Talking Leaf

August 1763. A brig bound for New York suddenly diverts its course into shallow Nantucket waters near the entrance to the Old Harbor, which has recently shoaled over. The fever ship, local history books tell us, laden with sick and dying Irish immigrants to the New World, is forced to anchor offshore. One by one, the frightened passengers make their way to the beach and into the village. Within several days, the first islanders lie infected and dying. By January three-quarters of the island's Indian population, 222 people, mostly elders, women, and children, are dead. It is a plague of biblical proportions. Mysteriously, no whites succumb. So begins the familiar tale. Undisputed local lore? Or massive cover-up? Now, for the first time, told through the diary of Sarah Skootequary, eyewitness, the answer to what really happened that tragic summer of 1763.