Engraving depicting the attack on the Pequot fort, published in 1638 shows the first surrounded by an inner ring of Colonial musketeers and an outer ring of their Mohegan allies.The Mystic massacre took place on May 26, 1637, during the Pequot War, when English settlers under Captain John Mason, and Narragansett and Mohegan allies set fire to a fortified Pequot village near the Mystic River. They shot and killed the entire village, consisting mostly of women and children, in retaliation for previous Pequot attacks. The Pequot War was an armed conflict spanning the years 1634-1638 between the Pequot tribe against an alliance of the Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, and Saybrook colonies who were aided by their Native American allies the Narragansett and Mohegan tribes. At the end of the war, about seven hundred Pequots had been killed or taken into captivity. It would take the Pequot more than three and a half centuries to regain political and economic power in their traditional homeland region along the Pequot and Mystic rivers in what is now southeastern Connecticut.