The three ships—the Susan Constant, the Godspeed, and the Discovery—sat like strange, wooden giants against the untouched shoreline. Men spilled out onto the marshy banks, their boots sinking into the muck of a land that had no names they knew. While the leaders argued over maps and mandates, the air hummed with the sound of insects and the distant, rhythmic drumming of a people who had called this shore home for centuries.