Everyone feasted day and night. I broke my oath to Abigail and drank Aqua Vitae with the rest. God forgive us, Rigdale, Pratt, and I got drunk for the second time on the Sabbath. We were seized with a diabolical recklessness induced by our terror of the vast snowy forest and the Indians. We were startled by the breaking boughs, weighed down with snow, that of a sudden fell to earth. Each crack sounded like a musket shot.
The Indians came to us at all hours of the day. They piled their bows and arrows upon blankets without the south gate. We put our muskets aside. They traded their peltry for liquor, axes, and the little round German brass bells they tied to the fringes of their leathern trousers. We heard the bells jangle whenever they walked across the glade in the deep snow toward the south gate.
Captain Green said, “They want us to become accustomed to their approach so they can attack us by surprise.”
The jangling bells in the stockade made us all anxious. I watched an Indian strip a blue English blanket from one of Green’s sailors curled up in the mud. Like my fellow Englishmen, I was too weakened by hunger and too cowed to intervene. Sorely ashamed at feeling so helpless, I looked away. As my countrymen sat scattered about steaming pots filled with ground nuts or shellfish, the Indians often stole the victuals. I once saw Butts protest. An Indian threw a lump of frozen mud in his face. Butts crept away. I was sore ashamed for us all.
Green said to me, “I am a master of a ship and a good one, too. But I do not know how to assert my authority on land.” One day ten sentinels in the stockade got drunk and deserted their posts. Green did not punish them.
By the last week in February, we had spent almost all of our victuals. Memsowit told me that the Indians would no longer trade with us for their corn, saying that they had none to spare.
I was hungry all the time. My legs felt weak and were wracked with pains. If I moved too quickly, I became dizzy. My heart pounded in my breast. A mouthful of oatmeal porridge immediately made me feel stronger; my strength from eating it lasted about an hour. Then I was beset with lassitude. Between noon and one of the clock, I could not sit up straight but only bent over.
One morning, two men in my house fell out with each other over a bowl of porridge. Rigdale had just the strength enough to separate them. Rigdale divided the porridge in twain, and the men gobbled up their portions.
Rigdale and I joined the crowd on the beach nearest the stockade searching for shellfish. The clams there, which formerly seemed of infinite store, were most of them already consumed. By God’s grace, I found eight of them frozen in the ice and swallowed their sandy flesh on the spot. Rigdale found nine more, three of which he gave to me.
To conserve our strength, we went to bed at sundown. The night was very cold. In spite of our fire, I shivered and lay awake, listening to my stomach rumble. I said, “I would be pleased to eat one raw egg.”
Rigdale said, “I love new laid eggs.”
I said, “Shall I give you some of this capon?”
“What capon is that?”
“God save me! I fell asleep for a moment and dreamed I was eating a roasted capon.”
In the days following, we all lived on ground nuts and acorns we digged up under the snow and the mussels, clams, and a few oysters we digged up on the beach. I twice went a-fowling, but there were no ducks or geese to be seen. I shot a squirrel in a pine tree and roasted it. Rigdale and I supped upon it without salt. It tasted sweet.
• • •
Green renewed his efforts to purchase victuals from the Indians. They refused. Green said, “I am determined to take by force what I can get in no other way.”
He gave orders to strengthen and perfect the stockade. The frightened men obeyed him.
All the entrances save the south gate were made fast. Ten sentinels, chosen by lot, again stood watch day and night. Before resorting to violence, Green sent a letter with a messenger named Tom Ford five-and-twenty miles through the forest, informing Governor Bradford of the dire straits we were in at Wessagusset and what he proposed to do. Ten days later, the Governor’s answer arrived. He wrote,
Your course of action is not only in contravention of the laws of God, but is calculated to bring King James’s policy to nought, both as respects the enlargement of his dominions and the propagation of the knowledge and law of God, and the glad tidings of salvation among the heathen.
Your case is no worse, if so bad, as that of Plymouth, where we have but little corn left and are compelled to sustain life on ground nuts and mussels, all of which you in Wessagusset have in great abundance. Yea, oysters also, which we at Plymouth sorely want.
Therefore, your plea of necessity cannot be maintained. If you have recourse to violence, those guilty of like violence will have to take care of yourselves and need look for no support from us at Plymouth. Moreover, if you escape the savages, you will not escape the gallows as soon as some special agent of the crown comes over to investigate.
Tom Ford also delivered the following letter from Abigail to me:
My darling Charles,
I know in my heart that my prayers will be answered and that we will be reunited!
Ford told me that you have grown a shaggy beard. Dearest Charles, please shave it off so that, with God’s grace, I may once again behold your pitted face and be reminded of my beloved father’s countenance.
Ford will give you a pint of corn from me. Consider it a present from me for your coming birthday. May it ease your hunger for a while. We live on a pint of corn a day and are fearful of an Indian attack. Still, I am grateful to God for bringing me to the Plymouth Plantation. He is working His will here in the wilderness and I feel part of it.
Darling Charles, a week ago Tuesday, I spake again with Master Brewster about the state of my soul. I told him that remorse and humiliation beset me because I wished my father to die before I caught his consumption.
Master Brewster said, “Increase your suffering, daughter! Let those three words of Scripture—‘Honor thy father’—bore into your soul like Pratt’s auger. Abase yourself before God! Humiliate yourself! Suffer remorse until it is well nigh unbearable.
“Then,” said he, “of a sudden, the Holy Spirit will rise up within you, and you will truly repent and know that you are predestined to be saved. This revelation can happen to you at any time. It happened to me upon a summer morning in Leyden at my house on Sink Street. What joy!”
Since he spake to me, I have heaped remorse and humiliation on my soul while I await God’s forgiveness.
My love to you, Abigail
March 6
I answered Abigail as follows:
Sweetheart,
I rejoice in your news. My own salvation is, God help me, furthest from my thoughts. I am trying only to survive.
Tom Ford will also deliver to you a brief letter I wrote you on the seventh of September. I always wear your handkerchief close to my heart.
Ford will relate to you in detail the dreadful circumstances that beset us here in Wessagusset. I am always cold and weak from hunger. The snow that hath fallen between the trees makes it difficult to search for ground nuts and roots, while the ice that covers the salt marches makes it almost impossible to dig up shellfish. We too fear an Indian attack.
I love you. I live for the day when, God willing, we will be together again. Thank you for the pint of corn. It is the best birthday gift I have ever received.
Pray for me.
Yours in Christ.
Charles.
March 10
God forgive me, I could not bring myself to share the pint of corn with Rigdale—or anyone else. Hunger traduced my soul. I covertly made the corn into Indian pudding and gobbled it all down after sundown in the glade. God punished me for my selfishness. I vomited up the pudding. The next day, the joints of my arms and legs were swelled, my gums bled, and my whole body shivered and shook. I frequently passed wat
er, and my hands and feet were numb. I prowled the stockade with a feeble gait looking for victuals to steal.
A tall Indian, wrapped in a blue blanket, pushed me aside; the bells tied to his leggings jangled in my ears.
That evening, Hook said to me, “If you want to eat, harken unto me. Come with me on the morrow to the Indian village and work for them. Gather firewood and draw water with their women, and they will pay you with Indian pudding.”
I said, “Wherefore? To become their slave?”
He said, “I have been a slave, one way or the other, all my life. The foremost thing is to stay alive. Starving to death is most horrible, almost as horrible to me as drowning. Well, what say you?”
The next morning, at dawn, I joined a score of Englishmen who became slaves of the Massachusetts in their village. Rigdale, Butts, Pratt, and I followed Hook there at first light. It took us three hours to walk two miles to the west through the drifted snow. I was surprised to discover that I was the strongest one of the four. Rigdale leaned upon my arm the whole way.
The Indian women fled with their children into their houses at our approach. The Indians lived in more than a score of circular houses built out of poles. The tops of the poles were bent and bound together with walnut bark forming a round hole through which the smoke of their fires ascended and escaped. The walls of the houses were covered with reed mats. Each house had two doors which were likewise covered with reed mats that could be rolled up and let down.
Memsowit greeted us without his house. He was wearing a mantle made from beaver skins that were sewn together.
I said, “We have come to work for you in exchange for victuals.”
He said, “We believe you have come to steal our seed corn that we are saving to plant in the spring once the danger of frost is past. I warn you, do not do so. We will punish you for stealing our seed corn with a severe whipping (suppondonk).”
He invited us into his house. Against the walls, on three sides, planks about a foot above the ground were raised upon rails that were borne up upon forks and covered with mats. The planks, laid side by side, were wide enough for four people to sleep upon. We four sat cross-legged upon them.
Memsowit said, “This is a bad winter for us. Our children are hungry. We live on squirrels, acorns, dogs, snakes, and the bark of trees. There are almost no turkeys or deer to be found in the forest. The evil spirits have chased them away.
“After your work is done, I will give each of you a bowl of our seed corn. Grind it into powder, put a little water to it, and eat the meal, which we call nokake. It is sweet, toothsome, and hearty.”
From whom did he learn “sweet, toothsome, and hearty”? I was again amazed at his command of the English language and hoped that one day his intelligence would be able to grasp the meaning of Holy Scripture and salvation through Christ our Lord.
Cicero wrote that there is no people so barbarous that do not have some religion or other. Tully asked, where is there to be found a race or tribe of men, which without instruction from anybody, doth not hold some sort of innate preconception of the gods? I must conclude against them: the Indians of New England have no religion or gods. They believe only in benign spirits and devils. Perhaps they were incapable of being converted to the true faith.
Wittuwamat entered, wearing a bearhide coat which was dressed and converted into good leather with the black fur next to his body. His hands were in a muff made from brown wildcat fur.
Memsowit translated his words as follows: “If you want to eat today, you will fetch us water and firewood. Our women will show you how.”
Rigdale said, “My lord, we are famished and require a bite to eat to give us the strength to do your biding.”
Wittuwamat ordered a young woman to serve us each a bowl of hot, unsalted broth. Memsowit explained that it was a liquor made from boiled old deer bones that had first been heated over a fire to drive out the worms and maggots. It immediately assuaged my hunger.
Memsowit said to me, “This woman is my youngest wife.”
She was marked across her forehead by the image of a crow that I surmised had been incised into her flesh and dyed with some sort of black ink.
Memsowit said, “Brother crow is the guardian spirit who appeared to me in a dream and saved her life.”
Wittuwamat said, “Last night I dreamed that my head fell off. My headless corpse fell into the mud. Then my head spake thus: ‘Please bury me in Grandmother Earth where my body already lies. Grandmother Earth shall join us together, so that I can sacrifice tobacco to the manitu who squats underground.’
“Now go with our women and gather firewood and draw water from our stream. In return, we shall feed you.”
He withdrew his carved pipe from his muff and lighted it. His son, called Tokamahamon, greeted us as we took our leave. He wore a bear claw in each pierced ear and a string of white bone beads about his neck.
Wittuwamat said, “Tokamahamon will become the sachem of my people when I die. Doth your king have a son?”
I said, “Yes. His name is Charles. With God’s grace, he will one day become our sovereign lord.”
Memsowit said, “‘Sovereign lord.’ What doth ‘sovereign lord’ mean?”
I said, “Sovereign lord means the same as king.”
Memsowit said, “‘Sovereign lord.’ I must remember that.”
Wittuwamat said, “Doth your king have a queen (squa sachem)?”
I said, “Her Majesty died four years ago.”
“Did your king marry again?”
I said, “He did not.”
Wittuwamat said, “It is marvelous to me (wequaiyewmut) that a king would live without a wife. I have three. My first wife—Tokamahamon’s mother—died from the plague. My people died in heaps. Those of us who were left alive fled our houses and let the carcasses lie above ground to rot without burial. Not I! I buried my queen with my own hands. It is our custom (machitut) to sew up the corpse in a mat, put it into the earth, and sing the Death Song (nuppmonk), which we are forbidden to share with you Englishmen (Englishmenog).
“Because I am a sachem, my grave shall be filled with my riches and covered with stones to prevent wild beasts from digging up my corpse.”
Then he said, “Tell your sovereign lord that I am his man.”
Three women accompanied us to gather firewood. The mantles they wore to cover their nakedness were much longer than the men’s. For as the men wore one deerskin, the women wore two, sewed together along the skins’ full length. And whereas the men wore one bearskin for a mantle, the women wore two sewed together. They had as much modesty as civilized people and deserve to be commended for it.
The Indian women smeared their bodies and hair with grease that made them smell very rank, and they were much stronger than we. They each carried almost twice as much firewood on their backs as every Englishman, in addition to strings of fish, baskets of beans, and mats.
They never once paused to rest as we did. I saw famished, exhausted Englishmen carrying firewood and skins filled with water. Then there were those squatting on the icy mud, holding out their hands to the Indians and crying, “Food, for the love of God!” Their blotched skin hung loosely from their bones. Their dull eyes protruded from their gaunt faces. The Indians ignored them.
In the late afternoon, Hook said to me, “Master Wentworth, I know where they keep some of their seed corn and am waiting for a chance to steal some. Shall I steal some for thee?”
I said, “Yes. Perhaps God will forgive me because I’ll share it with some hungry wretch at Wessagusset.”
Wittuwamat’s house was near a stream that flowed in the center of the village. It was built with poles and planks upon a scaffold, some six foot above the ground. Seven times, during the course of the day, we piled our firewood beneath the entrance. Despite the cold wind, I was drenched with sweat. Wittuwamat invited us up into his house, wherein
just before sunset, the women served us each a big bowl of nokake. After saying grace, we devoured the victuals. The Indians pressed themselves upon us on the planks and, wrapped in English blankets, sang themselves to sleep. I was light-headed from weariness and hunger. The savages’ barbarous singing and the lice and the fleas kept me awake for hours.
In the morning, the Indians served each of us a bowl of roasted squirrel, mixed with parched corn. Observing us to bless our meat before we did eat and afterwards to give thanks to God for the same, Wittuwamat asked, “Does your God appear to you in your dreams?”
I said, “He never has.”
He said, “Then how do you know that He exists?”
“We read His words in Scripture, and He speaks to us in our hearts.”
“What does He sound like?”
I said, “A still, small voice.”
He said, “Manitu speaks to us in the thunder.” Then he said, “You Englishmen will henceforth address me in English as your ‘Sovereign Lord.’”
We labored for our savage sovereign lord from dawn to dusk for another week. I understood what Aristotle meant when he said that a slave is a tool with a voice. Once I saw Butts bow to Wittuwamat. Then Butts said to me, “Because I refused to give this savage my Monmouth cap, he forbids me to labour here for food. Nevermind. I am taking my revenge.” He glanced about him, removed his Monmouth cap, and extracted a handful of yellow parched corn from its crown.
“Take it,” said he. “’Tis for thee.”
“Where did you get it?”
He said, “’Tis seed corn. I stole it.”
Rigdale and I followed Butts to a mound of hand-paddled earth on the eastern edge of the village, at the foot of a dead oak tree. Butts looked about to be sure that we were alone and then said, “I spied a savage digging up corn here four days ago and have been stealing a little every day since.”
Then he digged in the soft earth until he came to a large reed basket covered with mats. The basket held a hogshead of yellow, red, and blue husked and shelled corn. Rigdale and I stole two handfuls apiece and concealed them in the crowns of our caps, which we replaced upon our heads. Then we re-buried the basket.
The Pilgrim Page 17