The Pilgrim

by Hugh Nissenson

“Let us then declare that Wednesday, the fourteenth of July in the year of Christ 1622, is the birthday of our mutual love.”

  We asked Master Brewster to consult his Almanac. He did so, and then said, “Today is Wednesday, the thirty-first of July.”

  Abigail and I accordingly changed the birthday of our mutual love.

  Abigail said to Hook, “Forswear taking revenge on Master Wentworth and Rigdale. If they come to harm through you, I shall report you both to Governor Bradford and have you hanged.”

  Hook said, “God forfend such a punishment! I forswear taking revenge on Master Wentworth and Master Rigdale.”

  On Thursday afternoon, I left off labouring in the cornfields and walked about the Plantation with Abigail. About three of the clock, it thundered. The claps were loud, but short. Then it rained. We waited under a pine tree for the storm to end. Afterwards, the birds in the tree sang most pleasantly.

  We walked west up the Street between the two rows of houses and their garden plots.

  On the south side, we passed Edward Winslow’s house, Francis Cook’s house, Isaac Allerton’s house, and John Billington’s house. With their clapboard walls, thatched roofs, and chimneys made of logs daubed with clay, they all looked alike.

  Abigail said, “Cousin Edward told me that they cast lots for the plots, each of them being of the same size. Every man built his own house, but they built the common house together, some making mortar and some gathering thatch.”

  We continued walking west until we came upon a bush of wild strawberries in a sunny glade. We each picked a handful and ate them while sitting in the shade of a great oak.

  Abigail said, “God be blessed. These New English strawberries are heavenly.”

  I said, “The Plymouth Plantation is heavenly.”

  Seated in the cool shade, we compiled a list of some of the base and earthly things that the Saints of the Plymouth Plantation had left behind them in England:

  Item. Money

  Item. Moneylenders

  Item. Debtors

  Item. The poor

  Item. Beggars

  Item. The rich

  Item. Nobles

  Item. Members of the Church of England

  Item. Papists

  Item. Surplices

  Item. Altars

  Item. Crucifixes

  Item. Heretics

  Item. Blasphemers

  Item. Murderers

  Item. Thieves

  Item. Prostitutes

  Item. Brothels

  Item. Drunkards

  Item. Taverns

  Item. Stews

  Item. Maypoles

  Item. Lawyers

  Item. Actors

  Item. Theatres

  Item. Sodomites

  Item. Buggers

  Item. Cutpurses

  Item. Cutthroats

  Item. Prisons

  Item. Divers and sundry instruments of torture

  Item. Gibbets

  Item. Heads stuck on pikes

  Finally, Abigail said, “Would that I had some fresh English cream with my strawberries. Our heavenly Plantation sorely wants a few earthly cows. And a mill. Why is there no mill here? We must grind our corn in stone mortars like the savage Indians are obliged to do.

  “We have Indian corn, boiled pumpion, and boiled turnips in the morning, and boiled turnips, boiled pumpion, and Indian corn pudding at noon, and sometimes Indian corn pudding and boiled parsnips for supper. If it was not for those victuals, and the shellfish and cod, we should be undone.

  “I pray God for a quiet and contented mind.”

  • • •

  Captain Standish invited Abigail and me to dine upon an eagle that he had shot and dressed. It tasted like mutton.

  The Captain said to me, “I know something of you from Master Brewster. You followed your father to study at Cambridge. He was a Minister. My father was the second son of the house of Standwich Hall in Lancashire. My university was war.

  “I was bred a soldier in the Low Countries, where as a drummer boy and musketeer I fought for the Dutch Protestants against the Spanish papists for twelve years. Then God called me to join his exiles in Leyden, from whence I sailed with them hither on the Mayflower.

  “I fought for the space of almost a year at the siege of Ostend under Sir Francis Vere. Look you! This dent in my helmet is from a Spanish musket ball that glanced off it at the Northwest Bulwark. Another ball brake my collar bone. But I will tell you this: I would rather be besieged for a year at Ostend by twenty thousand Spanish papists than sail for eight weeks in that leaking, unwholesome Mayflower. We were battered by storms for three weeks. I lived in dread of our God who makes the deep boil like a pot.”

  Abigail said, “I live in dread of the Indians here on land.”

  Captain Standish said, “Fear not, Mistress. God is with us. His hand hath already fallen heavily upon the Massachusetts. Five years ago, they were smitten by a plague and died in heaps. The living who were fit ran away without burying their dead. They abandoned thousands of bloated corpses to rot above ground where the wolves, crows, kites, and vermin battened on them. I have seen their bones and skulls scattered among the many places of their empty habitations. By the grace of God, there is now but a small number of Massachusetts left. A plague sent by the Lord hath made the wilderness so much more fit for us Saints of the English nation to inhabit and erect in it Temples to the glory of God.”

  Abigail said, “God be praised!”

  The very next morning, Massasoit, the sachem of the Pokanokets, our neighbors to the southeast, arrived at the Plymouth Plantation with ten of his unarmed men. Captain Standish told Abigail and me that Massasoit had made a peace treaty with Governor Bradford at the beginning of the summer. According to the Governor’s charge, the savages had left their bows and arrows a mile from the town.

  Abigail clung to my arm at the sight of them—tall men, with faces painted black or red from their chins to their foreheads. Massasoit’s face was painted dark red. Hanging about his neck was a wide necklace made of white sea shells and a long English knife on a thong. He carried a wildcat’s skin over his right arm. He and the others wore deerskins over their right shoulders and leathern leggings, altogether like Irish trousers. Their long black hair reached their shoulders. Some had their hair trussed up with a feather; some had fox tails hanging down behind.

  After exchanging salutations, the savages drank liberally of the colony’s diminished supply of Aqua Vitae. Then they sang and danced after their manner. They sang in high, girlish voices. Massasoit guzzled two great draughts of Aqua Vitae, but neither sang nor danced. He made semblance unto Governor Bradford of friendship and amity and traded with him. Governor Bradford gave Massasoit a hatchet, a Monmouth cap, and a long length of red cloth, which he tied about his waist. Massasoit gave Governor Bradford four beaver skins and an otter skin.

  Squanto was Governor Bradford’s translator. Bradford said to Massasoit, “Try to keep yourself from those vices to which Indians are given and which will bring the wrath of God and men upon you, namely drunkenness, falseness, idleness, and thievery.”

  Massasoit said, “Give me a coat like yours.”

  Governor Bradford said, “Take mine as a token of our friendship.”

  He put off his blue coat with brass buttons and gave it to Massasoit. Then Governor Bradford dispatched the Indians from the Plantation.

  He said to Abigail and me, “Just before you arrived here in June, the Narraganset Indians, to the west of Plymouth, made preparations to make war upon us. Reported to be many hundred strong, they made many threats against us. They cast forth many insulting speeches at us, glorying in our weakness. We built a stockade around our town. I made an ally of Massasoit and his Pokanokets. I agreed that if any did unjustly war against him, we would aid him. If any did war agains
t us, he should aid us.”

  Captain Standish said to me, “I was appointed military commander of the Plymouth Plantation on Friday, the sixteenth of February in the year 1621, a day I will always remember. I divided our strength into four companies of ten men each and chose four men whom I thought most fit to take command. The next morning at a General Muster, I appointed each to his place. I gave each his Company and charged him upon every alarm to obey my orders.

  “You and your men, Mr. Wentworth, will face the Indians alone in your new colony. Beware of them! The Indians are cunning and treacherous. Your drunken Master Weston is ill prepared to deal with them. What hath he done about planning for a fort? You must have a carpenter in your company. Is he working on our fort? I warrant not. I am working there and have not heard of him. I suggest that you immediately set him to work on our fort so that he may learn to build one for your company.

  “I also suggest that you choose twenty of your most reliable and sober men to join with me and my four Companies next Wednesday at noon upon yonder bank of the Town brook. Each of you bring a musket, five musket balls, two flasks of powder, and a forked gun rest. I will train you to become disciplined musketeers, and you, in your turn, will each train two more companies of twenty men each to defend your plantation.”

  The next day, I put forth the two proposals to Weston, who was drunk at eleven of the clock in the morning.

  He said, “Why, those are fine ideas. Tell the carpenter—what’s his name?—to start work on the fort on the morrow. As for the other matter, I leave it in your hands. What was the other matter? Ah, yes, the training of musketeers. Doest thou know the song called ‘The Old Musketeer’?”

  He sang,

  His head as white as milk,

  All flaxen was his hair.

  But now he is dead,

  And laid in his bed,

  And never will come again.

  So shed a tear

  For the old Musketeer.

  Then he said, “Mark me, I will not die old.” He sang again, “So shed a tear…”

  He stopped and said, “My throat squeaks this morning for want of liquoring,” and took a swig of Aqua Vitae.

  I spake with Phineas Pratt in the evening. He said, “But I am working on the fort. I took it upon myself to do so, in order to learn how to build one for us.”

  I said, “God be at your labour.”

  “I have not had the honor of meeting Captain Standish.”

  I said, “I shall arrange it.”

  And so I did. Thereafter, Pratt worked with Captain Standish at building the fort.

  Pratt said to me, “Before the Governor’s house in the center of the town we are building a square stockade upon which four patereros will be mounted. They are small, breech-loaded swivel guns, which will enfilade the streets. Upon the hill, we are building a forty-eight-foot square house, eighteen foot in height, with a flat roof, built of sawn planks stayed with oak beams. Upon the top of that, they will mount six cannon which shoot iron balls of four and five pounds that will command the surrounding country. The lower part of the fort, ten foot in height, will be used for a church.”

  On Saturday morning, Master Brewster preached a sermon on Genesis 17:8, “And I will give thee, and thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, even all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God.”

  “Let us pray daily for the conversion of the heathen Indians. We must consider whether there be other means for us to take to convert them. It seems to me that we must endeavor to use other means to convert them. But these means cannot be used unless we go to them, or they come to us. They cannot come to us because our land is full. We may go to them for their land is empty.

  “This then is a sufficient and lawful reason to go thither unto them. Their land is spacious and a void, the haunt of foxes and wild beasts. The Indians are not industrious, neither do they have art, science, or skill to use the land. Everything spoils there and rots for want of manuring and cultivation.

  “As the ancient patriarchs removed from empty places into more roomy spaces, where the land lay idle and waste, even though there dwelt inhabitants therein, as Genesis 13:6, 11, 12 and 34:21 tells us, so it lawful for us now to take a land which none useth and make use of it.

  “Let us then by friendly usage, love, peace, and honest and good counsel live together in peace with the Indians on that land. May they subject themselves to our earthly prince and be persuaded at length to embrace the Prince of Peace, Christ Jesus, and rest in peace with him forever. Amen.”

  • • •

  Next morning, at dawn, the Swan set sail to search for the place wherein Weston’s company would establish a colony. The wind was full east and cool. Abigail and I lingered on the beach until the ship disappeared over the horizon to the northeast.

  She said, “Let us make the most of the time we have left to spend together.”

  We agreed to meet every afternoon when we finished our appointed work.

  On the day following, I went to weed in the cornfield. Just before noon, as I pulled a handful of weeds from the crumbling earth, my eye caught the yellowish tassel protruding atop a red ear of corn from its sheath of pointed leaves. I peeled the leaves back an inch or two. An ant was crawling on one of the red kernels. I gazed at my gloved right hand, holding the weeds with their roots covered with soil, and the shallow hole left in the earth around the stalk. Then I digged beneath the stalk’s roots. There I saw the backbone of a herring that had rotted away.

  Then my soul flowed joyfully into those elements of fecundity, ordained by God to bring forth the fruit of the earth for man. I was one with the sunlight, the soil, the rain in its season, and those herring bones. We were nurturing that red ear of Indian corn together. I sang, “Hey down, a-down, down-derry. Among the leaves so green, o!”

  Then my joy dissipated. I was once more sundered from the primal unity of things.

  Abigail and I met late that afternoon without the common house. I told her what had happened to me in the cornfield.

  She said, “Take care, sweetheart! It may have been the Devil that deluded thee.”

  “Wherefore?”

  “Why, to puff you up with pride.”

  I said, “In truth, I am proud of what happened to me in the cornfield.”

  We prayed that God chasten my pride. The sun began to set.

  Abigail said, “When I was a child of nine or ten, I was sore afraid of the dark. Night after night, when my candle went out, I cried out to my darling brother the old childish rhyme:

  Brother, dear brother, fetch me a light!

  Satan’s come hither to give me a fright.

  And darling Henry came to me with a freshly lit candle and stood at the head of my bed until I fell asleep.

  “Now I lie abed by the feeble light of a stinking fish-oil lamp. I cannot sleep for my terror of the Indians. I cannot forget Massasoit’s men singing and dancing on the Street. Their high whining voices were demonical. I fear the savages will massacre us in the night, like those savages who massacred our countrymen in Virginia. When that stinking oil lamp flickers out, I cry,

  Brother, dear brother, fetch me a light!

  Satan’s come hither to give me a fright.

  And darling Henry arises from his bed by the chimney with his cutlass and a burning reed torch and remains by my bed until I fall asleep.”

  I said, “When we are married, I will watch over you every night.”

  She said, “And I shall be subject to you in all things. My father taught me that the proper attitude of a wife to her husband should be a reverent subjection. My womanly nature shall ensure my sweet submission to you.”

  • • •

  I chose twenty of Weston’s men who wanted to learn how to shoot. Each armed himself with a match-lock musket, ten pounds of powder, five pounds
of shot, and a forked gun rest. At noon on Wednesday, the twenty-one of us lined up on the west bank of the Town brook with Captain Standish’s forty musketeers. I spied Henry Winslow, wearing a bandolier and armed with his cutlass, a musket, and a dagger in a green leathern scabbard.

  Little Captain Standish looked every inch the soldier in his pikeman’s helmet and chain-mail coat, with his rapier on his hip. He spake in a loud voice: “You new men will learn to do everything at my command. I will call out, ‘Forward march!’ and placing your left foot first, you will march in step together, carrying your muskets, with lit matches, upon your left shoulders.

  “At my next command, which will be ‘Halt!’ you will do just that and remain in a straight line. Then, upon my command ‘Rest!’ you will rest your musket’s barrel upon your forked gun rest.”

  Next, he taught us the commands to charge our muskets, prime our pans, blow on the ends of our burning matches, take aim, and shoot. He said, “Your target will be that oak, some forty yards to the east, on the far side of the brook. Hold your breath, exhale a bit, and slowly squeeze the trigger.”

  After three weeks practice, we learned to accomplish the aforesaid orders. I delighted in each roar of our muskets firing together in clouds of sulphurous smoke. From whence comes such indecent joy?

  Late one afternoon, Master Brewster said to me, “Squanto espied two great whales in the Bay yesterday, the best kind for oil and bone. They each gave a snuff of water and swam out to sea. We must learn to hunt them.”

  He and I talked again in Latin about Cambridge. He said, “I practiced archery at Peterhouse. I am as proficient with the bow as Squanto.” We discussed the prose of Hermogenes and the orations of Cicero.

  After sunset, we walked west with Abigail and Master Brewster upon the highway to the Town brook. I lighted our way with a smoky reed torch dipped in pitch drawn from pine. The wind was full east and cool. Ripening cornstalks rustled in the nearby fields. Crickets chirped in the long grass. The shrill song of the cicadas rose and fell in the bushes and trees.

  Brewster said, “God clothes the world in the summer season with a pleasant dress, delightful to the senses and profitable for use. Praise God for the summer season!”