Mayflower (13 page)

And yet, amid all this tragedy, there were miraculous exceptions. The families of William Brewster, Francis Cook, Stephen Hopkins, and John Billington were left completely untouched by disease. It is tempting to speculate that John Billington’s outburst against Standish may have been partly inspired by the fact that he and his fellow non-Leidener Stephen 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 and less like a Separatist community of saints.

Even more pressing than the emotional and physical strain of all this death was the mounting fear of Indian attack. They 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 an effective resistance. It became imperative, therefore, to make the best possible show of strength.

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. They did such a diligent job of hiding their loved ones’ remains that it was not until more than a hundred years later, when the runoff from a violent rainstorm unearthed some human bones, that the location of these ancient, hastily dug graves was finally revealed.

On Saturday, February 17, in the midst of the Pilgrims’ first official meeting about military matters, 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 was immediately adjourned, and the men hurried to get their muskets. When the Pilgrims reassembled under the direction of their newly designated captain, Miles Standish, 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” concealed on the other side of the hill. The Pilgrims feared an assault might be in the offing, “but no more came in fight.” It was time, they decided, to mount “our great ordnances” on the hill.

On Wednesday of the following week, Christopher Jones supervised the transportation of the “great guns”—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 installation of this firepower, 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 highly combustible houses was on its way to becoming a well-defended fortress.

Jones had brought a freshly killed goose, crane, and mallard with him, and once the day’s work was completed, they all sat down to an impromptu 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 explorations along the Cape, the winter had been, for the most part, unusually mild—a respite 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, especially when he began to walk toward them “very boldly.” The alarm was sounded, and still the Indian continued striding purposefully down Watson’s Hill and across the brook. Once he’d climbed the path to Cole’s Hill, he walked 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 restrained 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!”

T
HEY COULD NOT HELP
but stare in fascination. He was so different from themselves. For one thing, he towered over them. He stood before them “a tall straight man,” having not labored at a loom or a cobbler’s bench for much of his life. 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.

What impressed them the 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 soon began to warm to their impetuous guest and 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 biscuit, 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.

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 at the head of Narragansett Bay. 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 to see their voluble guest on his way. 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 their secret burials, he undoubtedly knew that many of the English had died over the winter.

For as long as anyone 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 of what to do next. A little over a year before, the sailors aboard an English vessel had killed a large number of his people without provocation. 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 skirmishes on Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard. Squanto had been taken prisoner on the Vineyard, but now he was with Massasoit in Pokanoket. The former Patuxet resident 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.

Over the winter, as the Pilgrims continued to bury their dead surreptitiously, 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 a highly spiritual landscape, where the unseen currents of the spirits intermingled with the hoots of owls.

Massasoit’s first impulse was not to embrace the English but to curse them. Bradford later learned that the powwows had attempted to “execrate them with their conjurations.” Powwows communed 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 endowed him with 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 weighed in on the issue of 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 break the Narragansetts’ stranglehold on the Pokanokets. “[E]nemies that were [now] too strong for him,” Squanto promised, “would be constrained to bow to him.”

It was a suggestion that played on Massasoit’s worst fears. The last three years had been a nightmare of pain and loss; to revisit that experience was inconceivable. Reluctantly, Massasoit determined that he must “make friendship” with the English. To do so, he must have 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 was loath to place his faith in the former captive, whom he regarded as a conniving cultural mongrel with dubious motives. So he first sent Samoset, a visiting sachem with only a rudimentary command of English, to the Pilgrim settlement.

But now it was time for Massasoit to visit the English himself. He must turn to Squanto.

On March 22, five days after his initial visit, Samoset returned to Plymouth with four other Indians, Squanto among them. The Patuxet Native spoke with an easy familiarity about places that now seemed 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 was a wide necklace made of white shell beads and a long knife suspended 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.

For the Pilgrims, who could not have mustered 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 enough of his meaning was apparently communicated to please Massasoit. 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 with Quadequina as a hostage while Massasoit went with twenty of his men, minus their bows, to meet the governor.

The Pilgrims were men of God, but they also knew their diplomatic protocol. Undoubtedly drawing on his experiences as an assistant to the English secretary of state, William Brewster appears to have orchestrated a surprisingly formal and impressive reception of the dignitary they called the “Indian King.” A Pilgrim delegation including Standish and half a dozen men armed with muskets greeted Massasoit at the brook. They exchanged salutations, and after seven of the warriors were designated 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 procession 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. The Pilgrims assumed the aqua vitae was what made him perspire, but anxiety may also have been a factor. As the proceedings continued, during which the two groups worked out a six-point agreement, Massasoit was observed to tremble “for fear.”

Instead of Carver and the Pilgrims, it may have been Massasoit’s interpreter who caused the sachem to shake with trepidation. Squanto later claimed that the English kept the plague in barrels buried beneath their storehouse. The barrels actually contained gunpowder, but the Pilgrims undoubtedly guarded the storehouse with a diligence that lent credence to Squanto’s claims. If the interpreter chose to inform Massasoit of the deadly contents of the buried stores during the negotiations on March 22 (and what better way to ensure that the sachem came to a swift and satisfactory agreement with the English?), it is little wonder Massasoit was seen to tremble.

Bradford and Winslow recorded the agreement with the Pokanoket sachem as follows:

1. That neither he nor any of his should injure or do hurt to any of our people.
   
2. And if any of his did hurt to any of ours, he should send the offender, that we might punish him.
   
3. That if any of our tools were taken away when our people were at work, he should cause them to be restored, and if ours did any harm to any of his, we would do the like to him.
   
4. If any did unjustly war against him, we would aid him; if any did war against us, he should aid us.
   
5. He should send to his neighbor confederates, to certify them of this, that they might not wrong us, but might be likewise comprised in the conditions of peace.
   
6. That when their men came to us, they should leave their bows and arrows behind them, as we should do our pieces when we came to them.
   

Once the agreement had been completed, Massasoit was escorted from the settlement, and his brother was given a similar reception. Quadequina quickly noticed a disparity that his higher-ranking brother had not chosen to comment on. Even though the Indians had been required to lay down their bows, the Pilgrims continued to carry their muskets—a clear violation of the treaty they had just signed with Massasoit. Quadequina “made signs of dislike, that [the guns] should be carried away.” The English could not help but admit that the young Indian had a point, and the muskets were put aside.

Squanto and Samoset spent the night with the Pilgrims while Massasoit and his men, who had brought along their wives and children, slept in the woods, just a half mile away. Massasoit promised to return in a little more than a week to plant corn on the southern side of Town Brook. Squanto, it was agreed, would remain with the English. As a final gesture of friendship, the Pilgrims sent the sachem and his people a large kettle of English peas, “which pleased them well, and so they went their way.”