Sassacus

:Sassacus is also a genus of jumping spiders.

{{Infobox Native American leader|name=Sassacus|tribe=Pequot|predecessor=Tatobem|birth_date={{circa|1560}}|death_date=June {{death year and age|1637|1560}}

| term_start = 1632

| term_end = June 1637

|death_place=Present-Day New York|death_cause=Murdered by the Mohawk Tribe|battles={{plainlist|

• Pequot War
• Fairfield Swamp Fight

}}}}

Sassacus (Massachusett: Sassakusu, "fierce") ({{circa|1560}} – June 1637) was a Pequot sachem{{cite news | title=Pequot Indian Chiefs and Leaders | url =http://www.accessgenealogy.com/native/tribes/algonquian/pequotchiefs.htm | work =Handbook of American Indians | access-date = 2007-02-21 }} who was born near present-day Groton, Connecticut. He became grand sachem after his father, Tatobem, was killed in 1632. The Mohegans led by sachem Uncas rebelled against domination by the Pequots.Oberg, p. 48 Sassacus and the Pequots were defeated by English colonists allied with the Narragansett and Mohegans in the Pequot War.

Sassacus fled to what he thought was safety among the Iroquois Mohawks in present-day New York state, but they murdered him and then sent his head and hands to the Connecticut Colony as a symbolic offering of friendship.Vaughan, Alden T. (1995). New England Frontier: Puritans and Indians, 1620–1675, p. 150. University of Oklahoma Press. {{ISBN|0-8061-2718-X|978-0-8061-2718-7}}.

Sassacus possibly had a brother who married Ninigret's daughter, and his sister-in-law may have married Harman Garrett.Glenn LaFantasie, The Correspondence of Roger Williams, (1988) 311-312Pulsief, ed., Acts of the Commissioners, I, 100, 169