for their wickedness, and would destroy them, and give their country to another people, that should not live like beasts as they did, but should be clothed, etc. But they derided him and said, that they were so many that God could not kill them. His answer was, that though they were never so many, God had many ways to destroy them that they knew not.³² Shortly after his death came the plague, a disease they never heard of before, and mightily swept them away, and left them as dung upon the earth (as you have heard). Not long after came the English to New Plimouth, and then several of the Indians began to mind the Frenchman’s words, thinking him to be more than an ordinary man. And as the first part of his speech had proved true, they began to be apprehensive of the latter, namely, the loss of their country. This relation the first planters at Plimouth, after they came to be acquainted with them, several of them heard from divers of their ancient and gravest Indians, and have often seen the place where the French were surprised and taken; which place beareth the name of Frenchman’s Point with many to this day. This relation, for the verity thereof, being also very observable, was thought meet to be here inserted, and let me add a word hereunto; that it is very observable likewise, that God hath very evidently made way for the English, by sweeping away the natives by some great mortalities; as first, by the plague here in Plimouth jurisdiction; secondly by the smallpox in the jurisdiction of the Massachusetts, a very considerable people a little before the English came into the country; as also at Connecticut, very full of Indians a little before the English went into those parts; and then the Pequots by the sword of the English (as will appear in its place) and the country now mostly possessed by the English. I might also mention several places in the jurisdiction of New Plimouth, peopled with considerable companies of proper able men, since the first planters thereof came over, even in our sight, before they were in a capacity to improve any of their land, that have by the same hand of Providence been cut off, and so their land even cleared for them, and now so replenished with their posterity, that places are too strait for them. By little and little (saith God of old to his people) will I drive them out from before thee, till thou be increased, and inherit the land, Exod. xxiii. 28-30.

But before I pass on, let the reader take notice of a very remarkable particular, which was made known to the planters at Plimouth, some short space after their arrival, that the Indians, before they came to the English to make friendship with them, they got all the powaws in the country, who, for three days together, in a horrid and devilish manner did curse and execrate them with their conjurations; which assembly and service they held in a dark and dismal swamp.³³ But to return.

The spring being now come, it pleased God that the mortality which had taken away so many of the first planters at Plimouth ceased, and the sick and lame recovered apace, which was, as it were, new life put into them; they having borne this affliction with much patience, being upheld by the Lord. And thus we are come unto the twenty-fifth of March, 1621.³⁴

Name

22. John Turner,*ss
23. Francis Eaton,*
24. James Chilton,*ss
25. John Crackton,ss
26. John Billington,*
27. Moses Fletcher,ss
28. John Goodman,ss
29. Degory Priest,ss
30. Thomas Williams,ss
31. Gilbert Winslow,
32. Edmund Margeson,ss
33. Peter Brown,
34. Richard Britterige,ss
35. George Soule,⁹
36. Richard Clarke,ss
37. Richard Gardiner,
38. John Allerton,ss
39. Thomas English,ss
40. Edward Dorey,¹⁰¹¹
41. Edward Leicester,¹¹