Plague of 1616
The introduction of European diseases to the Indians was devastating. The years from 1616 to 1619 are known as the "Great Dying." During this time, a deadly disease swept coastal New England from Cape Cod through Maine. In Massachusetts, the death rate among Native people was as high as 90-95%. Among the Wabanaki, even with a more spread out population, the death rate was more than 75%. The specific agent responsible for this epidemic has not been specifically identified, but it may have been plague, small pox or viral hepatitis. At the end of the Great Dying, many coastal villages were entirely abandoned, and the land was left virtually empty of its original inhabitants.
It is likely that bubonic plague was part of the set of epidemic diseases that might have been the culprit in coastal New England in 1616. Other possibilities, including yellow fever and trichinosis, have been suggested by various scholars but many primary sources refer to the epidemic as "plague," "the plague," and "Plague". Some records identifies a principal symptom as yellow skin. This has led to a suspect of hepatic failure and to suggest a hepatitis virus as the probable cause. According to the Jesuit missionary Biard, the epidemic hit the Maine coast in 1616, and the Indians said they had experienced nothing like it previously. "They are astonished and often complain that since the French mingle and carry on trade with them, they are dying fast, and the population thinning out" (Thwaites 1959, 3: 105). Bourque and Whitehead (1985: 337) see some evidence that localized epidemics my have struck the Indian communities around the Gulf of St. Lawrence. But even here there is no evidence of disease prior to Champlain's 1604 exploration, and clear indications that the epidemics did not reach the interior of New England. Richard Vines and his men spent a winter on the Saco River at the height of the epidemic, and although they inhabited the same dwellings as sick and dying Indians, they never contracted the illness themselves. Gorges, who had sent Vines to Saco in the first place, reports that although the English seem to have been immune, many Indian settlements were so reduced that there was no one left to bury the dead. The testimony of the Indians themselves and the effects the epidemic had on the population combine to indicate that this was the first major epidemic in the Northeast. While the 1616 epidemic was the first to appear in the Northeast, the sources clearly indicate that it did not spread far into the interior. The first epidemic to reach the interior was probably the 1633 smallpox epidemic. This epidemic was so prevalent and so destructive that nearly every contemporary writer mentions it and all Northeastern Indian groups appear to have suffered from it.