After some preliminary explorations of the Cape, a site for a settlement was finally selected in what had been an extensive Indian cornfield some years in the past. Evidence of the Indians’ former presence was everywhere. Exploring Cape Cod on foot, the Pilgrims discovered and excavated an Indian grave and entered an abandoned Indian encampment, where they found buried corn caches, some of which they appropriated. Later they would repay the Indians for the corn they had taken on that cold November day. But they had only one encounter with living Indians at that time, which was hostile and involved an exchange of shots for arrows; no one was injured in the incident. Had the Pilgrims known the situation, there would have been less concern about the Indians than they must have felt. Three years earlier the Indian population of the New England coast had been ravaged by some European disease, and as much as three-fourths of the population had perished. The Pilgrims were to have no further confrontations with the Indians until the following spring, and their next one was to be dramatically different. Their first year in the New World started badly. Upon arrival there had been rumblings of dissension from the “strangers” in the company, and anarchy seemed a real threat. This problem was met by framing the famous =Mayflower= Compact, which established a participatory form of government for the settlers. But even if all had been harmonious among the people, the physical hardships of establishing a colony were genuine and disturbing: using the =Mayflower= as a base of operations, work parties went ashore daily, constructing a common house and a platform for their guns, laying out house lots, and scavenging food supplies. Slowly, as the winter wore on, a small town began to grow on shore. The work was done under physical hardship, coupled with the latent threat from Indians, who appeared from time to time in the distance but never came close enough to engage in conversation. At other times smoke from the fires of unseen people appeared in the distance. As the tiny town grew, its population declined. William Bradford’s account of the winter’s sickness lends a sense of immediacy to what must have been a terrible time: “So as there died some times two or three of a day in the foresaid time, that of 100 and odd persons, scarce fifty remained. And of these, in the time of most distress, there was but six or seven sound persons who to their great commendations, be it spoken, spared no pains night nor day, but with abundance of toil and hazard of their own health, fetched them wood, made them fires, dressed them meat, made their beds, washed their loathsome clothes, clothed and unclothed them. In a word, did all the homely and necessary offices for them which dainty and queasy stomachs cannot endure to hear named....” [Illustration: Barn in snow]