A field can be overgrown and still have owners, memories, and relatives.

An epidemic can reduce a population without converting the land into moral vacancy.

Plymouth’s founding illustrates that distinction with unusual clarity.

The colonists saw opportunity.

Tisquantum saw what had been lost.

The exact emotional weight of that loss is absent from the written record, but the geography itself makes it impossible to ignore.

The Political Value Of Knowledge

Tisquantum knew several kinds of information the English desperately needed.

He knew where Native communities were located.

He knew which leaders mattered.