It fortuned some few yeares before the English came to inhabit at new Plimmouth, in New England, that upon some distast given in the Massachussets bay by Frenchmen, then trading there with the Natives for beaver, they set upon the men at such advantage that they killed manie of them, burned their shipp, {23} then riding at Anchor by an Island there, now called Peddocks Island,[230] in memory of Leonard Peddock[231] that landed there, (where many wilde Anckies[232] haunted that time, which hee thought had bin tame,) distributing them unto 5. Sachems, which were Lords of the severall territories adjoyninge: they did keepe them so longe as they lived, onely to sport themselves at them, and Five Frenchmen kept by the Salvages. made these five Frenchmen fetch them wood and water, which is the generall worke that they require of a servant.[233] One of these five men, out livinge the rest, had learned so much of their language as to rebuke them for their bloudy deede, saying that God would be angry with them for it, and that hee would in his displeasure destroy them; but the Salvages (it seemes boasting of their strenght,) replyed and sayd, that they were so many that God could not kill them.[234]

But contrary wise, in short time after the hand of God fell heavily upon them, with such a mortall stroake that they died on heapes as they lay in their houses; and the living, that were able to shift for themselves, would runne away and let them dy, and let there Carkases ly above the ground without buriall. For in a place where many inhabited, there hath been but one left a live to tell what became of the rest; the livinge being (as it seemes) not able to bury the The livinge not able to bury the dead. dead, they were left for Crowes, Kites and vermin to pray upon. And the bones and skulls upon the severall places of their habitations made such a spectacle after my comming into those partes, that, as I travailed in that Forrest nere the Massachussets, it seemed to mee a new found Golgatha.

{24} But otherwise, it is the custome of those Indian people to bury their dead ceremoniously and carefully, and then to abandon that place, because they have no desire the place should put them in minde of mortality: and this mortality was not ended when the Brownists of new Plimmouth were setled at Patuxet in New England: and by all likelyhood the sicknesse that these Indians died of was the Plague, as by conference with them since my arrivall and habitation in those partes, I have learned.[235] And by this meanes there is as yet but a small number of Salvages in New England, to that which hath beene in former time, and 2 Sam. 24. the place is made so much the more fitt for the English Nation to inhabit in, and erect in it Temples to the glory of God.