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>> 9 1 Columbian Exchange The winter had started when the Pilgrims, religious exiles from both England and Holland, arrived at the Massachusetts coast on November 11, 1620. The Mayflower had been at sea for sixty-five days and no terrible diseases had seized them during the crossing. Dr. Samuel Fuller, the ship’s surgeon had lost only one passenger and a seaman who had been sickly from the beginning, leaving one hundred men and women passengers and forty-seven crewmen. While anchored and deciding where to go from this point, a few more passengers and three of the remaining crew died. A decision was made not to proceed to Virginia, their original destination, but to settle in what had long been a fishing area for many Europeans—Portuguese, English, Italians, French, and possibly others since the 1480s, long before Columbus. Massachusetts was not an unknown land and had been mapped by John Smith a few years before the arrival of the Pilgrims.The Pilgrims would be the first Europeans to successfully plant a settlement in New England. A small party left the ship and began to explore the area known as Cape Cod. 10 > 11 Other Europeans who had explored along the northeastern coast had failed to create any permanent colonies. Giovanni de Verrazzano, an Italian acting for the French king, traded with the locals in 1523, but his crew was driven away, he reported, by a large number of hostile Indians. About eighty years later Samuel de Champlain visited Cape Cod in the hopes of setting up a French base, but the thickly settled villages discouraged him. Well armed and with large populations spread along the New England coast, the Indians successfully prevented any permanent European settlements, accepting only the sojourners, fisherman, who came for a few months, fished and traded for furs, and then went home. In 1614 John Smith appeared on the coast but soon left after arranging for his lieutenant Thomas Hunt to dry the fish they had caught before returning to England. But Hunt antagonized the locals by kidnapping some of the Native Americans; he was initially driven off but retained a few of his victims to take back to England, including one man named Tisquantum (better known as Squanto) of the Wampanoag tribe. Shortly afterward, Sir Fernando Gorges tried to found an English community in present-day Maine, but his group too was driven off by the Natives who, after the experience with Hunt, considered Europeans to be extremely dangerous people. In the following years, others who landed on the soil found the Indians violently hostile, determined to prevent any more foreigners from appearing on their shores. Sometime during 1616 a shipwrecked French ship was attacked; the Indians killed some of the crew and others were carted off to replace those men lost to the English. Shortly afterward, another French ship appeared in the vicinity of Boston. It was set afire and everyone on board was killed. European settlement was not wanted and was easily discouraged by the large number of native people in the area. Unwilling to be intimidated by potential threats from the local inhabitants , the Pilgrims sent a small group of armed men to search the land and find a place to settle. They saw a few Indians who ran away but did not come across the large number of thickly settled villages described by others, nor were they threatened in any way. In one deserted village, the scouting party saw tools scattered and fields cleared but no sign of inhabitants. They dug up some graves and found a few objects, which they took back to the Mayflower, and a cache of corn that could be used for seed. On December 16, 1620, the passengers disembarked and began to build houses and a fort for a permanent town on the site of the old village. But where were the great numbers of Indians noted by earlier visitors? The Pilgrims decided that God must be on their side and had cleared the land for His chosen people. Without assistance from the natives, the Pilgrims suffered terribly that first winter. Insufficient food had been brought on the boat, and there was little 12 > 13 1620 Massasoit was desperate for assistance, and the Pilgrims saw the benefit of allying with him. The nature of the epidemic that had led the Indians to accept the presence of the Pilgrims is still a mystery. It was not unusual for a variety of illnesses originating in the...

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