After the Pequot War, the Colonial government declared the once dominant Pequot Tribe to be extinct, even though a few survivors and descendants continued to remain in their former territory. They were ignored, along with occasional complaints about the statue being on the sacred site where their ancestors perished. The statue remained there for 103 years, until the early 1990s when the modern-day Pequots managed to obtain federal recognition and build a large gambling and entertainment empire. Former and new complaints about the statue could no longer be ignored and, in the spirit of a current political correctness movement, and studying the sensitivity and appropriateness of the statue's location on a cultural "sacred site"; a committee chartered by the Town of Groton, Connecticut recommended that it be relocated.