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The New England epidemic
In the years just before the Pilgrims reached Massachusetts, an epidemic swept the coastal communities of New England. Which disease it was is unresolved — leptospirosis, plague and viral hepatitis have all been proposed. The consequence is clear enough: Plymouth was laid out on an emptied village, Patuxet, and the survival of the early colonies rested on a power vacuum that had opened just before. The story of the "empty wilderness" originates here, and it is a description of a catastrophe presented as a natural condition.
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