For nearly a century before the landing of the
Mayflower in 1620, the Ninnimissinuok sporadically experienced direct contact by European explorers and for decades before that the indirect consequences of European cod fishermen off the
Newfoundland banks. The effect of these early encounters was profound. First, and more immediately catastrophic, Europeans brought a variety of diseases for which the aboriginal population had no resistance. When the English settlers arrived, they discovered that vast swaths of Southern New England, previously prepared for cultivation and settlement by extensive deforestation and land preparation was devoid of all inhabitants. Second, more gradual but equally profound for the economic and social conditions of the Natives, the "Fur Trade" engaged in at first by the Newfoundland fishermen, and later, more systematically by the French and English, destroyed the previously existing continental intertribal pattern of exchange in which the Natives traded local products in a system of extensive and peaceful commerce. That system was replaced by an economy driven by the demand of the Europeans for one product (animal pelts). The new economy resulted in intense intertribal rivalries and hostilities, which eventually allowed the English to play one off against the other. In addition to contributing to the first two causes of calamity, the English created immense ill-will and eventually hostilities by their aggressive approach to settlement, the brutality of which was apparent even before the first settlers. This was the result of the system the English employed which depended exclusively on private profiteers.
Richard Hakluyt made plain the goals that the entrepreneurs would pursue in an "inducement" he wrote in 1585: "The ends of this voyage are these: 1, to plant the Christian religion; 2, To trafficke; 3, To conquer; Or, to do all three." The first goal was never seriously pursued. == See also ==