The Pilgrim

by Hugh Nissenson

  Pratt said, “I have decided not to build us a small blockhouse, but a more spacious fortified village within the stockade.”

  And therein, within the space of another week, we built eight fifteen-by-eighteen timber and clapboard houses with sloping clapboard roofs. Twelve men lodged in each house. The rear walls of the houses were the sharpened stakes of the stockade. The side walls, eight foot in height, were not sharpened because the roof line rested on roof ribs supported atop the wall logs. At their highest point, the sloping roofs were ten foot high. We covered them with earth to prevent them from catching fire. The last thing we did was lay down five logs, each five foot in length and three foot wide, against the walls between the houses. These were to be the platforms from which sentinels could fire upon the savages beyond the walls.

  Pratt said, “This is the first fortification I have ever built. The idea came to me of a sudden, whilst I walked about in the sunny glade. I asked myself in my thoughts: how do I provide ample lodging for ninety men, and how could they defend themselves against an Indian assault? Then, praise God, I saw in my mind’s eye the fortification standing before you, even unto the roof ribs atop the wall logs.”

  I said, “You are truly a master carpenter.”

  Pratt said, “I like to think that Jesus Christ was the same.”

  The weather turned foul; we had a sore storm of wind and rain lasting a day and a night.

  I was chosen to be one of the ten sentinels on guard in the night. I wore my canvas suit. I could not keep my match lit, and therefore my musket could not be discharged in the rain. I carried a hatchet, lest we were attacked by the savages.

  The skies cleared on the Sabbath. Rigdale, Pratt, and I spent the day reading Scripture and praying. The other men swilled Aqua Vitae and played at dice and cards. Primero and Gleek were their favorite card games. They played for money. For the first time since arriving in New England, I heard the clink of thruppence, groats, farthings, and shillings.

  In the late afternoon, William Butts and Hugh Beere fell out over a game of Primero. Weston tried to restrain them.

  Butts yelled at Weston: “All the devils in hell go with you! Would to God that you were underground!”

  Weston backed away. The men laughed.

  Rigdale said to Weston, “I beseech you, assert your authority.”

  Weston bade me take a measure of the supplies that remained to us.

  Item. 85 bushels of white pease, of which 12 were wormy, left from 120 bushels.

  Item. 280 bushels of meal, of which 20 were wormy, left from 480 bushels.

  Item. 100 bushels of oatmeal left from 120 bushels, of which 13 were wormy.

  Item. No pepper, ginger, sugar, nutmegs, cloves, dates, raisins, damask prunes, rice, saffron, salt left at all.

  Item. 1 barrel of pippin vinegar left from 1 barrel of pippin vinegar.

  Item. 38 gallons of Aqua Vitae left from 80 gallons of Aqua Vitae.

  Item. 48 barrels of beer left from 60 barrels of beer.

  Item. 4 and a half tun of cider left from 8 tun of cider.

  Weston called a parliament of the whole company. We met about our public business within the east gate. Most of the men were drunk.

  Weston addressed us in a loud voice: “We must discipline ourselves and apportion our victuals and drink to an equal degree. Otherwise, we shall descend into chaos, and come winter, we shall starve to death.”

  The men cursed him. Their mouths were stinking sinks for all the filth of their tongues to fall into. As the drunken company dispersed, one of the sailors cried out, “Let’s be merry whilst we are still healthy. Sickness will steal upon us ere we be aware.”

  Each of us continued to eat and drink as much as he wanted. God forgive us, even Rigdale and I got drunk on a Sabbath. Possessed by the Devil, I lived only for the moment, rejoicing in each time of day. At dawn, the sky changed from black to deep blue to pale grey to white.

  The weather was frosty. The leaves were turning on the trees that grew amongst the pines. Those leaves that were freshly fallen upon the ground put me in mind of dragons’ scales. I wrote a little verse:

  The Turning of the Leaves in New England

  In the cold, the leaves turn purple, yellow, and gold.

  The trees then shed them, like dragons’ scales.

  Praise the Lord, ye dragons of the earth,

  That shed thy scales before the snow.

  Their brightness above will like my flesh below

  Change to the brown and grey of soil and clay.

  On the day following, I shot a duck. It made an excellent broth, which I gave to Weston, who was stricken with a fever. He ate it as would well have satisfied a man in good health. About an hour after, he was taken sick and vomited. Over-straining himself, he bled at the nose and so continued for the space of an hour. I washed his nose and beard with a linen cloth. He passed four liquid stools. He was stricken with a fever for five more days. His tongue swelled up, and he could not eat. I washed his mouth and scraped his tongue, getting an abundance of corruption out of it. The swelling in his tongue went down, but the rest remained dire.

  On the morning of the fifth day, which was a Monday, he said, “Tell me the truth. What do you think of my case?”

  I said, “I think your case is desperate. Make your peace with God.”

  “I am not ready to die. I am but two-and-thirty years of age. My brother is forty. If God wants a Weston, let it be he. Do you hear me, O my God? Take my brother in my stead.”

  The blood gushed from his nose.

  He said, “Where is my brother? Hast thou seen him? Where is he? Hast thou seen him? Where hath he gone?”

  He sat up, looked about, and said, “Am I dead?”

  “Nay,” said I. “Not yet.”

  “Methinks that I am dead.”

  “Nay, not yet.”

  “Are you sure? I swear that I am dead.”

  Then he let out a long death rattle and died.

  We buried him near the southern gate. The sailors called a parliament and elected Captain Green the new governor of our plantation.

  Rigdale said to me, “We have exchanged one drunkard for another.”

  • • •

  On the day following, eight Massachusetts Indian men from their village to the west came to trade beaver skins for axes, knives, blankets, and hats. Their sachem was the self-same Wittuwamat who had greeted Weston. The right side of his face was painted red; the left side was painted black. His long black hair shone with smelly bear grease.

  Green said, “Weston is dead. I am now the sachem of the Englishmen.”

  Wittuwamat said, “Let us live together in peace.”

  His interpreter was Memsowit, who was a comely youth, being in his general carriage very affable and courteous. He told me that he had learned English trading with English fishermen for a year on Cape Cod. He had a great facility for the English tongue. He said that many more of his people had survived the pestilence than Winslow reckoned. “We remain a strong people and great warriors.”

  A pious English fisherman on Cape Cod had taught Memsowit something of Scripture. He accepted all of the Commandments save the seventh, thinking that there were many inconveniences in it.

  He said, “No man should be tied to one woman.”

  We reasoned about this a good time, but he would not be persuaded. He said, “I have two wives. My second wife is the joy of my life.”

  Memsowit told me that the Indians loved to wager. They staked their women, clothes, houses, and corn—some even their freedom, the losers reduced to slavery. At Wittuwamat’s command, two savages taught some Englishmen their way of gaming. Their game was called “hubbub.”

  Two savages played against each other. Each had eleven sticks. They squatted facing one another. One held a shallow wooden bowl, eight or ten inches in circumference, on
his lap. Five bones colored purple on one side were placed in the bowl. One of the players struck the bowl lightly with his palm, shouting, “Hub, bub, bub, bub, bub!” in a loud voice. The Indians looking on rejoined with hellish cries. The bones bounced and clicked in the bowl. If five of the self-same color bones came up, the player won two sticks from his opponent. If four of the self-same colors came up, the player lost one stick, and his opponent took his turn. If three of the self-same color bones came up, the player lost two sticks. If two of the self-same colors came up, the player likewise lost two sticks. If one came up, the player won two sticks. The game went on until one of the players lost all of his sticks.

  Rigdale said, “Only Satan could have invented such an intricate game. These savages are incapable of doing so themselves. Satan is the father of all gaming.”

  Butts said, “How so?”

  I answered thus, “Gaming makes the players believe that the world is governed by chance.”

  Butts said, “I think it is.”

  I said, “God governs the world and all the things therein.”

  “And the Devil?”

  “He is subject to God’s will in everything. Between the two, chance doth not exist, even unto the bounce of bones in a wooden bowl.”

  Rigdale said, “What then do you make of Ecclesiastes 9:11? ‘Time and chance comes to us all.’”

  I said, “I can make nothing of it. Those words are a constant torment to me.”

  Rigdale said, “To me, too.”

  Butts laughed.

  Butts became proficient at hubbub in the space of the afternoon, whereupon he played against Wittuwamat. Butts wagered his Monmouth cap against the wildcat’s skin which Wittuwamat carried over his right arm. Butts won. He wrapped the wildcat’s skin about his neck.

  Green said, “Give him the cap. Even though you won fairly, give the savage your cap. We do not want to anger him.”

  Butts said, “I will not!”

  Green snatched Butts’s cap from his head and gave it to the sachem, who put it on. Butts snatched it back. Wittuwamat’s nine savages made a great din. He silenced them with a shout: “Aka!” (“Stop!”) Then he spake to Butts. Memsowit translated his words: “I will remember you.”

  Late in the afternoon, Green appointed me to trade with Wittuwamat. I gave him seven axes, six knives, and five blankets for fourteen beaver skins, each of which had been worth five shillings when I was last in London. He offered me four skins for my dagger in its green leathern scabbard. I refused.

  Hanging from Wittuwamat’s girdle was a long leathern bag out of which he filled his pipe with powdered green tobacco. Memsowit told me the savages take tobacco for two causes: first against the rheum, which causes the toothache, and secondly to revive and refresh themselves.

  Wittuwamat lighted his pipe and offered me a drink. To be friendly, I drank my first and last mouthful of tobacco smoke, whereupon I coughed and coughed. The savage laughed. I perceived that his fingernails were bitten to the quick, like Reverend Hunt’s at Cambridge. My uncle Roger’s words returned to me: “The vilest person of the earth is the living image of Almighty God.”

  We shared our dinner with the Indians, who especially relished eating oatmeal porridge. Weston’s men opened a tun of Aqua Vitae; some sailors opened another. Almost everyone got drunk. Night drew on. I watched scores and scores of drunken savages and Englishmen frolic about four huge fires. Butts danced a jig. Wittuwamat hopped on one foot. As his tall, robust men danced with their heads thrown back, they sang together in high voices. One of Weston’s men threw two armfuls of brush upon the fire nearest me. The flames flared up. By their light, I spied two naked sailors practicing the abominable vice in the dry, brown grass.

  At midnight, when we sent the savages from us, we gave each of them some trifle. Wittuwamat received a pair of stockings. He offered to trade me three skins for my knife, and again I refused. Then he bade us farewell, with a promise that he and his men would soon come again with more skins to truck.

  It rained for the next two days. Rigdale and I wore our canvas suits. We slept and ate under our leaky roof. Just before dawn on the second morning, he said to me, “Dear friend, I will die in Wessagusset.”

  I said, “God forbid!”

  Rigdale said, “Such thoughts about death come to me in the night. It came to me upon a spring night that my wife, Ann, would soon die. I said nothing to her but savoured each fleeting moment we had left. I often asked her to sing. She had a sweet voice and sang our babe to sleep. My poor babe! Little Joan. I did not foresee her death.

  “My darling Ann died that very summer, on Mid-Summer Eve. Lying abed, she said, ‘I have a frightful headache,’ and fell asleep in the Lord.”

  I said, “Would that I had savoured each fleeting moment of my dear Sarah’s last days.”

  • • •

  It snowed on the twenty-fourth of October. It was the earliest day of snow that I could remember anywhere. We built fires in each house between the two rows of sleeping men. The houses filled with smoke. It drifted up through the chinks between the clapboards in the roofs. I wore my cloak over my canvas suit. I still shivered. Rigdale’s teeth chattered. He and I trudged through the drifted snow to fetch brush and logs for our fire. Our feet swelled from the cold.

  During this time, Rigdale, Pratt, and I again kept the Sabbath. Rigdale could not persuade anyone else to join us. He said to the men, “Take heed! Harken unto me! You will perish if you do not obey the Fourth Commandment to keep the Sabbath holy.”

  Butts, who was mizzled on Aqua Vitae, replied to him, “Keeping the Sabbath will not keep death at bay. Sooner or later, we will all die. I would rather frolic playing Gleek on the Sabbath than pray it away.”

  I said, “‘Bay’ and ‘away’ and ‘pray.’ You speak in rhyme, sirrah.”

  He said, “I will do so again. Let me see. Aqua Vitae makes a poet out of me. If I could read and write, I would drink Aqua Vitae all the day and write poems about playing Gleek. What rhymes with Gleek?”

  “Shriek.”

  “‘Shriek!’ said Death to me when I lost to him at Gleek. So I shrieked…What comes next? I cannot think. Give me more to drink.”

  I said, “Another rhyme! That makes four!”

  Butts said, “They come to me all on their own.”

  Rigdale said, “Enough of this childish nonsense! We were talking about the Fourth Commandment.”

  I said, “I would rather play with words. God forgive me, I sometimes fear that I love the English language more than I love Christ.”

  Butts said, “Well spoken, sir! Give me to drink again.”

  I said, “Away, soused herring, pickled in Aqua Vitae!”

  On Christmas day, the men feasted and frolicked in a heathenish fashion, only wanting roasted boar to make their celebration complete. Rigdale, Pratt, and I sought the Lord’s guidance with a solemn fast.

  Rigdale said, “All our victuals will soon be spent. We will starve as punishment for our recklessness.”

  Pratt said, “How did we do such a thing?”

  I said, “’Tis because we are living for the moment, without regard for the future or the after life. That is a grievous sin.”

  Rigdale and I fetched firewood every afternoon. My wet shoes froze stiff in the snow, and I wrung blood from my stockings when I pulled them off.

  On Thursday afternoon, the twenty-third of January, the sachem Wittuwamat, his interpreter Memsowit, and twelve other Indians came again to trade beaver skins for our Irish beef. We had none left. I again refused to trade Wittuwamat my dagger in its green leathern scabbard for four beaver skins.

  Memsowit told me that his third wife, for whom he had traded a dog, had been very ill.

  He said, “My dream cured her cough.”

  I said, “Your dream? How could your dream cure her cough?”

  “I will tell you.
One night, I sat up with her. Her coughing kept her awake. I fell asleep. I dreamed that the ground rose near her head, where she lay coughing. I saw that a crow was flying about under the ground and I said, ‘Do not hide yourself, brother crow, I see you.’ The crow stuck his head out of the ground and opened his beak. He had a snake’s forked tongue.

  “I said, ‘I saw you, brother crow. You were flying about under the ground while my wife coughed.’ The crow flew out of the ground, opened his beak again, and stuck out his snake’s tongue. Then he died. I woke up. My wife stopped coughing and fell asleep right away. She got completely well. My dream cured her.”

  I said, “God cured her,” and he said, “I believe in what I can see. I see my dreams. I cannot see your God so I do not believe in Him. When I see Him, I will believe in Him, but not until then.”

  “In what do you believe?”

  “I believe in Spirits of the Light and Spirits of the Dark. I also believe in the manitu.”

  “What is the manitu?”

  “The manitu is the spirit that dwells in everything. In stones, in fish, in the stars.”

  I said, “Have you seen all these spirits?”

  “Others have seen them. Have you seen your God?”

  “I have faith that by His grace I will see Him after I die, when I will be with Him forever.”

  He said, “You know not what you are talking about.”

  Butts challenged Wittuwamat to another game of hubbub. Butts again wagered his Monmouth cap, and Wittuwamat wagered his knife that had the face of a woman carved upon its handle. Wittuwamat lost. Memsowit translated his response: “I will have my revenge.”

  • • •

  After the Indians departed, it snowed for three days. The falling snow hid the hills to the south and west. The islands in the bay to the north were blotted out. When it ceased snowing, the water froze in patches. The ebb and flow of the tide lifted the ice high upon the beach, then let it fall in pieces in the inlets and upon the salt marshes. Wolves howled in the forest. Flocks of crows flew in circles above the stockade.