◆ The wicker cradle reputed to have been brought to America by William and Susanna White.
And yet, amid all this tragedy, there were miraculous exceptions. The families of William Brewster, Francis Cook, stephen Hopkins, and John Billington were completely untouched by disease. The strangers Billington and Hopkins had a total of six living children among them, accounting for more than a fifth of the young people in the entire plantation. The future of Plymouth was beginning to look less like a separatist community of saints than a mix of both groups.
Even more worrisome than the emotional and physical strain of all this death was the growing fear of Indian attack. The Pilgrims knew that the Native inhabitants were watching them, but so far the Indians had refused to come forward. It was quite possible that they were simply waiting the Pilgrims out until there were not enough left to put up a fight. It became necessary, therefore, to make the best show of strength they could.
Whenever the alarm was sounded, the sick were pulled from their beds and propped up against trees with muskets in their hands. They would do little good in case of an actual attack, but at least they were out there to be counted. The Pilgrims also tried to conceal the fact that so many of them had died by secretly burying the dead at night. They did such a good job of hiding their loved ones’ remains that it was not until more than a hundred years later, when a violent rainstorm washed away the topsoil and revealed some human bones, that the location of these hastily dug graves was finally identified.
◆◆◆ On Friday, February 16, one of the Pilgrims was hidden in the reeds of a salt creek about a mile and a half from the plantation, hunting ducks. That afternoon, the duck hunter found himself closer to an Indian than any of them had so far come.
He was lying amid the cattails when a group of twelve Indians marched past him on the way to the settlement. In the woods behind him, he heard “the noise of many more.” Once the Indians had safely passed, he sprang to his feet and ran for the plantation to sound the alarm. Miles standish and Francis Cook were working in the woods when they heard the signal. They dropped their tools, ran down the hill, and armed themselves, but once again, the Indians never came. Later that day, when standish and Cook returned to get their tools, they discovered that they’d disappeared. That night, they saw “a great fire” near where the duck hunter had first spotted the Indians.
The next day, a meeting was called “for the establishing of military orders amongst ourselves.” Not surprisingly, Miles standish was officially named their captain. In the midst of the meeting, someone realized that two Indians were standing on the top of what became known as Watson’s Hill on the other side of Town Brook, about a quarter mile to the south. The meeting immediately ended, and the men hurried to get their muskets. When the Pilgrims reassembled under the direction of their newly designated captain, the Indians were still standing on the hill.
The two groups stared at each other across the valley of Town Brook. The Indians gestured for them to approach. The Pilgrims, however, made it clear that they wanted the Indians to come to them. Finally, standish and stephen Hopkins, with only one musket between them, began to make their way across the brook. Before they started up the hill, they laid the musket down on the ground “in sign of peace.” But “the savages,” Bradford wrote, “would not tarry their coming.” They ran off to the shouts of “a great many more” hidden on the other side of the hill. The Pilgrims feared an assault might be imminent, “but no more came in fight.”
Once standish and Hopkins returned home, they decided it was time to mount “our great ordnances” on the hill. On Wednesday of the following week, Christopher Jones supervised the transportation of the “great guns” from the Mayflower—close to half a dozen iron cannons that ranged between four and eight feet in length and weighed as much as half a ton. With the cannons in place, each capable of hurling iron balls as big as three and a half inches in diameter as far as 1,700 yards, what was once a ramshackle collection of houses was on its way to becoming a well-defended fortress.
◆ Although the architectural details in this drawing are inaccurate (for example, the first houses had no chimneys), this nineteenth-century depiction of the Pilgrim settlement gives a good impression of Plymouth’s topography and landscape.
Jones and the sailors had brought along a freshly killed goose, crane, and mallard, and once the day’s work was completed, they all sat down to a feast and were, in Bradford’s words, “kindly and friendly together.” Jones had originally intended to return to England as soon as the Pilgrims found a settlement site. But once disease began to ravage his crew, he realized that he must remain in Plymouth Harbor “till he saw his men begin to recover.”
In early March, there were several days of unseasonably warm weather, and “birds sang in the woods most pleasantly.” At precisely one o’clock on March 3, they heard their first rumble of American thunder. “It was strong and great claps,” they wrote, “but short.” They later realized that even though temperatures had been bitterly cold during their earlier explorations along Cape Cod, the winter had been, for the most part, unusually mild—a lucky break that undoubtedly prevented even more of them from dying.
On Friday, March 16, they had yet another meeting about military matters. And as had happened the last time they had gathered for such a purpose, they were interrupted by the Indians. But this time there was only one of them atop Watson’s Hill, and unlike the previous two Indians, this man appeared to be without hesitation or fear. He began to walk toward them “very boldly.” The alarm was sounded, and still the Indian continued walking down Watson’s Hill and across the brook. Once he’d climbed the path to Cole’s Hill, he came past the row of houses toward the rendezvous, where the women and children had been assembled in case of attack. It was clear that if no one stopped him, the Indian was going to walk right into the entrance of the rendezvous. Finally, some of the men stepped into the Indian’s path and indicated that he was not to go in. Apparently enjoying the fuss he had created, the Indian “saluted” them and with great enthusiasm spoke the now famous words, “Welcome, Englishmen!”
SIX
In a Dark and Dismal Swamp
THEY COULD NOT help but stare. He was so different from themselves. For one thing, he towered over them, “a tall straight man.” His hair was black, short in front and long in back, and his face was hairless. Interestingly, the Pilgrims made no mention of his skin color in their writings.
What impressed them most was that he was “stark naked,” with just a fringed strap of leather around his waist. When a cold gust of wind kicked up, one of the Pilgrims was moved to throw his coat over the Indian’s bare shoulders.
He was armed with a bow and just two arrows, “the one headed, the other unheaded.” The Pilgrims do not seem to have attached any special significance to them, but the arrows may have represented the alternatives of war and peace. In any event, they offered him something to eat. He immediately requested beer.
With their supplies running short, they offered him some “strong water”—perhaps the aqua vitae they’d drunk during their first days on Cape Cod—as well as some biscuits, butter, cheese, pudding, and a slice of roasted duck, “all of which he liked well.”
He introduced himself as samoset—at least that was how the Pilgrims heard it—but he may actually have been telling them his English name, somerset. He was not, he explained in broken English, from this part of New England. He was a sachem from Pemaquid Point in Maine, near Monhegan Island, a region frequented by English fishermen. It was from these fishermen, many of whom he named, that he’d learned to speak English. Despite occasional trouble understanding him, the Pilgrims hung on samoset’s every word as he told them about their new home.
◆ A nineteenth-century engraving of the Pilgrims meeting Samoset. While the Pilgrim and Native American dress here is based on later stereotypes, this image does show the cultural differences between the two groups.
He explained that the harbor’s name was Patuxet,
and that just about every person who had once lived there had “died of an extraordinary plague.” The supreme leader of the region was named Massasoit, who lived in a place called Pokanoket about forty miles to the southwest. samoset said that the Nausets controlled the part of Cape Cod where the Pilgrims had stolen the corn. The Nausets were “ill affected toward the English” after Hunt had abducted twenty or so of their men back in 1614. He also said that there was another Indian back in Pokanoket named squanto, who spoke even better English than he did.
With darkness approaching, the Pilgrims were ready for their guest to leave. As a practical matter, they had nowhere for him to sleep; in addition, they were not yet sure whether they could trust him. But samoset made it clear he wanted to spend the night. Perhaps because they assumed he’d fear abduction and quickly leave, they offered to take him out to the Mayflower. samoset cheerfully called their bluff and climbed into the shallop. Claiming that high winds and low tides prevented them from leaving shore, the Pilgrims finally allowed him to spend the night with stephen Hopkins and his family. samoset left the next morning, promising to return in a few days with some of Massasoit’s men.
◆◆◆ All that winter, Massasoit had watched and waited. From the Nausets he had learned of the Pilgrims’ journey along the bay side of Cape Cod and their eventual arrival at Patuxet. His own warriors had kept him updated as to the progress of their various building projects, and despite the Pilgrims’ secret burials, he undoubtedly knew that many of the English had died over the winter.
For as long as any Indians could remember, European fishermen and explorers had been visiting New England, but these people were different. First of all, there were women and children—probably the first European women and children the Indians had ever seen. They were also behaving unusually. Instead of attempting to trade with the Indians, they kept to themselves and seemed much more interested in building a settlement. These English people were here to stay.
Massasoit was unsure what to do next. A little over a year before, the sailors aboard an English ship had killed a large number of his people for no reason. As a consequence, Massasoit had felt compelled to attack the explorer Thomas Dermer when he arrived the following summer with squanto at his side, and most of Dermer’s men had been killed in fights on Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard. squanto had been taken prisoner on the Vineyard, but now he was with Massasoit in Pokanoket. squanto had told him of his years in Europe, and once the Mayflower appeared at Provincetown Harbor and made its way to Plymouth, he had offered his services as an interpreter. But Massasoit was not yet sure whose side squanto was on.
◆ Early-twentieth-century painting of Massasoit.
Over the winter, Massasoit gathered together the region’s powwows, or shamans, for a three-day meeting “in a dark and dismal swamp.” swamps were where the Indians went in time of war. They provided a natural shelter for the sick and old; they were also highly spiritual places, where unseen spirits mixed with the hoots of owls.
Massasoit’s first impulse was to curse the English. Bradford later learned that the powwows had first attempted to “execrate them with their conjurations.” Powwows communicated with the spirit world in an extremely physical manner, through what the English described as “horrible outcries, hollow bleatings, painful wrestlings, and smiting their own bodies.” Massasoit’s powwows were probably not the first and certainly not the last Native Americans to turn their magic on the English. To the north, at the mouth of the Merrimack River, lived Passaconaway, a sachem who was also a powwow—an unusual combination that gave him extraordinary powers. It was said he could “make the water burn, the rocks move, the trees dance, metamorphise himself into a flaming man.”
But not even Passaconaway was able to injure the English. In 1660, he admitted to his people, “I was as much an enemy to the English at their first coming into these parts, as anyone whatsoever, and did try all ways and means possible to have destroyed them, at least to have prevented them sitting down here, but I could in no way effect it; ... therefore I advise you never to contend with the English, nor make war with them.” At some point, Massasoit’s powwows appear to have made a similar recommendation.
The powwows were not the only ones who discussed what to do with the Pilgrims. There was also squanto. Ever since the appearance of the Mayflower, the former captive had begun to work his own kind of magic on Massasoit, insisting that the worst thing he could do was to attack the Pilgrims. Not only did they have muskets and cannons, they possessed the seventeenth-century equivalent of a weapon of mass destruction: the plague. At some point, squanto began to insist that the Pilgrims had the ability to unleash disease on their enemies. If Massasoit became an ally to the Pilgrims, he would suddenly be in a position to free the Pokanokets from the Narragansetts. “[E]nemies that were [now] too strong for him,” squanto promised, “would be constrained to bow to him.”
Reluctantly, Massasoit decided that he must “make friendship” with the English. To do so, he needed an interpreter, and squanto—the only one fluent in both English and Massachusett, the language of the Pokanoket—assumed that he was the man for the job. Though he’d been swayed by squanto’s advice, Massasoit didn’t want to place his faith in the former captive, whom he regarded as a trickster with selfish motives. so he first sent samoset, a visiting sachem, to the Pilgrim settlement.
But now it was time for Massasoit to visit the English himself. He had to turn to squanto.
◆◆◆ On March 22, five days after his initial visit, samoset returned to Plymouth with four other Indians, squanto among them. squanto spoke about places that now seemed like a distant dream to the Pilgrims—besides spending time in spain and Newfoundland, squanto had lived in the Corn Hill section of London. The Indians had brought a few furs to trade, along with some fresh herring. But the real purpose of their visit was to inform the Pilgrims that Massasoit and his brother Quadequina were nearby. About an hour later, the sachem appeared on Watson’s Hill with a large entourage of warriors.
The Pilgrims described him as “a very lusty [or strong] man, in his best years, an able body, grave of countenance, and spare of speech.” Massasoit stood on the hill, his face painted dark red, his entire head glistening with bear grease. Draped around his neck were a wide necklace made of white shell beads and a long knife hanging from a string. His men’s faces were also painted, “some black, some red, some yellow, and some white, some with crosses, and other antic works.” some of them had furs draped over their shoulders; others were naked. But every one of them possessed a stout bow and a quiver of arrows. These were unmistakably warriors: “all strong, tall, all men in appearance.” Moreover, there were sixty of them.
◆ Nineteenth-century engraving of the first peace treaty between Governor Carver and Massasoit.
For the Pilgrims, who could not have gathered more than twenty adult males and whose own military leader was not even five and a half feet tall, it must have been a most intimidating display of physical strength and power. squanto ventured over to Watson’s Hill and returned with the message that the Pilgrims should send someone to speak to Massasoit. Edward Winslow’s wife, Elizabeth, was so sick that she would be dead in just two days, but he agreed to act as Governor Carver’s messenger. Clad in armor and with a sword at his side, he went with squanto to greet the sachem.
First he presented Massasoit and his brother with a pair of knives, some copper chains, some alcohol, and a few biscuits, “which were all willingly accepted.” Then he delivered a brief speech. King James of England saluted the sachem “with words of love and peace,” Winslow proclaimed, and looked to him as a friend and ally. He also said that Governor Carver wished to speak and trade with him and hoped to establish a formal peace. Winslow was under the impression that squanto “did not well express it,” but Massasoit seemed pleased. The sachem ate the biscuits and drank the liquor, then asked if Winslow was willing to sell his sword and armor. The Pilgrim messenger politely declined. It was decided that Winslow would remain wi
th Quadequina as a hostage while Massasoit went with twenty of his men, minus their bows, to meet the governor.
Captain standish and half a dozen men armed with muskets met Massasoit at the brook. They exchanged greetings, and after seven of the warriors were designated as hostages, standish accompanied Massasoit to a house, still under construction, where a green rug and several cushions had been spread out on the dirt floor. On cue, a drummer and trumpeter began to play as Governor Carver and a small parade of musketeers made their way to the house.
Upon his arrival, Carver kissed Massasoit’s hand; the sachem did the same to Carver’s, and the two leaders sat down on the green rug. It was now time for Massasoit to share in yet another ceremonial drink of liquor. Carver took a swig of aqua vitae and passed the cup to Massasoit, who took a large gulp and broke into a sweat. As the meeting continued, during which the two groups worked out a six-point agreement, Massasoit was observed to tremble “for fear.”
The Mayflower and the Pilgrims' New World Page 8