Chapter Four - After the Meal: Fire and Smallpox

CHAPTER FOUR

After the Meal: Fire and Smallpox

PEACE DIDN’T LAST.

It never really could.

The Wampanoag helped the Pilgrims survive. Taught them to plant. Sat down and shared food.
But it was never about friendship. It was about leverage — power, protection, diplomacy.
Once that leverage started slipping, so did the alliance.

And the cracks showed up fast.

The Pilgrims wanted land. Not trade. Not balance. Land.

And they didn’t get how property worked in Native culture.

To the Wampanoag and other tribes, land wasn’t a commodity you bought and sold like a horse. It was a shared resource — a sacred trust passed through families and tribes by custom, not by deed.

But to the English? If you put up a fence, it was yours. If you had a piece of paper with a signature on it, it was yours. If nobody was on it at that exact moment? Still yours.

So guess what happened.

Settlers started wandering. Claiming. Expanding.
Their cows trampled Wampanoag fields. They built fences across hunting routes. And when someone pushed back?

They called it rebellion.

Meanwhile, the diseases kept spreading.

Smallpox. Measles. Typhus. Leptospirosis.
Some outbreaks were accidental. Others… maybe not.

There are accounts of infected blankets being handed out — especially later during the frontier wars. Whether it was biological warfare or just cruel indifference, the result was the same:

More dead villages. More funerals. More justifications for taking land that “no one” lived on anymore.

The theology kicked in, too.
The Pilgrims literally believed God was clearing the land for them. That the plague was divine proof. That their survival meant they were chosen.

It gave them permission. Not just to stay — but to expand.

Then came 1637.

The Pequot War.

This is where the mask drops.

Tensions had been rising between the Pequot tribe and English settlers in Connecticut. A few colonists were killed — some say by rival tribes, others blamed the Pequot. Either way, the response was brutal.

The English allied with the Narragansett and launched a raid on a Pequot village near the Mystic River.

They surrounded it at night. Set it on fire. And when people ran out?

They were shot, hacked, or shoved back into the flames.

Hundreds — men, women, children — were burned alive.

And afterward?

The governor declared a “Day of Thanksgiving.”
For the victory.

They literally thanked God for the massacre.

This is the part that never makes it into school plays.

This is what came after the meal.
Not dessert. Not peace.

Fire. Disease. And conquest wrapped in prayer.