“An Extraordinary Plague”
This blog entry is dated March 28, 2020, so it is perhaps a pertinent time, as we Americans endure an unprecedented and rather peculiar quarantine, to explore a curious and historically important plague of four centuries ago.
In 1616, several years prior to the year of the Mayflower, an unseen enemy stalked the thousands of inhabitants scattered along what we call the Maine and Massachusetts coasts, particularly affecting the various Abnaki, Massachusett, and Wampanoag communities, especially the Patuxet Tribe of the area we now call Plymouth. Over three years, 1616 to 1619, the disease would essentially “uninhabit” an area about 200 miles long and 40 miles inland, killing “up to 90 percent of the people in coastal New England.” [Charles C. Mann, “Native Intelligence,” Smithsonian Mag., Dec. 2005] Surrounding tribal groups would not venture to the “dead” area, strewn with bones, so the Patuxet community was literally land up for grabs.
How do we know that? From a number of sources, including the various ship captains of Sir Ferdinando Gorges, and because explorer Thomas Dermer reported it in his letters as he and Squanto coasted those shores in 1619, giving Squanto, a Patuxet, his first view of home in five years. Imagine what Squanto thought as he viewed the devastation. Here’s a quote from Dermer’s letter as he reported to his employer, Gorges, by way of Samuel Purchas:
It was the nineteenth of May (1619) before I was fitted for my discovery, when from Monahiggan (Monhegan Island off coast of Maine) I set sail in an open pinnace of five tons for the island I told you of (Martha’s Vineyard). I passed along the coast (of Massachusetts) where I found some ancient plantations, not long since populous, now utterly void; in other places a remnant remains, but not free of sickness. Their disease is the plague, for we might perceive the sores of some that had escaped, who described the spots of such as usually die. When I arrived at my savage’s (Squanto) native country (Plymouth), finding all dead,…
Dermer wrote that letter to “his worshipful friend, M. Samuel Purchas, preacher of the Word, at the Church a little within Ludgate, London.” Purchas was rector of St. Martin’s church and chaplain to the archbishop of Canterbury. He had recently stepped into the shoes of England’s great travel writer and champion of colonization, Richard Hakluyt, who had collected every exploration report, letter, or chronicle he could access (and he pretty much got them all). Purchas continued his collection and writing and then published it, and we really, really owe him, big time. This letter by Dermer (we have several) was written from Jamestown Colony, Captain Martyn’s Hundred (plantation), December 27, 1619. (Purchas His Pilgrimes, Book Nine, pgs. 1778-1779)
The term “savage” (also spelled “salvage“) used by Dermer was common, employed then as we might use “native” or “Indian” today, though it was at that time more a term of cultural distinction, from the viewpoint of Christian Western Civilization. London was filthy and diseased, but it was civilized and generally (by mandate) Christian. (Once in London, Pocahontas didn’t want to leave, but that’s another story.) We’ll meet Captain Dermer soon. He and Squanto were friends of long acquaintance by this time. Squanto would save his life. Dermer brought Squanto home, as he had promised.
Plague Connected to Wars Among Tribes
It seems that it is not politically correct to talk about how the tribes of North (and South) America fought and subjugated one another, and particularly the tribes of New England, so you will not find the wars mentioned in connection with this plague unless you look in the right places. The wars were common knowledge among the explorers and adventurers. The wars stretched northeast from Cape Cod to Maine and further north and west. French explorer Champlain was involved with the wars of the Iroquois.
We find several mentions of the wars from the Memoir of Sir Ferdinando Gorges written by James Phinney Baxter in 1890. (Find it on Archive.org) Baxter was a historian, politician, businessman, and civic leader in Portland, Maine, active with The Prince Society of Boston, publisher of rare works relating to America. One “wars source” is, by way of Gorges, Sir Richard Hawkins who sailed to “New England” in 1614 right after Captain John Smith returned to report to Gorges. He found the natives engaged in war, so he refrained from venturing ashore and sailed the American coast all the way to Jamestown.
In 1616, Gorges sent yet another ship to New England, “Richard Vines, a man of good energy and judgment, who is supposed to have made previous voyages to the same coast, going in her. Vines and other servants (employees) of Gorges landed at the mouth of the Saco River (south of Cape Elizabeth and Casco Bay) and spent the winter there in the cabins of the savages, who had suffered severely in the wars that had been going on among them, and perhaps still more by a deadly disease against which their feeble remedies were powerless, and which Gorges denominates a plague.” (This quote is from Baxter’s narrative comments in 1890. Gorges himself details it on page 19 of his A Description of New England.) Vines returned safely to England, then later founded a colony on the Saco. Gorges adds on page 76 that the sachems (or sagamores) of the Penobscot (Tarentines) and various other Abnaki tribes “spoiled and destroyed each others people and provision” so that a famine took hold, “seconded by a great and general plague, that so violently rained (perhaps “reigned”?) for three years together” that the greater part of the land was left basically deserted. In his Smithsonian article, Charles Mann adds a multi-year drought to the mix.
In his narrative, Baxter comments further, directly connecting the wars and the plague:
Thus far all attempts to found a permanent colony in New England had failed; but the way was now opening to success. The wars between the savage tribes had greatly diminished the number of the native inhabitants; and the long-continued epidemic which followed had swept them away, until but a remnant was left, too weak to oppose successfully any considerable body of colonists;
Captain John Smith had explored and mapped the region he named New England in 1614 and had published his report and map in London in 1616, the year the plague attacked. Writing in his General History of Virginia of 1624, Smith states that others had written to him about the plague that occurred after he left Massachusetts:
…as they writ unto me, that God had laid this Country open for us, and slain the most part of the inhabitants by civil wars and a mortal disease, for where I had seen one hundred or two hundred Salvages, there is scarce ten to be found,…
So Smith also connected the wars and the disease, and expressed a common view of Providence held strongly by Christians of all stripes in the 17th Century.
The Pilgrims and Samoset
Another report of the “extraordinary plague” came from an Abnaki man named Samoset. The Abnakis (or Abenaki, I use the older spelling) occupied the coast of Maine northeast from Casco Bay, through the Kennebec River area and Pemaquid Point, across from which lay the island of Monhegan, the great cod fishery headquarters of New England. Abnaki (or Abenaki), according to sources cited by the Encyclopedia of World Biography, means “People of the Eastern Dawn.” Maine is north and actually a good bit east of the Cape Cod area. According to both Gorges and the Pilgrim leader, William Bradford, the Abnaki ~ called Tarentines ~ were a fierce, warring tribe. Historian Samuel Eliot Morison calls them the “Vikings of New England.” The Massachuset people much feared them because, as Bradford writes, they would “come in harvest time and take away their corn, and many times kill their persons.” [OPP, pg. 89]
Samoset was well known by the fishermen and ship captains of Monhegan. Also according to the EWB above, Samoset’s name means “He Who Walks Over Much,” a title he seems to have well deserved. The Abnaki sagamore (subordinate chief) was a friendly and chatty fellow who obviously enjoyed traveling about the region as he knew all about it. His “bio” is uncharacteristic for an Abnaki. From reading the accounts of the Pilgrims, I imagine Samoset to have been quite a fun and fascinating guy.
Eight months prior to meeting the Pilgrims, Samoset had hitched a ride with Dermer and Squanto from Monhegan to Cape Cod and had been “hanging out” (along with Squanto) with the Pokanokets (or Wampanoags) around what is now the area of Bristol, Rhode Island, on the Narragansett Bay. Wampanoag means “People Who See the First Light.” The arrival of the English ship (Mayflower) some 40 miles distant at Patuxet (New Plymouth) had made quite a stir, but the tribe had been cautious and had not rushed right over with a casserole. The Pokanoket Wampanoag Massasoit, the chief Ousamequin, may well have exercised control over Squanto and Samoset, and it may have been his decision as to when to send Samoset and then Squanto into the village of the Pilgrims. We do know that, once Squanto was allowed to be among the English and serve as the translator and the peace treaty was agreed to, he stayed.
When the loquacious Samoset finally volunteered (or was sent) to check out these English and strode into New Plymouth on Friday, March 16, 1620/1621, he amazed them with his English “Welcome!” and his detailed knowledge of the region, even though he was from up the coast further northeast. He gave them a tourist brochure’s worth of information, including an account of the plague, and the Pilgrim leaders (William Bradford and Edward Winslow) wrote it down in journals that were later published in England in 1622 as Mourt’s Relation. (Prior to Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation which he began later.)
He (Samoset) told us (Pilgrims) the place where we now live is called Patuxet, and that about four years ago all the inhabitants died of an extraordinary plague, and there is neither man, woman, nor child remaining, as indeed we have found none, so as there is none to hinder our possession, or to lay claim unto it.
It was bad news for Squanto but amazing good news for the newly arrived settlers, the group, remember, who had intended to go to the Hudson River, but ended up, totally unplanned, at Patuxet/Plymouth. As we have seen above, the plague was actually mentioned by a number of writers of the day. The following comes from notes in the Library of Congress collection. [It does not say the author of these notes, though the language indicates someone probably of the 19th Century.]
The prevalence of a mortal disease among the natives of New England by which the country within certain limits was almost entirely depopulated, is often alluded to in the accounts of that period. It is supposed to have commenced its ravages about the year 1616, and to have continued for two or three years. Dermer calls it the plague, from its desolating effects, but writers seem not to agree as to the character of the disease. What must have been the emotions of the savage chief (Squanto) on arriving at his native place, and finding his people utterly extinct, kindred, friends, the companions of his youth, all gone, and not a solitary survivor left with whom he could condole in the general calamity, not one to greet him upon his return from a long captivity in a far distant land!
In June, not too long after the Pilgrims met Samoset and Squanto and the Massasoit, Squanto led them on a journey to Massasoit’s home on the big bay, going through the settlement called Nemasket (now Middleboro, Mass.) about 15 miles west of New Plymouth. There the Pilgrim leaders saw locals fishing on the river that “cometh into the sea at the Narraganset Bay.” So we see that the bay has long been called after the aggressive tribe that lived on its west side. Here the Pilgrims see more evidence of the plague.
The head of this river is reported to be not far from the place of our abode; upon it are and have been many towns, it being a good length. The ground is very good on both sides, it being for the most part cleared: thousands of men have lived there, which died in a great plague not long since: and pity it was and is to see so many goodly fields, and so well seated, without men to dress and manure the same.
Mysterious Disease?
How much had the wars affected the physical strength, immune systems, and living situations of the tribal peoples who succumbed to the mysterious disease? The wars had to have had some (if not a lot) effect.
And why is the disease called “mysterious”? From the physical marks the natives showed him, Dermer thought it to be the plague, something with which he was quite familiar from England, though he was from Plymouth and not London. The infamous plague of the 14th Century hung around for quite a while in fits and spurts, haunting England, especially London, for much of the 16th and 17th Centuries. Shakespeare dodged it almost every year. During her visit to England, Pocahontas took a house outside of London, a common practice of those who could afford it. Then she succumbed to some kind of “bug” just as she left in early 1617, and died, as so many others, including Shakespeare in April 1616.
Some later speculated that the “plague” was small pox or yellow fever. Moderns have proffered chicken pox and trichinosis. Charles Mann’s 2005 article cites a study that concluded “the epidemic was probably of viral hepatitis, likely spread by contaminated food,….” In 2010, another group names…
…leptospirosis complicated by Weil syndrome. Rodent reservoirs from European ships infected indigenous reservoirs and contaminated land and fresh water… Previous proposals do not adequately account for signature signs (epistaxis, jaundice)… (CDC article, Vol. 16, Number 2, Feb. 2010, “New Hypothesis for Cause of Epidemic among Native Americans, New England, 1616-1619”)
So experts still argue over it. Epistaxis is bleeding from the nose, the sign that Squanto had caught the “Indian fever” and was about to die in 1622. Jaundice was also mentioned by the explorers. Perhaps it was more than one “bug.” Some credit it to one of a handful of Frenchmen who survived a shipwreck in 1615 and were enslaved by the tribes in revenge for the earlier kidnappings. This sailor prophesied before he died that “God would destroy them for their misdeeds.” [Mann] The other Frenchmen were treated miserably by the natives. Dermer later rescued several.
However, the Europeans nor English (nor Pilgrims) never suffered from it, as Gorges attested when Vines and his men spent the winter of 1616 in the “cabins” of the sick and dying natives, with nary a symptom. The Pilgrims quickly lost 50 percent of their group from disease (virus with complications, most likely?) in the first months at Plymouth, but their weakened conditions were due to cumulative reasons. Half either recovered or never succumbed to it, and it never happened again, many living to advanced ages.
Relieved and Thankful
The people we call Pilgrims were genuine and serious Christians. They were a decent and dedicated people. They felt pity upon the thousands who had died, but also felt relieved and thankful that this “particular plantation” of theirs was unclaimed and unchallenged. This was not where they were supposed to be. They were driven there by a long list of “natural” circumstances. And a very special person “awaited” their arrival to effect their survival. It’s all quite thought provoking and we will talk more about it during this Year of the Mayflower.