Small numbers of Pequots remain in Connecticut, receiving reservations at Mashantucket in 1666 and at the Pawcatuck River in 1683; others lived in different areas and with other tribes.

In the 18th century, some Christian Pequot joined members of several other groups to form the Brothertown Indians in western New Hampshire.

They relocated to western New York in the 19th century, where they were allowed land by the Oneida people of the Iroquois League, and later to Wisconsin, where they were granted a reservation.

Frank Speck was a leading specialist of the Mohegan-Pequot language in the early twentieth century, and he believed that another term was more plausible, meaning "the shallowness of a body of water", given that the Pequot territory was along the coast of Long Island Sound.

In the aftermath of King Philip's War, Hubbard detailed in his Narrative of the Troubles with the Indians in New-England the ferocity with which some of New England's tribes responded to the English.

Hubbard described the Pequot as "foreigners" to the region; not invaders from another shore, but "from the interior of the continent" who "by force seized upon one of the goodliest places near the sea, and became a Terror to all their Neighbors.

"[9] Much of the archaeological, linguistic, and documentary evidence now available demonstrates that the Pequot were not invaders to the Connecticut River Valley but were indigenous in that area for thousands of years.

[10] By the time of the founding of Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay colonies, the Pequot had already attained a position of political, military, and economic dominance in central and eastern Connecticut.

[1] The smallpox epidemic of 1616–1619 killed many of the Native Americans of the eastern coast of New England, but it did not reach the Pequot, Niantic, and Narragansett tribes.

[11] Members of the Pequot tribe killed a resident of Connecticut Colony in 1636, John Oldham, and war erupted as a result.

The poor treatment the Pequot received at the hands of the colonists was remembered almost two centuries later by other Native American tribes such as some groups of Shawnees.

Revenue from the casino has enabled the development and construction of a cultural museum which opened on August 11, 1998, on the Mashantucket Pequot Reservation where many members of the tribe continue to live.

The Connecticut state government and Congressional delegation opposed the BIA's recognition because residents were worried that the newly recognized tribes would establish gaming casinos.

They are conducting careful analysis of historical documents containing Pequot words and comparing them to extant closely related languages.