The fall feast was sometime in late September or early October, with about one hundred of Massasoit\u2019s Indians and less than half that number of English who had survived the previous disease-filled winter. It affirmed a recent peace treaty between the two groups \u201cPeace\u201d is perhaps too strong a word, for it was a treaty of mutual support in case either was attacked. The Pilgrims carried the threat\/weapon of a deadly plague, which had already wiped out the once thriving Indian village at Plymouth \u2013 a ghost town when the Pilgrims conveniently came upon it.\u00a0 Massasoit\u2019s decision \u2013 if you can\u2019t beat them, join them. This was no real peace, as time would soon tell. And the threat of plague as a weapon was very real, as Lord Jeffry Amherst demonstrated when he gave gifts of smallpox infected blankets to his new Indian \u201cfriends.\u201d And then, with the arrival of two more ships during the winter, bringing passengers but no food, they were back in starvation times again.<\/p>\n