by Rod Gragg
We went on further and found new stubble, of which they had gotten corn this year, and many walnut trees full of nuts, and great store of strawberries, and some vines. Passing thus a field or two, which were not great, we came to another, which had also been new gotten, and there we found where an house had been, and four or five old planks laid together. Also we found a great kettle, which had been some ship’s kettle and brought out of Europe. There was also an heap of sand, made like the former, but it was newly done (we might see how they had paddled it with their hands), which we digged up, and in it we found a little old basket full of fair Indian corn; and digged further and found a fine great new basket full of very fair corn of this year with some 36 goodly ears of corn, some yellow, and some red, and others mixed with blue, which was a very goodly sight. The basket was round, and narrow at the top. It held about three or four bushels, which was as much as two of us could lift up from the ground, and was very handsomely and cunningly made. But whilst we were busy about these things, we set our men sentinel in a round ring, all but two or three which digged up the corn. We were in suspense what to do with it and the kettle, and at length after much consultation, we concluded to take the kettle and as much of the corn as we could carry away with us; and when our shallop came, if we could find any of the people and come to parley with them, we would give them the kettle again and satisfy them for their corn. So we took all the ears, and put a good deal of the loose corn in the kettle for two men to bring away on a staff. Besides, they that could put any into their pockets, filled the same. The rest we buried again; for we were so laden with armor that we could carry no more.
As they explored the Cape Cod coastline, the Pilgrims encountered a variety of wild game. “We saw great flocks of wild geese and ducks,” they reported.
WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
Not far from this place we found the remainder of an old fort or palisades, which, as we conceived, had been made by some Christians. This was also hard by that place which we thought had been a river; unto which we went, and found it so to be dividing itself into two arms by an high bank standing right by the cut or month, which came from the sea. That which was next unto us was the less; the other arm was more than twice as big, and not unlike to be an harbor for ships; but whether it be a fresh river, or only an indraught of the sea, we had no time to discover; for we had commandment to be out but two days. Here also we saw two canoes, the one on the one side, the other on the other side. We could not believe it was a canoe, till we came near it. So we returned, leaving the further discovery hereof to our shallop, and came that night back again to the fresh water pond; and there we made our rendezvous that night, making a great fire, and a barricade to windward of us, and kept good watch with three sentinels all night, every one standing when his turn came, while five or six inches of match was burning. It proved a very rainy night.
In this nineteenth-century artist’s conception, a New England Indian is outfitted in buckskin leggings, a bear-hide tunic, and a bear claw necklace. The first Native Americans that the Pilgrims sighted fled into the forest.
STORIES OF THE PILGRIMS
In the morning we took our kettle and sunk it in the pond, and trimmed our muskets, for few of them would go off because of the wet; and so coasted the wood again to come home, in which we were shrewdly puzzled and lost our way. As we wandered we came to a tree, where a young [sapling] was bowed down over a bow, and some acorns strewed underneath. Stephen Hopkins said it had been to catch some deer. So as we were looking at it, William Bradford being in the rear, when he came looked also upon it, and as he went about it, it gave a sudden jerk up, and he was immediately caught by the leg. It was a very pretty device, made with a rope of their own making, and having a noose as artificially made as any roper in England can make, and as like ours as can be, which we brought away with us. In the end we got out of the wood, and were fallen about a mile too high above the creek, where we saw three bucks, but we had rather have had one of them. We also did spring three couple of partridges; and as we came along by the creek, we saw great flocks of wild geese and ducks, but they were very fearful of us. So we marched some while in the woods, some while on the sands, and other while in the water up to the knees, came to fetch us. Master Jones and Master Carver being on the shore, with many of our people, came to meet us. And thus we came, both weary and welcome home. . . .4
“We saw great flocks of wild geese and ducks”
Native American hunters flush deer toward a forest snare in this early seventeenth-century illustration. Pilgrim William Bradford experienced a surprise encounter with such a snare.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
Where would they build their homes and establish their colony? Their three-day exploration had not provided an answer: they needed to venture out again. On November 27, the shallop was finally repaired and reassembled—and the Pilgrims set out on another exploratory expedition. This time, they gave the honor of commanding the expedition to Master Jones, and about one-third of the thirty-four members of the party were sailors from the Mayflower. Jones had agreed to make the Mayflower available for housing and help until the colonists had found a location for their fledgling colony. He could not feed the Pilgrims from the ship’s rations, however, which had to be preserved for the return voyage. The Pilgrims had to find a location for their home—and they had to find it soon.
As they headed along the Cape Cod shoreline, a winter storm blew in, dropping the temperature to below zero with wind and snow. The Pilgrims now saw that New England winters could be far worse than England’s. They put in at a bayside inlet at what would become known as Pilgrim Lake, and most splashed ashore through thigh-deep, icy cold water, leaving the boats with some of the sailors. They hiked inland for several miles through the blowing snow, then made camp. When they awakened the next day, a half-foot of snow blanketed the ground, and many of the men were coughing. They trudged back to the boats, and sailed southward along the shoreline to an anchorage at modern Pamet Harbor, which they dubbed Cold Harbor. From there, they hiked for several hours up and down wooded hills until Master Jones—whose sea legs were not accustomed to hiking through snow—called it quits. They made camp in a stand of pine trees, dressing and cooking “three fat geese and six ducks” that they shot.
The next day they returned to the place where they had unearthed the Indian corn, which they named Corn Hill. They took more corn, along with a store of dried beans they discovered. By now the ground was so frozen that they had to hack into it with their swords and cutlasses to retrieve the horde. This time, perhaps threatened by the severity of the weather, they apparently engaged in no prolonged debate about making off with someone else’s grain. “And sure it was God’s good providence that we found this corn,” Winslow and Bradford later observed, “for else we know not how we should have done. . . .”
Master Jones headed back to the boats and the Mayflower, presumably accompanied by his sailors, but Captain Standish and seventeen others remained ashore, camping again, and exploring more the next day. They wandered onto another graveyard, where they unearthed the skeletal remains of what appeared to be a blond-haired European, buried alongside the skeleton of a small child, along with a sailor’s uniform, European tools, and Indian artifacts. They also examined some abandoned Indian dwellings, but encountered no Indians. With increasing numbers of their party cold and coughing, they returned to the Mayflower. Back aboard ship, as they reviewed their explorations, the Pilgrim leaders admitted that they had not encountered a suitable location for their colony. Next, they agreed, they would explore the western side of Cape Cod Bay.5
CHAPTER NINE
“The Best They Could Find”
“Indians! Indians!” The men in camp heard the alarm, but barely had time to react before a shower of arrows fell among them. For weeks, they had been searching for Indians—now they had found them and the Indians were attacking. Led by Captain Standish and Governor Carver, a ten-man expedition had left the Mayflower in the shallop on Decembe
r 6, again searching for a good location for the colony. Among them were William Bradford, Edward Winslow, Stephen Hopkins, and Mayflower pilot Robert Coppin. It was Coppin, who had been to Cape Cod before, who had encouraged them to search for good ground on the other side of the bay. They were likely motivated by a rising sense of urgency: aboard ship, illness was spreading among the passengers and some appeared critically ill.1
Armed with a deadly long bow, an Indian archer stands ready to do battle. English artist John White made this watercolor portrait in the late sixteenth century.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
“Their Arrows Came Flying amongst Us”
A First Encounter with Native Americans Turns Violent
Two days before the latest expedition departed, one of the Pilgrims died. His name was Edward Thompson, and he was a servant to William and Susanna White. Ironically, a few days earlier, the White family had added new life to the Mayflower: Susanna White, one of the three pregnant women who had made the voyage, gave birth to a son. He was named Peregrine White—the first child born to the Pilgrims in America—and he would survive the grim shipboard conditions in which he was born to live a long life in America. Others among the Pilgrims, however, were not faring so well. They were now extremely low on food. Their reduced diet left them weakened and susceptible to illness, and the wet, bitterly cold New England weather was helping no one. The severe weather also complicated their search for a colony site: as the ten-man expedition rowed the shallop along the Cape Cod coastline on December 6, the salt spray froze on the men’s clothing, making it “like coats of iron.”
“The water froze on our clothes, and made them . . . like coats of iron”
With their shallop—a light sailboat they had brought aboard the Mayflower—a ten-man exploration party set out to find the best location for the Pilgrim colony.
AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY
They put ashore near the modern Massachusetts town of Eastham, still on the east side of the bay. As they prepared to beach the shallop, they spotted a group of Indians farther down the shore, crowding around a large object on the edge of the bay. Instead of trying to make immediate contact, the party posted guards and encamped for the night. When they moved out the next day, the Indians were gone. On the beach, the Pilgrims found the remains of “a great fish like a grampus”—perhaps a beached killer whale—which the Indians had been butchering. They scouted around all day, but found neither the Indians nor a suitable location for the colony. At night, they built a makeshift fort of logs and brush, posted guards, and bedded down by a large fire. In the middle of the night they were abruptly awakened by “a hideous and great cry,” which they attributed to wolves—but which later proved to be Indian war cries.
The next day they were attacked. Some of the Pilgrims had carelessly left their firearms on the shore where they had beached the shallop, and a band of Indians attempted to capture the weapons. To cover their raid on the firearms, the Indians unleashed a volley of arrows on the Pilgrims’ campsite—which is how the explorers found themselves in a hail of arrows. Remarkably, no one was hit. The Pilgrims on the beach yelled a warning to the others—“Indians! Indians!”—and the men in camp opened up with their firearms. It was a brisk skirmish, but apparently no one on either side was killed. Outgunned, the Indians retreated into the forest, and the Pilgrims “gave God solemn thanks and praise for their deliverance.” They dubbed the site of their skirmish “the First Encounter,” and Winslow and Bradford recorded the combat in Mourt’s Relation:
Wednesday, the sixth of December, we set out, being very cold and hard weather. We were a long while after we launched from the ship, before we could get clear of a sandy point, which lay within less than a furlong of the same. In which time two were very sick, and Edward Tilley had like to have [fainted] with cold. The gunner also was sick unto death (but hope of trucking made him to go), and so remained all that day and the next night. At length we got clear of the sandy point, and got up our sails, and within an hour or two we got under the weather shore, and then had smoother water and better sailing. But it was very cold; for the water froze on our clothes, and made them many times like coats of iron.
We sailed six or seven leagues by the shore, but saw neither river nor creek. At length we met with a tongue of land, being flat off from the shore, with a sandy point. We bore up to gain the point, and found there a fair income or road of a bay, being a league over at the narrowest, and some two or three in length; but we made right over to the land before us, and left the discovery of this income till the next day. As we drew near to the shore, we espied some ten or twelve Indians very busy about a black thing—what it was we could not tell—till afterwards they saw us, and ran to and fro, as if they had been carrying something away. We landed a league or two from them, and had much ado to put ashore anywhere, it lay so full of flat sands. When we came to shore, we made us a barricade and got firewood, and set out sentinels, and betook us to our lodging, such as it was. We saw the smoke of the fire which the savages made that night about four or five miles from us.
As they hiked through the forest surrounding Cape Cod Bay, the Pilgrim explorers were introduced to the severity of New England’s winter weather—snow, freezing rain, and bitterly cold temperatures.
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES
In the morning we divided our company, some eight in the shallop, and the rest on the shore went to discover this place. But we found it only to be a bay, without either river or creek coming into it. Yet we deemed it to be as good a harbor as Cape Cod; for they that sounded it found a ship might ride in five fathom water. We on the land found it to be a level soil, but none of the fruitfullest. We saw two [brooks] of fresh water, which were the first running streams that we saw in the country; but one might stride over them. We found also a great fish, called a grampus, dead on the sands. They in the shallop found two of them also in the bottom of the bay, dead in like sort. They were cast up at high water, and could not get off for the frost and ice. They were some five or six paces long, and about two inches thick of fat, and fleshed like a swine. They would have yielded a great deal of oil, if there had been time and means to have taken it. So we, finding nothing for our turn, both we and our shallop returned.
“About midnight we heard a great and hideous cry”
We then directed our course along the sea sands to the place where we first saw the Indians. When we were there, we saw it was also a grampus which they were cutting up. . . . We found here and there a piece scattered by the way, as it seemed, for haste. This place the most were minded we should call the Grampus Bay, because we found so many of them there. We followed the tract of the Indians’ bare feet a good way on the sands. At length we saw where they struck into the woods by the side of a pond. As we went to view the place, one said he thought he saw an Indian house among the trees; so went up to see. And here we and the shallop lost sight one of another till night, it being now about nine or ten o’clock. So we lit on a path, but saw no house, and followed a great way into the woods. At length we found where corn had been set, but not that year. And on, we found a great burying place, one part whereof was encompassed with a large palisade, like a church-yard with young [saplings] four or five yards long, set as close one by another as they could, two or three foot in the ground. Within it was full of graves, some bigger and some less. Some were also paled about; and others had like an Indian house made over them, but not matted. Those graves were more sumptuous than those at Corn Hill; yet we dug none of them up, but only viewed them and went our way. Without the palisade were graves also, but not so costly. From this place we went and found more corn ground, but not of this year. As we ranged, we lit on four or five Indian houses, which had been lately dwelt in; but they were uncovered, and had no mats about them; else they were like those we found at Corn Hill, but had not been so lately dwelt in. There was nothing left but two or three pieces of old mats, a little sedge, also a little further we found two baskets full of parched acorns hid in the ground,
which we supposed had been corn when we began to dig the same; we cast earth thereon again, and went our way. All this while we saw no people.
We went ranging up and down till the sun began to draw low, and then we hasted out of the woods, that we might come to our shallop, which, when we were out of the woods, we espied a great way off, and called them to come unto us; the which they did as soon as they could, for it was not yet high water. They were exceeding glad to see us, for they feared because they had not seen us in so long a time, thinking we would have kept by the shore side. So being both weary and faint—for we had eaten nothing all that day—we fell to make our rendezvous and get firewood, which always costs us a great deal of labor. By that time we had done and our shallop come to us, it was within night; and we fed upon such victuals as we had, and betook us to our rest, after we had set out our watch. About midnight we heard a great and hideous cry, and our sentinel called, “Arm! Arm!” So we bestirred ourselves and shot off a couple of muskets, and the noise ceased. We concluded that it was a company of wolves or foxes, for one told us he had heard such a noise in Newfoundland.