It is true that archaeology in New England has been generally less immediately rewarding than in many other areas of North America. The poorer conditions of preservation, the apparent absence of deeply stratified sites and the dense settlement pattern in this region have contributed to this condition. With the emergence of what is now being called historical archaeology, however, new potentials are being realized in New England. The efforts of Plimoth Plantation are showing dramatically that Colonial history can be meaningfully rewritten through the lenses of anthropology and that archaeology does not by any means end where history begins. Indeed, a new understanding is being achieved for that period in early Colonial history when an immigrant European culture was transformed into something distinctively American. For many anthropological studies that will undoubtedly be made about southern New England, the culture of the 17th century Indians will be an important baseline. This monograph will be one of the valuable sources for scholars undertaking such studies. THE WAMPANOAGS IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY An Ethnohistorical Study _by Catherine Marten_ _And also those which should escape or overcome these difficulties, should yett be in continuall danger of the salvage people; who are cruell, barbarous, and most trecherous, being most furious in their rage, and merciles wher they overcome; not being contente only to kill, and take away life, but delight to tormente men in the most bloodie manner that may be; fleaing some alive with the shells of fishes, cutting of the members and joynts of others by peesmeale; and broiling on the coles, eate the collops of their flesh in their sight whilst they live, with other cruelties horrible to be related._ One of many fearsome prospects awaiting Europeans who would settle upon the American continent was thus described by William Bradford—Indians. In faraway Europe this simplistic view of the cruel and hostile primitives that inhabited the New World seemed adequate. But Bradford and his friends—known to history as the Pilgrims, who settled at Plymouth Massachusetts in 1620—were destined to see one group of North American Indians in a different way. Who were the Indians that greeted the Pilgrims and what can be told of their culture?