Mancall further explained that after the visits to the New World by Samuel de Champlain and Capt. John Smith in the early 1600s, “a terrible illness spread through the region” among the Native Americans. King James’s patent called this spread of disease “a wonderfull Plague” that might help to devastate and depopulate the region. But many of those native people not killed by disease would be killed by direct deed. This was just one of the earliest episodes in which settlers and colonists did something horrible to the natives.

Source: New York Times November 27, 2019 22:07 UTC