For two years more it was an anxious and difficult time for the new colony.  By 1624 its success may be said to have become assured.  That the Indians in the neighbourhood had not taken advantage of the distress of the settlers in that first winter, and massacred every one of them, was due to a remarkable circumstance.  Early in 1617 a frightful pestilence had swept over New England and slain, it is thought, more than half the Indian population between the Penobscot river and Narragansett bay.  Many of the Indians were inclined to attribute this calamity to the murder of two or three white fishermen the year before.  They had not got over the superstitious dread with which the first sight of white men had inspired them, and now they believed that the strangers held the demon of the plague at their disposal and had let him loose upon the red men in revenge for the murders they had committed.  This wholesome delusion kept their tomahawks quiet for a while.  When they saw the Englishmen establishing themselves at Plymouth, they at first held a powwow in the forest, at which the new-comers were cursed with all the elaborate ingenuity that the sorcery of the medicine-men could summon for so momentous an occasion; but it was deemed best to refrain from merely human methods of attack.  It was not until the end of the first winter that any of them mustered courage to visit the palefaces.  Then an Indian named Samoset, who had learned a little English from fishermen and for his own part was inclined to be friendly, came one day into the village with words of welcome.  He was so kindly treated that presently Massasoit, principal sachem of the Wampanoags, who dwelt between Narragansett and Cape Cod bays, came with a score of painted and feathered warriors and squatting on a green rug and cushions in the governor’s log-house smoked the pipe of peace, while Standish with half-a-dozen musketeers stood quietly by.  An offensive and defensive alliance was then and there made between King Massasoit and King James, and the treaty was faithfully kept for half a century.  Some time afterward, when Massasoit had fallen sick and lay at death’s door, his life was saved by Edward Winslow, who came to his wigwam and skilfully nursed him.  Henceforth the Wampanoag thought well of the Pilgrim.  The powerful Narragansetts, who dwelt on the farther side of the bay, felt differently, and thought it worth while to try the effect of a threat.  A little while after the Fortune had brought its reinforcement, the Narragansett sachem Canonicus sent a messenger to Plymouth with a bundle of newly-made arrows wrapped in a snake-skin.  The messenger threw it in at the governor’s door and made off with unseemly haste.  Bradford understood this as a challenge, and in this he was confirmed by a friendly Wampanoag.  The Narragansetts could muster 2000 warriors, for whom forty or fifty Englishmen, even with firearms, were hardly a fair match; but it would not do to show fear.  Bradford stuffed the snake-skin with powder and bullets, and sent it back to Canonicus, telling him that if he wanted war he might come whenever he liked and get his fill of it.  When the sachem saw what the skin contained, he was afraid to touch it or have it about, and medicine-men, handling it no doubt gingerly enough, carried it out of his territory. [Sidenote:  Why the colony was not attacked by the Indians]