Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues

by Jonathan Kennedy

That same year, an English trading company—the Popham Colony—tried to set up a base in what is now southern Maine but abandoned the project after fourteen months, in large part because of opposition from numerous well-armed Native Americans. The French attempted to found a settlement near Chatham, Cape Cod around the same time, but it failed for similar reasons. Then, improbably, a small, ragtag group of English Separatists who had been exiled in Leiden landed in late 1620 and managed to start the first permanent settlement in New England. Why did the Pilgrims succeed where others failed? It wasn’t because they were better prepared or more numerous. Rather, between 1616 and 1619 a savage epidemic had swept through the Massachusetts Bay area, most probably brought by European fishermen or traders who operated there. Some scholars believe it was smallpox, others viral hepatitis. Either way, it is estimated to have killed as much as 90 percent of the population.[56] If modern-day Americans want to be historically accurate, then their gratitude at Thanksgiving should be directed to the Old World pathogens that made the settlement of Plymouth Colony possible.