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In the summer of 1640 Patuxet was marked off as a separate township; and in 1643 Samuel Gorton and others, fleeing from the wrath of Massachusetts, made a settlement called Shawomet, or Warwick, about twelve miles distant from Providence. The tendency of these various towns was to combine in a commonwealth, but on account of their separate origin the process of union was slow.
Spring and summer came to bless them for their endurance and unconscious heroism. On March the sixteenth, Samoset came with Indian greeting. Samoset returned soon with Squanto or Tisquantum, the only survivor of the Patuxet tribe of Indians which had perished of a pestilence Plymouth three years before.
The Indian name of the place was Patuxet, but the emigrants called it New Plymouth "after Plymouth, in old England, the last town they left in their native country"; and it was a curious coincidence that the spot had already received from John Smith the name of Plymouth. Later the town was called simply Plymouth, while the colony took the name of New Plymouth. Hist.
He told us the place where we now live is called Patuxet, and that about four years ago all the inhabitants died of an extraordinary plague, and there is neither man, woman, nor child remaining, as indeed we have found none; so as there is none to hinder our possession, or to lay claim unto it. All the afternoon we spent in communication with him.
The lights closed in around a group of Indians decked in their new robes. Our attention is turned toward the shore once more where three English sailors hold a flag bearing the words: "Thomas Hunt Patuxet 1615." Hunt enters stealthily at the right, and his attention is concentrated upon a spot where his trained eye has caught, a glimpse of something of greater interest than bird or fish.
"Might it be this place?" "This place Patuxet. Monhegan nearer to the sunrise," replied Samoset pointing eastward. "And how far?" "Suppose walk, five days; big wind in ship, one day." "And how camest thou, and when?" "Ship. Three, four moons ago." "Ah, then it is not an armed assault upon us," said Carver aside and in a tone of relief. "Nay, these salvages are more treacherous than a quicksand.
Farther inquiry elicited the fact that the former inhabitants of Plymouth, or Patuxet, a people tributary to Massasoit, but living under their own sachem, had been totally exterminated by a plague, perhaps small-pox, which had swept over the country two or three years before the landing of the Pilgrims, leaving, so far as Samoset could tell, only one man alive; this man seeking refuge among the Nausets, the tribe to the east of Patuxet, was one of the victims entrapped by Hunt, escaping from whom, he lived a long time in England with a merchant of London named Slaney, who finally sent him in a fishing vessel to Newfoundland, whence he had made his way back to his friends on Cape Cod.
Nevertheless, he and his party left Patuxet and removed to Shawomet, a tract beyond the limits of Providence, and purchased in January, 1643, from Miantonomoh, the great sachem of the Narragansetts. Gorton's letter had secured for him the thorough hatred of the authorities in Massachusetts, and his removal by no means ended their interference.
Tisquantum not Mattakee, not Nauset; Tisquantum Patuxet, where white men live," hastily replied Squanto; while Bradford suggested in a rapid aside, "Best leave go thy sword and restrain thy wrath, Captain, or we be but dead men. Look at the faces of those men behind the sachem. Already they finger their tomahawks."
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