DEVELOPMENT OF NEW PLYMOUTH (1621-1643) During the winter of 1620-1621 the emigrants suffered greatly from scurvy and exposure.

More than half the company perished, and the seamen on the _Mayflower_ suffered as much.[1] With the appearance of spring the mortality ceased, and a friendly intercourse with the natives began.

These Indians were the Pokanokets, whose number had been very much thinned by the pestilence.

After the first hostilities directed against the exploring parties they avoided the whites, and held a meeting in a dark and dismal swamp, where the medicine-men for three days together tried vainly to subject the new-comers to the spell of their conjurations.
At last, in March, 1621, an Indian came boldly into camp, and, in broken English, bade the strangers "welcome." It was found that his name was Samoset, and that he came from Monhegan, an island distant about a day's sail towards the east, where he had picked up a few English words from the fishermen who frequented that region.

In a short time he returned, bringing Squanto, or Tisquantum, stolen by Hunt seven years before, and restored to his country in 1620 by Sir Ferdinando Gorges.