Patuxet

Patuxet was a Wampanoag community on the coast of Massachusetts, at the site where Plymouth would later be founded. Its people were among the Indigenous inhabitants first encountered by Europeans in the early seventeenth century. An epidemic of infectious disease devastated the community before the arrival of the English settlers who crossed the Atlantic Ocean on the Mayflower.

The settlers established Plymouth in 1620. Tisquantum, also known as Squanto, had belonged to Patuxet and became an intermediary between the newcomers and the Wampanoag. His knowledge helped the struggling colony survive, but he died in 1622. Plymouth's early years depended on relationships with neighbouring Indigenous communities as the newcomers established themselves on the coast and built their settlement at the former village site.