and French fishermen who had been fishing off the Massachusetts coast. "The plague that ensued made the Black Death pale in comparison." (Loewen, 80)
             So by the time the Pilgrims had reached the New World in 1620, they came to a land where disease and plague had killed almost everyone in sight. Howard Simpson describes the sight the Pilgrims had stumbled across in America: "Villages lay in ruins because there was no one to tend them. The ground was strewn with the skulls and the bones of thousands of Indians who had died and none was left to bury them." Historians speculate that this "plague" could have been any disease, from the bubonic plague to others such as hepatitis, small pox, chicken pox, or influenza. (Loewen, 80-81)
             The only surviving member of the Patuxet tribe was Tisquantum, or "Squanto," who had been in England during the time of the plague. Squanto accepted the Pilgrims and became part of the Plymouth colony. He also acte
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