John Winthrop, a founder of the Massachusetts Bay colony considered this wave of illness and death [among Natives] to be a divine miracle. He wrote to a friend in England, ''But for the natives in these parts, God hath so pursued them, as for 300 miles space the greatest part of them are swept away by smallpox which still continues among them. So as God hath thereby cleared our title to this place, those who remain in these parts, being in all not 50, have put themselves under our protection.''
