The colony was settled without adequate provisions,[1] and was dissolved in late March 1623 after harming relations with local Indians.

This battle scarred relations between the Plymouth colonists and the Indians, and it was fictionalized two centuries later in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 1858 poem The Courtship of Miles Standish.

[7] Historian Charles Francis Adams, Jr. glowingly called him a "sixteenth century adventurer" in the mold of John Smith and Walter Raleigh, adding that his "brain teemed with schemes for deriving sudden gain from the settlement of the new continent".

[12] An advance team of 60 settlers arrived at the Plymouth Colony in May 1622 aboard the Sparrow, an English fishing vessel which was sailing to the coast of Maine.

The team traveled the final 150 miles (240 km) down the New England coast in a shallop with three members of the Sparrow's crew.

After finding one, they negotiated for the land with Chief Aberdecest and returned to Plymouth, sending the shallop back to the Sparrow and awaiting the remainder of the colonists.

[13] By the end of September, the colony was established, the Swan was moored in Weymouth Fore River, and the Charity returned to England.

[14] Wessagusset was consuming food too quickly because of the disorder of the colony, as reported by Plymouth's Governor Bradford, and it became apparent that they would run out before the end of the winter.

[18] The legend that the Wessagusset colonists hanged an innocent man was later popularized by a satirical depiction of this event in Samuel Butler's 1660s poem Hudibras.

Near the end of the winter, the Indians near Wessagusset moved some of their huts to a swamp near the colony, and the colonists felt that they were under siege.

[21] One colonist at Wessagusset saw these signs and other indications of hostility, and fled to Plymouth to bring word of an imminent attack, pursued by Indians during his flight.

Historical sources give different accounts of the killings, but four of the Indians were in the same room as Standish and several of his men.

[22] As many as five colonists were also killed in the brief battle; one Indian's head was cut off and displayed in Plymouth as a warning to others, which was a common practice in Europe at the time.

[27] In 1858, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow included a fictionalized depiction of the killings in his poem The Courtship of Miles Standish.

Headlong he leaped on the boaster, and, snatching his knife from its scabbard, Plunged it into his heart, and, reeling backward, the savage Fell with his face to the sky, and a fiendlike fierceness upon it.

Instead, they divided, some returning to England in the Swan, including John Sanders, others remaining behind to join the Plymouth colony.

[30] Some of his former settlers apparently had gone north to Maine and were living on House Island in Casco Bay in a home built by explorer Capt.

[4] The Plymouth Council for New England gave Robert Gorges a patent for a settlement covering 300 square miles (780 km2) northeast of Boston Harbor.

[34] Most of his settlers returned to England, but some remained as colonists in Weymouth, Plymouth, or Virginia, and William Blaxton settled in Boston.