The word empty describes what Tisquantum saw physically when he returned: deserted homes, abandoned planting grounds, the absence of the people he expected to find.

But historically and morally, Patuxet was not empty in the sense Europeans often used that word.

The land had a history.

It had names.

It had graves.

It had paths shaped by use.

It had fields cleared through Native labor.

It had memory held by survivors and neighboring communities.

The epidemic had depopulated the village; it had not erased every relationship to the place.

This distinction matters far beyond Tisquantum.