The next day, Massasoit was well enough to ask Winslow to shoot a duck and make an English pottage similar to what he had eaten at Plymouth. Fearing that his stomach was not yet ready for meat, Winslow insisted that he first try a pottage of greens and herbs. After much hunting about, Winslow and John Hamden were able to find only a few strawberry leaves and a sassafras root. They boiled the two together, and after straining the results through Winslow’s handkerchief and combining it with some roasted corn, they fed the mixture to Massasoit. He drank at least a pint of the broth and soon had his first bowel movement in five days.
Before fading off to sleep, the sachem asked Winslow to wash out the mouths of all the others who were sick in the village, “saying they were good folk.” Reluctantly Winslow went about the work of scraping the mouths of all who desired it, a duty he admitted to finding “much offensive to me, not being accustomed with such poisonous savors.” This was a form of diplomacy that went far beyond the usual exchange of greetings and gifts.
That afternoon Winslow shot a duck and prepared to feed Massasoit the promised pottage. By this time, the sachem had improved remarkably. “Never did I see a man so low ... recover in that measure in so short a time,” Winslow wrote. The duck’s meat was quite fatty, and Winslow said it was important to skim the grease from the top of the broth, but Massasoit was now so hungry he insisted on making “a gross meal of it”—gobbling down the duck, fat and all. An hour later, he was vomiting so violently that he began to bleed from the nose.
For the next four hours the blood poured down, and Winslow began to fear that this might be the end. But eventually the bleeding stopped, and the sachem slept for close to eight hours. When he awoke, he was feeling so much better that he asked that the two chickens, which had just arrived from Plymouth, be kept as breeding stock rather than cooked for his benefit.
All the while, Indians from as many as a hundred miles away continued to arrive at Pokanoket. Before Winslow’s appearance, many of those in attendance had commented on the absence of the English and suggested that they cared little about Massasoit’s welfare. With this remarkable recovery, everything had changed. “Now I see the English are my friends and love me,” Massasoit announced to the crowd; “and whilst I live, I will never forget this kindness they have showed me.”
Before their departure, Massasoit took Hobbamock aside and had some words with the trusted pniese. Not until the following day, after they had spent the night with Corbitant, who now declared himself to be one of the Pilgrims’ strongest allies, did Hobbamock reveal the subject of his conversation with Massasoit.
Plymouth, the sachem claimed, was in great danger because of Weston’s men at Wessagussett, who had upset the Massachusetts so much that the Indians had decided to wipe out the settlement. But to attack Wessagussett would surely anger the Pilgrims, who would take revenge for the deaths of their countrymen. The only solution, the Massachusetts had determined, was to launch raids on both English settlements.
But the Massachusetts had just forty warriors; if they were to attack Wessagussett and Plymouth simultaneously, they needed help. Massasoit claimed that they had gotten the support of half a dozen villages on Cape Cod, as well as the Indians at Manomet and Martha’s Vineyard. An attack was imminent, Massasoit insisted, and the only option the Pilgrims had was “to kill the men of Massachusetts, who were the authors of this intended mischief.” If the Pilgrims waited until after the Indians had attacked Wessagussett, it would be too late.
It was alarming to learn that they were, in Winslow’s words, “at the pit’s brim, and yet feared nor knew not that we were in danger.” After more than two years of threatened violence, it now appeared that the Pilgrims might have no choice but to go to war.
◆◆◆ As Winslow, Hobbamock, and John Hamden hurried back to Plymouth to tell Governor Bradford of the plot, Phineas Pratt, one of the leaders of the sorry settlement of Wessagussett, was beginning to think it was time to flee to Plymouth.
Their sufferings had become unendurable. They had nothing to eat, and the Indians were terrifying them. The warriors, led by a pniese named Pecksuot, gathered outside the wall of the Wessagussett fort. “Machit pesconk!” they shouted, which Pratt translated as “naughty guns.” An attack seemed at hand, so the English increased the number of men on watch. But without food, the guards began to die at their posts. One bitterly cold night, Pratt reported for guard duty. “I [saw] one man dead before me,” he remembered, “and another [man dead] at my right hand and another at my left for want of food.”
Word had reached the settlement that the Massachusetts planned to attack both Wessagussett and Plymouth. sachem Obtakiest was waiting for the snow to melt so that his warriors’ footprints could not be tracked when they left one settlement for the other. “[T]heir plot was to kill all the English people in one day,” Pratt wrote. He decided to leave as soon as possible for Plymouth. “[I]f [the] Plymouth men know not of this treacherous plot,” he told his companions, “they and we are all dead men.”
With a small pack draped across his back, Pratt walked out of the fort as casually as he could manage with a hoe in his hand. He began to dig at the edge of a large swamp, pretending to search for groundnuts. He looked to his right and to his left and, seeing no Indians, disappeared into the swamp.
He ran till about three o’clock in the afternoon, camped for the night, and by three the next day, he had reached the site of what would become the village of Duxbury, just to the north of Plymouth. As he ran across the Jones River, haunted by the fear that the Indians were about to catch up to him, he said to himself, “[N]ow am I a deer chased [by] wolves.” He found a well-worn path and was running down a hill when up ahead he saw an Englishman walking toward him. It was John Hamden, who had recently returned from Pokanoket with Edward Winslow. suddenly overcome by exhaustion, Pratt collapsed onto the trunk of a fallen tree. “Mr. Hamden,” he called out, “I am glad to see you alive.”
◆◆◆ Hamden explained that Massasoit too had told them of the plot against Plymouth and Wessagussett and that Governor Bradford had recently convened a public meeting to discuss how the plantation should proceed. It was irritating to the Pilgrims to know that they had been put into this mess not by anything they had done but by the irresponsible actions of Weston’s men. The one bit of good news was that thanks to Winslow’s efforts at Pokanoket, Massasoit was once again on their side. There was little doubt what the sachem expected of them: They were to launch a preemptive strike against the Massachusetts.
The fact remained, however, that so far no Indians had even threatened Plymouth. If they were to start an attack, it would be based on rumors—and they all knew from experience how misleading the rumors could be. Then again, with a sachem as trustworthy and powerful as Massasoit telling them to act, what more justification did they need? Yes, they decided, their future safety depended on a swift and daring assault.
William Bradford decided that standish should make an example of “that bloody and bold villain” Wituwamat and bring back his head to Plymouth, “that he might be a warning and terror to all of that disposition.” standish had been itching to settle a score with Wituwamat ever since the Massachusett warrior had snubbed him at Manomet. The captain put together a force that included Hobbamock and just seven Englishmen—any more and the Massachusetts might suspect what the English were planning. They would sail for Wessagussett pretending to be on a trading mission. Instead of launching a full-scale attack, they would, after secretly warning Weston’s men, “take [the Indians] in such traps as they lay for others.”
◆ Opening page of William Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation, his account of the Plymouth settlement, including the attack on Wessagussett.
They were scheduled to leave the same day Pratt staggered out of the forest. standish postponed their departure so that he could get as much information as possible from the young man. The Pilgrims found Pratt’s story “good encouragement to proceed in our intendments,” and with the help of a fair wind,
standish and his men left the next day for Wessagussett.
◆◆◆ Before landing, they stopped at the Swan, which was anchored just offshore from Wessagussett. The little vessel was deserted, but after standish’s men fired off a musket, the ship’s master and several other men from Wessagussett walked down to the water’s edge. They had been gathering groundnuts and seemed surprisingly unworried, given what the Pilgrims had been led to believe. standish asked why they had left the ship without anyone on guard. “[L]ike men senseless of their own misery,” they replied that they had no fear of the Indians. In fact, many of them had hired themselves out as servants to the Indians and were living with the Massachusetts in their wigwams.
If this was indeed the case, then why was standish preparing to launch an attack? Had Pratt simply told the Pilgrims what they wanted to hear? standish was not about to allow anything—not even evidence that all was peace at Wessagussett—to stop his plan. He explained that he was going to kill as many Indians as he could, then the settlers could either return with him to Plymouth or take the Swan up to Maine, where they could look to English fishermen for help. standish had even brought along some corn for them to eat during their voyage.
It was their hunger, not their fear of the Indians, that was the main concern of Weston’s men. so they quickly embraced standish’s plan, since it meant they would soon have something to eat. swearing all to secrecy, the captain told them to tell any Englishmen living outside the settlement to return as soon as possible to the safety of the fort. Unfortunately, it had started to rain, so several of the English chose to remain in the warmth of the Indians’ wigwams.
In the meantime, a warrior approached the fort under the pretense of trading furs with standish. The fiery captain tried to appear welcoming and calm, but it was clear to the Indian that standish was up to no good. Once back among his friends, he reported that “he saw by his eyes that [the captain] was angry in his heart.”
This prompted the Massachusett pniese Pecksuot to approach Hobbamock. He told the Pokanoket warrior that he knew exactly what standish was up to and that he and Wituwamat were unafraid of him. “[L]et him begin when he dare,” he told Hobbamock; “he shall not take us unawares.”
Later that day, both Pecksuot and Wituwamat brashly walked up to standish. Pecksuot was a tall man, and he made a point of looking down on the Pilgrim military officer. “You are a great captain,” he said, “yet you are but a little man. Though I be no sachem, yet I am of great strength and courage.”
For his part, Wituwamat continued to sharpen the same knife he had made such a show of when he last saw standish several weeks before at Manomet. On the knife’s handle was the carved outline of a woman’s face. “I have another at home,” he told standish, “wherewith I have killed both French and English, and that has a man’s face on it; by and by these two must marry.”
“These things the captain observed,” Winslow wrote, “yet bore with patience for the present.”
◆◆◆ The next day, standish invited both Wituwamat and Pecksuot into one of the settlement’s houses for a meal. In addition to corn, he had brought along some pork. The two Massachusett pnieses were suspicious of the Plymouth captain, but that did not prevent them from accepting standish’s invitation. Wituwamat and Pecksuot were accompanied by Wituwamat’s brother and a friend, along with several women. Besides standish, there were three other Pilgrims and Hobbamock in the room.
Once they had all sat down and begun to eat, the captain signaled for the door to be shut. He turned to Pecksuot and grabbed the knife from the string around the pniese’s neck. Before the Indian had a chance to respond, standish had begun stabbing him with his own weapon. The point was needle sharp, and Pecksuot’s chest was soon riddled with blood-spurting wounds. As standish and Pecksuot struggled, the other Pilgrims assaulted Wituwamat and his companion. “[I]t is incredible,” Winslow wrote, “how many wounds these two pnieses received before they died, not making any fearful noise, but catching at their weapons and striving to the last.”
All the while, Hobbamock stood by and watched. soon the three Indians were dead, and Wituwamat’s teenage brother had been taken captive. A smile broke out across Hobbamock’s face, and he said, “Yesterday, Pecksuot, bragging of his own strength and stature, said though you were a great captain, yet you were but a little man. Today I see you are big enough to lay him on the ground.”
◆ Detail from John Seller’s 1675 map of New England.
But the killing had just begun. Wituwamat’s brother was quickly hanged. There was another company of Pilgrims elsewhere in the settlement, and standish sent word to them to kill any Indians who happened to be with them. As a result, two more were put to death. In the meantime, standish and his cohorts found another Indian in the settlement and killed him too.
With Hobbamock and some of Weston’s men in tow, standish headed out in search of more Indians. They soon came across sachem Obtakiest and a group of Massachusett warriors. The Indians quickly scattered along the edge of a nearby forest, each man hiding behind a tree. Arrows were soon whizzing through the brisk afternoon air, most of them aimed at standish and Hobbamock. Hobbamock was a pniese and was therefore supposedly invulnerable. Throwing off his coat, he began to chase after the Indians behind the trees. Most of them fled so quickly that none of the English could keep up with them.
There was a powwow who stood his ground and aimed an arrow at standish. The captain and another Englishman fired simultaneously at the powwow, and the bullets broke his arm. With that, the remaining Indians, which included sachem Obtakiest, ran for the shelter of a nearby swamp, where they paused to yell curses at the Plymouth captain. standish challenged the sachem to fight him man-to-man, but after a final exchange of insults, Obtakiest and the others disappeared into the swamp. several women had been captured back at the settlement during the scuffle with Pecksuot and Wituwamat. Now that the killing spree had finally come to an end, standish decided to release the women, even though he knew there were at least three of Weston’s men still living with the Indians. If he had kept these women as hostages, standish could easily have bargained for the Englishmen’s lives. But killing Native warriors, not saving lives, appears to have been the captain’s goal at Wessagussett, and he released the female hostages. All three Englishmen were later executed.
Now that the violence had come to an end, the majority of the Wessagussett survivors decided to sail to Maine. The Pilgrims waited until the Swan had cleared Massachusetts Bay, then turned their shallop south for Plymouth, with the head of Wituwamat wrapped in a piece of white linen.
◆◆◆ Standish arrived at Plymouth to a hero’s welcome. After being “received with joy,” the captain and his men marched up to the newly completed fort, where Wituwamat’s head was planted on a pole on the fort’s roof. This was a common practice back in England, where the heads of executed traitors were mounted above the entrance to London Bridge. As it turned out, the fort contained its first prisoner: an Indian who had been sent to catch Phineas Pratt.
The Indian was released from his chains and brought out for examination. After looking “piteously on the head” of Wituwamat, the captive confessed everything. The plot had not originally been sachem Obtakiest’s idea. There were five—Wituwamat, Pecksuot, and three powwows, including the one standish had injured at Wessagussett—who had convinced their sachem to launch an attack against the Pilgrims. Bradford released the prisoner on the condition that he carry a message to Obtakiest: If the sachem dared to continue in “the like courses,” Bradford vowed, “he would never suffer him or his to rest in peace, till he had utterly consumed them.”
It took many days for the Pilgrims to receive an answer. Finally a Massachusett woman appeared at Plymouth with Obtakiest’s response. she explained that her sachem was eager to make peace with the Pilgrims, but none of his men were willing to approach the settlement. Ever since the massacre at Wessagussett, Obtakiest had kept on the move, fearful that standish might return and “take further vengea
nce on him.”
The Massachusetts were not the only Indians in the region to have escaped into the wilderness. All throughout Cape Cod—from Manomet to Nauset to Pamet—the Native inhabitants had fled in panic, convinced that standish and his thugs were about to descend on their villages and kill every Indian in sight. “[T]his sudden and unexpected execution ... ,” Edward Winslow wrote, “hath so terrified and amazed them, as in like manner they forsook their houses, running to and fro like men distracted, living in swamps and other desert places, and so brought manifold diseases amongst themselves, whereof very many are dead.”
Huddled in swamps and on remote islands, afraid to go back to their villages, Indians throughout the region began to die at a startling rate. “[C]ertainly it is strange to hear how many of late have, and still daily die amongst them,” Winslow wrote. Just about every notable sachem on the Cape died in the months ahead, including Canacum at Manomet, and Aspinet at Nauset. Among the Massachusetts, the Pilgrims had earned a new name: wotawquenange, which one English settler later translated as meaning “cutthroats.”
◆◆◆ The Pilgrims knew that there were those back in England who would criticize them for launching an unprovoked attack on sachem Obtakiest and the Massachusetts. In the months ahead, Edward Winslow wrote a book called Good Newes from New England. As the title suggests, Winslow’s account puts the Wessagussett raid in the best possible light. The Pilgrims, Winslow points out, had been operating in a climate of intense fear since learning about the massacres in Virginia the previous spring. When Massasoit revealed the plot against them, there was little else they could have been expected to do.
The Mayflower and the Pilgrims' New World* Page 13