Country Silence

August, 1608

Seven ships loaded with two-hundred men, women, children, and everything else that they would need to start over again in the New World sailed into the Delaware Bay and went ashore at present day Kent. These people had fled the forest of England and sailed to the new world seeking the same things that the Puritans would, twelve years later in 1620.

Only the Indians were aware of them but they kept their distance from the strange pale people that lived in a part of the forest they long believed was inhabited with the evil spirits of the enemies they killed in the wars among the tribes. They stayed hidden among the giant Eastern Hemlocks and American Beech trees from other Europeans until the Drake Well in Titusville discovered oil in 1859.

That was when the first Europeans—the descendants of those whom they escaped—ventured into their new home looking to get rich. And that's when the killing first began.