The Definitive Plymouth Timeline: Key Milestones from Ancient Harbor to Colony
By Elena Rostova
The survival of Plymouth Colony hung by a thread during the winter of 1620, 1621. Nearly half of the passengers and crew died of scurvy, pneumonia, and hypothermia. By March 1621, only 47 colonists remained alive.
The primary historical window into this harrowing period exists in William Bradford’s journal, Of Plymouth Plantation, written between 1630 and 1651. Bradford, who served as governor for more than thirty years, recorded the internal decisions of the settlement alongside its political dealings with neighboring tribes.
The colonists settled on land that had been cleared by the Patuxet band of the Wampanoag confederacy. Between 1616 and 1619, a catastrophic epidemic, likely leptospirosis brought by European traders, wiped out roughly 90 percent of the coastal Indigenous population. This depopulation left the fields of Patuxet empty of inhabitants when the English arrived.
In March 1621, formal contact occurred when Samoset, an Abenaki sagamore, walked directly into the settlement, greeting the colonists in broken English picked up from seasonal fishermen along the coast of Maine. Samoset returned days later with Tisquantum (Squanto), the sole surviving native of Patuxet who had been kidnapped by English explorer Thomas Hunt in 1614, sold into slavery in Spain, escaped to London, and eventually found passage back to Massachusetts.
Tisquantum arranged an audience between Governor John Carver and Ousamequin, the Massasoit (paramount leader) of the Wampanoag tribe. Facing increasing subjugation from the rival Narragansett to the west, Ousamequin negotiated a formal mutual-defense pact with the English. The terms bound both parties to render military aid if either were attacked, established judicial processes for grievances, and prohibited weapons during diplomatic negotiations.
The pact preserved the vulnerable settlement. Tisquantum instructed the settlers in native agricultural techniques, showing them how to plant maize using alewives (herring) as soil fertilizer to survive the acidic, thin coastal soils.
Elena Rostova holds a Master's degree in Public Health Journalism. She covers groundbreaking medical research, holistic wellness trends, mental health awareness, and nutritional science.
