In 1633, and the year afterwards, the smallpox broke out among the Massachusetts Indians, multitudes of whom died by this terrible disease of the old world.

These misfortunes made them far less powerful than they had formerly been.
For nearly half a century after the arrival of the English, the red men showed themselves generally inclined to peace and amity.

They often made submission, when they might have made successful war.

The Plymouth settlers, led by the famous Captain Miles Standish, slew some of them in 1623, without any very evident necessity for so doing.

In 1636, and the following year, there was the most dreadful war that had yet occurred between the Indians and the English.