He was in the prime of his life—about thirty-five, strong and imposing, with the quiet dignity that was expected of a sachem.Despite his personal vigor and equanimity, Massasoit presided over a people who had been devastated by disease. During the three years that the Pilgrims had been organizing their voyage to America, the Indians of southern New England had been hit by what scientists refer to as a virgin soil epidemic—a contagion against which they had no antibodies. From 1616 to 1619, what may have been bubonic plague introduced by European fishermen in modern Maine spread south along the Atlantic seaboard to the eastern shore of Narragansett Bay, killing in some cases as many as 90 percent of the region’s inhabitants.So many died so quickly that there was no one left to bury the dead. Portions of coastal New England that had once been as densely populated as western Europe were suddenly empty of people, with only the whitened bones of the dead to indicate that a thriving community had once existed along these shores.
