pequots could survive.  But by the end of the 18th century, the Pequots' own labor had helped establish an economy that brought an end to their traditional way of life.