Estimates of population for the southern New England area are variable. The most widely quoted figure is that arrived at by Mooney—25,000 for the entire New England area, prior to the 1616-17 plague.[5]Other writers place the number at around 20,000 for southern New England alone.[6]In all likelihood, the lower number is the more nearly correct. Population estimates made by visitors to the New England area in the 16th and 17th centuries were based in the main upon what could be observed in the course of a coastwide voyage. And while Indian population appeared dense, the actual situation was one of a considerably concentrated population along the immediate coast, where rich marine resources were available, and a very sparse, often seasonal, occupation of vast tracts further inland.[7]
By the time the Pilgrims arrived, the population of eastern Massachusetts had declined greatly, as a result of the epidemic which we have mentioned before. No one really knows what the disease was that took such great numbers of Indians. The Massachusetts were virtually destroyed—first by the plague and then by wars with the Abnaki during the early decades of the seventeenth century. Population declined from perhaps three thousand to a mere five hundred between the years 1615 and 1630.[8]The Wampanoags had suffered less, but the effects of the plague were still felt heavily by them. Prior to the plague their numbers are estimated to have been two to three thousand, but death depopulated large tracts of land.[9]Altham writes that the nearest Indian town to Plymouth was fourteen miles away.[10]Gookin called them, “a potent nation in former times....”[11]In 1620 they numbered perhaps something over one thousand.[12]The Narragansetts, however, were untouched by the plague; they are said to have numbered some four thousand.[13]
The general result of the settlement of Europeans in New England was to further the trend of Indian depopulation. Whereas the Europeans might hope to have developed or inherited a degree of immunity to the diseases which they carried, such infections proved fatal to the Indians almost without exception. In 1632-33 the Narragansetts suffered a smallpox epidemic which killed some seven hundred, and at the same time it destroyed what remained of the Massachusettstribe.[14]The well-meaning attempts of missionaries to Christianize the Indians by civilizing them and putting them into European clothes and houses also brought changes to the detriment of their general health. The “civilized” custom of washing, for example, removed the coating of animal fat that the Indian customarily wore to protect himself from cold and insects and exposed his body to previously unknown physiological shocks. Wars of the colonial period also took their toll of the Indian population.
As far as can be told from available information, the density of population in New England just prior to European colonization was .22 Indians per square mile.[15]