Fields had already been cleared.

Fresh water was accessible.

The harbor offered protection.

The location seemed providential.

But what the colonists interpreted as opportunity was the physical aftermath of Native death.

Plymouth Colony was established at Patuxet because Patuxet had been devastated.

That fact changes the meaning of the founding story.

The English did not carve a settlement from untouched land.

They occupied a Native place whose people had recently died in extraordinary numbers.

Tisquantum understood that more intimately than anyone in the colony.