Disease and Devastation
In 1616-1617, an unidentified plague devastated Native communities in eastern Massachusetts. In some areas, it killed up to 90% of the population. According to one estimate, there were 4,500 Massachusett people in 1600. By 1631, just 750 Massachusett people had survived. That number would drop further still with the arrival of a smallpox epidemic in 1633. The scale of loss for Native communities across the region was then — and is still — incomprehensible.
Yet, Native people did survive, and more: they established new villages, forged new alliances, and preserved and adapted traditions. Many found ways to establish local economic and political power and to work and live interdependently with the English people who began to colonize the Boston area in 1629 and soon outnumbered them. Some Native people leased pastureland to the colonists or allowed them to plant in exchange for shares of English crops. Others sold honey, maple syrup, and fish, or handmade objects such as baskets and brooms, to English families.
The English
More than 3,000 Puritan men, women, and children colonized Massachusetts Bay between 1630 and 1633. They encountered many fields and villages that had been abandoned during the epidemics that devastated Native communities. It seemed to the English that God had cleared the land for their arrival.
Header Image: Quinobequin (Charles River), Spring 2020. Image courtesy of the Natick Historical Society.