The Landing of the Pilgrims Read online

  In a single day the hunters killed enough turkeys to last for a week. Gratefully they gathered on Sabbath days and sang praise to God for his goodness and mercy to the children of men.

  Now the forests were turning to the autumn splendor of red and gold. It was a time for a celebration, for a feast of rejoicing, for a day of Thanksgiving.

  The twelve women of New Plymouth began great preparations. From the kitchens came the savory smell of roasting geese and turkey. An abundance of corn bread and hasty pudding was being prepared. Stewed eels, boiled lobsters, and juicy clam stews simmered over the fires.

  Before the feast, Squanto was sent with an invitation to Massasoit and his chiefs. On the appointed day, the Chief appeared with ninety tall warriors. For a moment there was consternation among the cooks. They were not prepared to feed ninety extra guests, but Massasoit took care of the difficulty by sending his hunters into the forest. They returned with five deer. The feast now became a barbecue with juicy cuts of roast venison for all.

  There were shooting contests with bows and guns. The Plymouth Musketeers under their Captain, Miles Standish, put on a drill with drums and trumpets. In return the Indians performed their tribal dances and chants for the amazed English. Everyone relaxed. There was laughter and clowning. The Indians were in no hurry to go home as long as the food held out, and the holiday-making carried on for three days. Squanto and Samoset translated long speeches of friendship and good will. White men and red would keep the peace as long as the sun shone and the grass grew.

  There would be lean times and hard work aplenty in the days ahead, but it was a goodly country. Though the English still were strangers in it, this was for them the Promised Land.

  After the Thanksgiving feast, Plymouth settled down to its second winter. Daily Governor Bradford parceled out to each one a ration of corn from the common store. Because there were thirty-five newcomers to feed, he had to cut the corn rations to half of what had been planned at harvest time. When snow came, the hunters found no game in the bare woods. Each day the Governor sent the axmen to the forest to cut wood for the fires that must be kept burning in Plymouth against the bitter cold.

  Christmas Day was no exception. That morning the newcomers came to the Governor and explained it was against their conscience to work on Christmas Day. “Very well, until you learn better,” said the Governor as he marched off with the workers to the woods.

  When the workers came home at noon, they found some of the newcomers playing games in the street, “some pitching ye bar and some at stoole-ball and suchlike sports.” The Governor gathered up the gaming implements and drily announced that it was against his conscience for some to play while others worked. Through the bleak winter months, the men soon learned that hard work was not a virtue in Plymouth. It was a necessity.

  In March a meeting was called to plan the second spring planting. The Governor divided up their common land and gave to each his lot, together with his share of the seed corn. This had been carefully saved from the common supply. It was now clear that they would not have enough food to last until the harvest. For weeks to come they would again have to fight off starvation as best they could while they waited for the crops to ripen.

  Although Bradford’s bold answer to Canonicus had discouraged the Narragansetts from making war, there was still danger. Standish pointed out that the little group of houses on the hill slope was unprotected. His plan was to build a log palisade to enclose the mount, as well as the town, down to the water’s edge. Everybody agreed to the plan. Axmen felled the straight pine trunks, and others worked on the six-foot-deep trench encircling the town.

  Within a month, a stout log palisade twelve feet high enclosed the town. At the corners were projecting bastions that commanded the sides. At sunset the gates were closed and a guard kept watch during the night.

  Captain Standish was very proud of the new fortification. He proceeded to organize his fighting men into four companies with a leader for each. Each soldier was assigned his post for defense, in case of an attack or fire. From now on the settlers slept more peacefully in their beds at night.

  Of a Strange Plot

  (Spring 1622)

  Miles Standish was not a captain to sit idly in the shelter of the new palisade. He decided they should let the Indians know that the English would not remain shut up in the town fearfully awaiting an attack. The Captain would go forth boldly among them, for Plymouth was badly in need of provisions and the Indians of Massachusetts were known to have much corn. The shallop was fitted out for this trip with trading goods, guns, and gunpowder.

  The Captain and his ten musketeers, together with Squanto and Hobomok, sailed out of the harbor for Massachusetts Bay. As they rounded the point called Gernet’s Nose, the wind died down. Standish threw out the anchor while the men got out their oars.

  Suddenly a distant cannon shot sounded across the water. Then another and then a third. It was a signal from Plymouth telling them to come back. They loaded their muskets and rowed with all speed.

  At Plymouth they found every man and boy standing at his post prepared for an Indian attack. Squanto’s brother had come running into the town, his face covered with blood, to warn them that the Narragansetts, together with Corbitant and Massasoit, were on the way to attack the town. The Indians, he said, were close behind him.

  All night they stood watch. No Indians appeared. The messenger who brought the news had disappeared. It was a false alarm.

  Not long after, Hobomok came secretly to Standish, saying he knew that his chief, Massasoit, would not make war on the English. It was a plot by Squanto to turn the English against Massasoit.

  When Standish said he could not believe this of their faithful friend, Squanto, Hobomok revealed that Squanto, for a long time, had been terrifying the Indians. It had been his boast that he had great power to influence the English to destroy the tribes. He had told them that the English kept the dreadful plague hidden in the ground. Only he could prevent them from loosing it on the Indians. Squanto was blackmailing the Indians and influencing them against Massasoit.

  To prove his story, Hobomok said he would send his wife secretly to Massasoit’s village to discover whether he was plotting against the English. She came back with word from Massasoit that he always had and always would keep the peace treaty with his friends, the English. Squanto was a bad man and should die, Massasoit declared.

  At this news, Standish angrily told Squanto that he deserved death. But he realized the Indian was too valuable to the English as an interpreter to be killed.

  The expedition now set off again for Massachusetts and in a short time came back with a good supply of corn. On his return Standish found Massasoit in Plymouth, angrily demanding that Squanto be killed for his treachery. In fact Massasoit wanted to murder the traitor on the spot with his own ax. Bradford refused to surrender Squanto, saying that he was “the tongue of the English.” Without him they would not be able to talk with the Indians. Massasoit left in a rage.

  A few days later messengers came from the Chief with Massasoit’s knife. With it the English should kill Squanto and send his severed head and hands to Massasoit. Squanto stood silently by, awaiting his fate. The Indians claimed that he was Massasoit’s subject and according to the peace treaty must be turned over to them.

  At this moment a cannon shot announced a sail on the horizon. The lookout reported that it appeared to be a pirate ship. The Governor ordered everyone on the alert. Bradford told the Indians that they must await his decision about Squanto.

  Of How They Built a Strong Fort for Their Defense

  The sail did not belong to a French pirate ship, but to a shallop with an English crew from one of Mr. Weston’s fishing vessels, The Sparrow. It had come to deliver seven passengers from Leyden. The visitors brought no supplies other than enough for the return of the shallop’s crew.

  These new arrivals added seven more mouths for Plymouth to feed, besides the thirty-five men from the Fortune. The Plantation’s prov
isions were nearly exhausted.

  In desperation, Bradford decided to send to the fishing fleet for provisions. He appointed Winslow to this difficult business. He had been a wise ambassador on all occasions.

  Winslow now took the long trip up the east coast in the shallop and found the Sparrow and the fishing fleet. When he told them of Plymouth’s desperate need, the fishermen gave him what they could spare. Winslow returned with enough food to provide a lean diet till harvest time.

  In this crisis, Standish, Bradford, and Elder Brewster sat in the meeting house considering future plans. “The Indians, knowing of our poor condition, grow daily more insolent, and Massasoit hath taken much offense and cometh no more unto us as formerly,” said the Governor gloomily. Then he added, “Hunger and weakness doth greatly discourage our people.”

  “And the sin of idleness will do worse,” said Captain Standish, rising and pacing the floor.

  Brewster opened the great brass-studded Bible on the table before him.

  “ ‘Lift up the hands that hang down, and strengthen ye the feeble knees,’ ” he read. “Thus sayeth the Prophet Isaiah.”

  “Methinks this is the Lord’s counsel to us to arise and build a fort on top of the mount, and there place our cannon. It will greatly set back our enemies,” mused the Captain, looking out the window toward the mount.

  “Such a fort could serve as a meeting house and would greatly encourage our people in their worship of God,” replied Elder Brewster vigorously.

  At the town meeting every man’s vote was cast in favor of building the fort. Soon the hills echoed with the clamor of ax and saw and hammer. Work took men’s minds off the gnawing emptiness under their belts. They talked gaily, or grimly, and jested as they worked. It gave them a lift of heart to see the wooden walls rise higher day by day.

  May came, and with it planting time. Shifts of workers left the fort and went to the fields to set corn. On the flat roof of the fort were planted four cannons. Within were a goodly meeting hall, a gun room for muskets and ammunition, and a guardhouse where lawbreakers were to be kept.

  “Now the fort is finished, we shall keep a guard there,” said Mr. Winslow to the Captain as they stood on the roof of the new building and looked out over their fields green with new corn. “It will utterly discourage the Indians from rising against us.”

  Concerning the Coming of the Charity and the Swan and of the Great Sickness That Came upon Massasoit and How Master Winslow Did Marvelously Recover Him

  One day toward the end of June, two ships sailed into Plymouth Harbor. They were the Charity and the Swan, sent by Mr. Weston in England to begin a plantation on Massachusetts Bay. The sixty newcomers asked to stay at Plymouth until their surveyors could find a good place to settle somewhere in Massachusetts.

  The long-suffering colonists of Plymouth took these visitors into their homes and shared with them their lean rations in Christian charity. The Weston men proved themselves a graceless crew. Some helped to weed and tend the corn fields by day. Others by night stole and ate the unripe ears of corn.

  At last this band of ruffians departed in the Swan for their new colony on the Bay, and the Charity returned to England. Before leaving for Massachusetts, the newcomers left their sick in the care of surgeon Samuel Fuller at his own charge. As they recovered, the doctor sent them to Massachusetts.

  Shortly after, the Bay Indians came to Bradford with bitter complaints that the newcomers were robbing the Indian corn fields. The Governor could do no more than advise the new settlers to deal honestly with the Indians. Before the coming of Weston’s men, the Plymouth settlers had planned to start a trading post on the Bay.

  By August, the provisions at Plymouth were exhausted. Two more ships arrived—the Discovery, Thomas Jones, Master; and the Sparrow, a smaller ship belonging to Weston. The Sparrow carried a cargo of fish.

  Captain Jones of the Discovery had plenty of supplies which he was willing to sell, at top prices, though he demanded in exchange beaver skins at below their current market value.

  These unlooked-for provisions were enough to keep them till harvest time.

  “Had not the Almighty in his all-ordering Providence, directed him to us; it would have gone worse with us than ever it had been, or after was.”

  The unruly Weston colony at Wessagussett (Weymouth) on the Bay soon used up all their provisions. Winter was at hand. They sent to Plymouth, proposing that the two plantations join in trading along the coast with the Indians for corn. The Weston men would furnish their ship Swan for this purpose and the proceeds would be divided between them.

  The Plymouth Colony agreed, but Standish, their usual leader, was sick with fever, and so Governor Bradford led the expedition. Squanto, too, went along, promising to guide the Swan around the Cape and through the shoals of Pollack’s Rip. Not long after they left the harbor, fierce winter storms beat down on them, and forced them to turn back. However, they traded with the Cape Indians and collected some twenty-eight hogsheads of corn.

  During this voyage, Squanto was taken ill with an Indian fever. Within a few days he died, asking the Governor to pray for him, that he might go to the Englishmen’s God in heaven.

  The corn was divided and the Weston colonists returned to Wessagussett. Captain Standish had now recovered and went along the Cape in the shallop, trading for corn in the bitter January weather. Through the long winter, he came and went, trading and treating with the sometimes treacherous Indians. Once he barely escaped an Indian plot on his life by “a notable insulting villain,” Witawamat, whose hands were stained with the blood of many a castaway English and Frenchman. The fearless Captain and his men came back in the weather-beaten shallop with corn enough to keep alive the families in the Plymouth cabins. The flame of hope and faith was kept aglow through the lean winter days and nights.

  One day, an Indian came with news that Massasoit was sick unto death. The Plymouth folk had not heard of the Chief since the quarrel over Squanto, but this was not the time to harbor ill will. After all, the great Chief had been and still was their faithful ally. Bradford appointed Winslow to visit the sick sachem. With him went Master John Hamden, a visiting gentleman from London who wanted to see the country. Hobomok was their guide.

  On the way, they heard that the Chief was dead. When they reached Massasoit’s village, they found that the sachem was still alive. From his lodge came the chanting of the medicine men. Enough din to make a well man sick, thought Winslow. The lodge was crowded with sorrowing friends who believed their Chief as good as dead. Six squaws sat around the sick man, chafing his arms and legs.

  Winslow saw at once that Massasoit was indeed at the point of death. He had lost his sight and his jaws were set. As the Englishman leaned over him, the dying man reached out a feeble hand and groaned, “Keen Winsnow? [Is this you, Winslow?]” for the Indians could not say “l.” And he added, “Oh, Winsnow, I shall never see you again.”

  Winslow explained, through Hobomok, that the Governor had sent him to say how sorry he was to hear of his friend’s sickness. He had sent medicine and such things as he thought most likely to do him good. If Massasoit would take it, Winslow would give him the medicine at once.

  Winslow had to force the concoction between the Indian’s clenched teeth with his knife. The sick man swallowed for the first time in two days. The Englishman then washed his mouth and scraped his furred and swollen tongue. In a few minutes the sick man asked for a drink and the amateur doctor poured more medicine down his throat. Within half an hour Massasoit opened his eyes.

  Winslow leaned close to his face and smiled. “Massasoit will live,” he said. “Soon he will be restored to health and strength.”

  In a few moments Massasoit was asleep for the first time in days. Winslow sent off a note to Surgeon Samuel Fuller asking for more physic and a couple of chickens with seasoning for a broth.

  Among the Indians the news spread that the sachem had been restored to health. A miracle had been brought about by the white man’s medicin
e.

  When the Chief awoke he was hungry. He asked Winslow to make him some soup of wild ducks such as he had tasted at Plymouth.

  At once Winslow set to work to prepare a thin soup of corn meal flavored with strawberry leaves and sassafras root. After eating this, the Chief was strong enough to sit up.

  Massasoit’s confidence in Winslow was now boundless. He insisted that the Englishman visit every sick Indian in the village and give him the same treatment. It was an unfamiliar task for Winslow, but he did the best he knew how and went among the sick in the foul-smelling lodges. “With wonderment he blessed God for giving His blessing to such raw and ignorant means.”

  After Winslow had seen all the other sick and ailing Indians, Massasoit wanted more broth. Winslow took his gun and soon came back with a fat duck. Presently the savory soup was ready. Winslow told Hobomok to skim the fat from the top, as it was entirely too rich for the weak stomach of the convalescent. But Massasoit would not permit it and quickly swallowed several helpings of the rich dish.

  In an hour the sachem was again a very sick man. He was vomiting and, what was worse, bleeding severely from the nose. This, the Indians believed, was a sure sign of death. But presently the bleeding ceased and Massasoit slept as Winslow watched by his side. When he woke, Winslow bathed his face and urged his friend to take things slowly until he was stronger. He soon could sit up and receive visitors.

  When the chickens were brought from Plymouth the Chief decided he would not eat them. Instead he would keep them and start a poultry farm.

  Massasoit’s Indian friends came from as far as a hundred miles to see the miracle. The Chief told them, “Now I see the English are my friends and love me; and whilst I live I will never forget this kindness they have showed me.”