Read it through once

The Pilgrims were genuinely surprised that the Indians wished to live at peace with them. Their reasons for doing so were doubtless complex. In the first place they were not the fearsome people the Pilgrims had been led to believe inhabited the land. The history of European-Indian relations before the coming of the Pilgrims is marked by trust and friendliness on the Indians’ part, all too often betrayed. Yet, although stories of the Europeans’ actions had circulated among the Indians over all of northeastern North America, it seems that not all Indians were ready to believe the worst. But there was more to it than that. The epidemic of 1617 had upset the balance of power that had prevailed among the native American population for years. The Indians who had suffered most were those along the coast, where the disease had had its most drastic effect. Not far inland were Narragansets and further west Pequots, neither of whom had felt its effects. It would be insulting to the intelligence of Massasoit and his Wampanoags to believe that they did not perceive the advantage English allies would give them in opposition to their western neighbors. In the words of one of the Pilgrim chroniclers of the time: