Mayflower (17 page)

By March, it was complete: a massive, sap-dripping, bark-peeling boundary between them and the surrounding forest. A new sense of order and control had been willed upon the wilderness. Plymouth was now an entity, a circumscribed place, its streets and houses darkened by the shadows of its margins. It was quite shiplike in many ways. Plymouth was like a huge
Mayflower
run aground on the shores of New England, her bow resting atop Fort Hill, her stern edging toward the harbor and the outflow of Town Brook. By impaling the town, the Pilgrims had made it clear that they intended to remain there for a very long time.

Miles Standish developed a manpower plan to go with the new fortress. The men were divided into four companies, each with its own commander, and were assigned positions and duties in the event of an attack. There was also a plan in the event fire should break out. Most of the men would work to put out the conflagration, but a group was assigned to stand on guard in case the Indians attempted to use the fire as a diversion prior to an attack. Standish drilled the men regularly and set up contingency plans if he should be away from the settlement during an attack. They were now ready to reestablish contact with the rest of the world.

They had long since planned to visit the Massachusetts to the north to trade for furs. But as they prepared the shallop to depart, Hobbamock, the Pokanoket pniese who had led the midnight raid on Nemasket the summer before and who had been living with the Pilgrims throughout the winter, asked to speak with Bradford and Standish. Hobbamock had heard that the Massachusetts had joined in league with the Narragansetts and were planning to attack Standish and the trading party. With Standish eliminated, the Narragansetts would then fall upon the settlement. Even more disturbing, Hobbamock insisted that Squanto was in on the plot. According to Hobbamock, all that winter, while the Pilgrims had been preoccupied with their wall, Squanto had been meeting secretly with Indians throughout the region.

Without letting Squanto know of Hobbamock’s claims, Standish and Bradford met with several other leading members of the community to discuss what to do next. As they all knew, they could not simply “mew up ourselves in our new-enclosed town.” They were running out of food. If they were to trade for more corn, they must venture beyond their own settlement. Up until this point, they had, in Winslow’s words, “ever manifested undaunted courage and resolution” when it came to their relations with the Indians. They must forge ahead, knowing, as always, that God was on their side. Standish must depart immediately for his trading mission with the Massachusetts and betray no signs of knowing about a possible Massachusett-Narragansett alliance.

Left unresolved was how to treat Hobbamock’s accusations concerning Squanto. As had become obvious to all of them, a rift of jealousy had developed between the two Indians. It was quite possible that Hobbamock had misrepresented Squanto’s involvement in the conspiracy, if indeed a conspiracy existed at all. Bradford and Squanto had developed a strong relationship over the last year, while Standish and Hobbamock—both warriors by inclination and training—had also become close. Rather than bring Squanto to task, it was decided to use the rivalry between the two Indians to their advantage. “[T]he governor seemed to countenance the one,” Bradford wrote, “the Captain the other, by which they had better intelligence, and made them both more diligent.”

Neither Bradford nor Winslow ever wrote about it, but by their second year in America they knew enough of the Indians’ spiritual beliefs to realize that the two Indians they had come to rely on most closely, Squanto and Hobbamock, were both named for the Native spirit whom the Pilgrims equated with the devil. It was more than a little ironic. They had come to America to serve God as best they knew how, and they were now dependent on two Indians named Satan.

In April, Standish and ten men, accompanied by both Squanto and Hobbamock, departed in the shallop for Massachusetts. A few hours later, an Indian who was a member of Squanto’s family appeared outside the gates of town. His face was bloody, and he had apparently been running for a long time. He kept looking behind him as if those who had been chasing him might appear at any moment. He shouted out that he had come from Nemasket and he had frightening news. The Narragansetts had teamed up with the Pokanokets for an assault on Plymouth. Being a member of Squanto’s family, he had spoken in the Pilgrims’ defense and had, as a consequence, received a blow to the head. The enemy might be on their doorstep at any moment.

It was a strange, alarming, and confusing performance. It was difficult to believe that Massasoit had joined with the Narragansetts against them. The circumstances of this Indian’s arrival at Plymouth were suspiciously similar to Hobbamock’s escape from Corbitant back in August, which had resulted in a raid on Nemasket. The timing was also suspect. The Indian had arrived just after Standish and company had left for Massachusetts. Without their military leader to protect them, the Pilgrims were especially vulnerable. Indeed, the Indian’s sudden appearance seemed calculated to elicit a rash and possibly disastrous response on their part.

Given Hobbamock’s recent claims concerning Squanto, there was ample reason to suspect that the interpreter was behind all this. But why was Squanto attempting to get them to attack Massasoit? Bradford immediately ordered that the cannons be fired as a warning signal. It was probably too late to recall Standish, but it was important that anyone working in the countryside return to the safety of town.

As it turned out, Standish
was
in earshot of the signal. Soon after the shallop rounded the Gurnet at the northern edge of the harbor mouth, the wind had deserted him and his men. When the cannons fired, they were anchored off the Gurnet, preparing to take down their mast and sails and start to row. Upon hearing the signal, they immediately turned back for town—something Squanto, who was in fact the central conspirator behind the unfolding drama, had never anticipated.

Upon returning to the settlement, Hobbamock angrily insisted that the claims of Squanto’s relatives were all lies. Being a pniese, he was certain he would have been consulted by Massasoit if the sachem had been planning some kind of attack. Bradford “should do well,” Hobbamock insisted, “to continue his affections” toward Massasoit. So as not to create any unnecessary suspicion, it was decided to send Hobbamock’s wife to Pokanoket, where she could determine whether there was any truth to the claims of Squanto’s relative.

As Hobbamock had predicted, all was peace at Pokanoket. Inevitably, Hobbamock’s wife revealed the reason behind her visit to Massasoit, who was outraged to learn that Squanto had attempted to turn the Pilgrims against him. The sachem offered his assurances to Bradford that he would certainly warn him of any possible threats to Plymouth if they should ever arise.

Over the next few weeks, it became increasingly clear that Squanto had been laboring long and hard to overthrow Massasoit as the Pokanokets’ supreme sachem. All winter he had been conducting a kind of covert psychological warfare on villages throughout the region. The Pilgrims, he claimed, possessed the plague, and they were about to unleash it at will. However, if a village sent him sufficient tribute, he assured them that he could convince the Pilgrims to relent. Gradually, more and more Indians began to look to Squanto rather than Massasoit for protection. Squanto had hoped the false alarm raised by his family member might prompt the Pilgrims to attack Massasoit. In the confusion that ensued, Squanto would emerge as New England’s preeminent Native leader.

It was a bold, risky, and outrageous plan, but it was conduct perfectly becoming an aspiring sachem. Rather than accept the decimation of Patuxet as a fait accompli, he had secretly striven to resuscitate his and his family’s fortunes by playing the English against the Pokanokets in a nervy game of brinksmanship. For Squanto, it had all been about honor, “which he loved as his life,” Winslow wrote, “and preferred before his peace.” In just a year, he had gone from being Massasoit’s prisoner to being one of his chief rivals. But his ambitions, it now seemed, had gotten the better of him.

Under the terms of the treaty drawn up the previous year, Bradford must turn Squanto over to Massasoit for punishment. But Bradford could not bear the thought of being without his interpreter despite his clear treachery. His attachment to Squanto appears to have gone well beyond the need for an Indian who could speak both languages. Squanto had become part of the Plymouth community about the same time that Bradford had become governor. The two seem to have bonded in a deep, almost spiritual way, and Bradford was willing to risk the wrath of the supreme sachem of the Pokanokets if it meant keeping Squanto as his interpreter.

In May, Massasoit appeared at Plymouth and was “much offended and enraged” against Squanto. The traitor must die. Bradford attempted to pacify the sachem, but not long after he returned to Pokanoket, Massasoit sent a messenger insisting that Squanto be put to death immediately. While acknowledging that Squanto deserved to die, Bradford stubbornly insisted that his interpreter was vital to the welfare of the plantation and could therefore not be executed. Within a day of leaving for Pokanoket, Massasoit’s messenger was back again, this time with several warriors. In keeping with their own customs, they had brought their sachem’s knife and had been instructed to return to Pokanoket with Squanto’s head and hands. They even offered to pay off the governor with some furs.

Bradford refused the payment, but did agree to send for Squanto. Even though he knew he was about to face his potential executioners, the interpreter valiantly appeared before Bradford and the emissaries from Pokanoket. None of this was his fault, he insisted. It was Hobbamock who was “the author and worker of his overthrow.” In the end Squanto knew he had no choice but to submit to whatever the governor thought was right. Bradford seemed on the verge of turning him over to Massasoit’s men when a boat appeared off the Gurnet. He would not surrender Squanto, the governor informed the Pokanokets, until he could determine the nationality of the boat. If it was French, they might be on the verge of attack.

But Massasoit’s men refused to play along. “[B]eing mad with rage,” Winslow reported, “and impatient at delay, they departed in great heat.” Squanto had lived to see another day.

It was a shallop from an English fishing vessel hired by Thomas Weston, the Merchant Adventurer who had pledged his undying loyalty to the Pilgrim cause in an earlier letter. In the months ahead, Bradford learned that all those promises were “but wind.” Not only had Weston abandoned them, he was now their competitor. Weston had secured a patent for his own settlement and had the temerity to expect the Pilgrims to host his sixty or so settlers as their leaders searched for a settlement site. He communicated this information in a series of “tedious and impertinent” letters that Bradford concealed from everyone but his most trusted associates.

Even though Weston had betrayed them, Bradford felt compelled to offer his men the requested hospitality. They proved to be young ruffians who made the already unstable mix of Leideners and Strangers even more combustible. The settlement had been on half rations before the addition of all these men; now it was on the edge of starvation. With the arrival of spring, fish became plentiful, but the Pilgrims were farmers not fishermen, and though the surrounding waters seethed with cod, bluefish, and striped bass, they were unable to catch enough to feed themselves. In desperation, they sought shellfish in the mudflats of Plymouth Harbor and planted their corn. But as the young plants began to grow, Weston’s men, who pretended to assist them in the fields, took to gobbling up the immature cornstalks and ruined the crop.

As if this wasn’t bad enough, Bradford learned that the
Fortune,
the ship they had loaded with clapboards in the fall, had been seized by the French just before she arrived in England. They had lost everything. The voyage that was to have turned a significant profit had put them even deeper in the hole. “I pray you be not discouraged,” Robert Cushman wrote, “but gather up yourself, to go through these difficulties cheerfully and with courage in that place wherein God hath set you, until the day of refreshing come.”

Then they received a different sort of letter. To the northeast, off the coast of modern Maine, the codfishing season was in full swing. Between three hundred and four hundred vessels were gathered off that rocky, fogbound coast, and a master of one of the ships had taken it upon himself to write the Pilgrims concerning some disturbing developments at Jamestown. That spring, the Indians had massacred 347 English colonists—more than four times the total population of Plymouth. “Happy is he,” the codfisherman wrote, “whom other men’s harms doth make to beware.”

As it so happened, the Pilgrims’ relations with the Indians were at a new low. Thanks to Squanto’s machinations and Bradford’s reluctance to punish his interpreter, they could no longer count on the support of their former allies the Pokanokets. Recognizing that the English were newly vulnerable, the Massachusetts and Narragansetts were said to be planning an assault on Plymouth.

Bradford decided that the wall was not enough. If they should become the victims of a Jamestown-like attack, they needed a heavily reinforced structure that was large enough to accommodate all of them. They needed a fort. Perched atop the hill overlooking the town, it might very well provide the means of their deliverance. Even though food supplies were still low, the inhabitants launched into the work with a will. It was hoped that the mere presence of this imposing, well-defended structure would be enough to discourage future Indian attacks.

But as the work progressed, many of the settlers began to lose their enthusiasm for the project. Given the nebulousness of the Indian threat, it was difficult to justify the expenditure of so much time and effort—especially given their lack of food. The question of how much of a society’s resources should be dedicated to security persists to this day. What amazed Edward Winslow during the summer and fall of 1622 was how “reasonable men [will be led] to reason against their own safety.”