Saints and Strangers and Wabenake and Patuxet and Wampanoag and Naraggansett

Plymouth colony's forty years of treaty, trade, and paranoia

Those living in eastern Massachusetts in 1620 called themselves neither Indians nor Native Americans nor red men nor savages nor indigenous nor aboriginal. They lived in several nations, each with its own unique name, various alliances, and loose confederations. Also, sometimes they had traditional enemies.

The first passengers off the Mayflower didn't know this, in fact they didn't know anything about those inhabiting the country. But they did worry, because they hadn't seen any. A small party from the ship was chased by a few inhabitants while exploring Nauset on Cape Cod, but nobody knew why. For six weeks after they chose to build at the site that is now Plymouth, there were no more sightings.

Then a well armed party appeared nearby. Soon after, a man whose name was Samoset stepped out of the wood, tall and muscular, carrying a bow and arrows, and said "Welcome." (Yes, in English). While the new arrivals were ignorant babes in the woods, many of those born on the coast had met Breton fishermen and various other expeditions for decades, and had traded with fishing vessels that made temporary camp on the coast of what is now Maine. Samoset was visiting from Pemaquid, far up the coast.

He cleared up the mystery of the land being so empty. The inhabitants of the immediate area had been killed by disease, probably smallpox. This is why the new arrivals had found stored corn, which they plundered, abandoned homes, which they left standing, many graves, which they sometimes respected. When they dug into one, they once found a child and a man with blonde hair wearing a sailor's clothes. For one reason or another, one or more people with blonde hair had made an earlier appearance.