"A Country Wonderfully Prepared for Their Entertainment" the Aftermath of the New England Indian Epidemic of 1616‪.‬

A formidable mythology has grown up around the Pilgrims and their voyage to the New World. In the popular myth a group of idealistic religious reformers fled persecution into the wilds of the New World, braving seas, storms, winter, hunger, and death at the hands of teeming hordes of Indians, carving a new life out of an unspoiled wilderness, building a civilization with naked force of will and an unshakable religious vision. As with most historical myths, this account has been idealized to the point that it obscures the facts of the Pilgrims' voyage. When the handful of separatists stepped onto the shores of New England in 1620, they did not step into an untamed wilderness. They did not run into wild bands of ravenous savages bent on their destruction, nor did they ever have to contend with the full force of nature's fury. In fact, they walked into an abandoned village, whose inhabitants had been gone barely long enough for weeds to grow over the tilled fields of corn. They discovered caches of crops, tools, and other supplies, as if they were waiting to be found and put into use by industrious hands. They moved quietly into a graveyard and built their shining example of a city on the hill directly on the still-exposed carcasses of dead Indians. The site they had chosen was of late the Indian village of Patuxet, which had been wiped off the face of the earth a few years earlier by a plague the likes of which the natives had never seen before. It was a virgin soil epidemic of biblical proportions, which left no aspect of Indian society untouched. Economic networks crumbled and trade routes faltered; political boundaries and military fortunes changed overnight as the relative strength of tribes fluctuated; even the religious beliefs of many Indians were undermined, such was the power of this sweeping sickness. The Pilgrims arrived into this maelstrom of terror, a world reeling from the body blow it had just received and struggling desperately to reconstitute itself. And while the epidemic had a direct and appalling effect on the destiny of the Indians, through the fate of the Indians it affected the Pilgrims as well. The Pilgrims invoked the epidemic and its cataclysmic depopulation of the countryside time and again as proof that the they were destined to rule New England, and they followed suit by following an aggressive policy of political subjugation. At the same time, the devastation of the population and resulting demoralization caused by the ravages of an unstoppable disease first allowed the Pilgrims to gain a toehold at Plymouth, then eventually resulted in the long-term success of their designs for regional dominion.