Mayflower (19 page)

It was terrifying to learn that they were, in Winslow’s words, “at the pit’s brim, and yet feared nor knew not that we were in danger.” They must return to Plymouth as soon as possible and inform Governor Bradford. After more than two years of threatened violence, it now appeared that the Pilgrims might have no choice but to go to war.

As Winslow, Hobbamock, and John Hamden were hurrying back to Plymouth, Phineas Pratt, a thirty-year-old joiner who had become, by default, one of the leaders of the sorry settlement of Wessagussett, was beginning to think it was time to escape this hellhole and find his way to Plymouth.

Their sufferings had become unendurable. They had nothing to eat, and the Indians were becoming increasingly belligerent. The warriors, led by a pniese named Pecksuot, gathered outside the wall of the Wessagussett fort. “Machit pesconk!” they shouted, which Pratt translated as “Naughty guns.” An attack seemed at hand, so the English increased the number of men on watch. But without food, the guards began to die at their posts. One bitterly cold night, Pratt reported for guard duty. “I [saw] one man dead before me,” he remembered, “and another [man dead] at my right hand and another at my left for want of food.”

Word reached the settlement from an Englishman living with the Indians that the Massachusetts planned to attack both Wessagussett and Plymouth. Sachem Obtakiest was waiting for the snow to melt so that his warriors’ footprints could not be tracked when they left for the other settlement. “[T]heir plot was to kill all the English people in one day,” Pratt wrote. He decided he must leave as soon as possible for Plymouth. “[I]f [the] Plymouth men know not of this treacherous plot,” he told his compatriots, “they and we are all dead men.”

With a small pack draped across his back, he walked out of the settlement as casually as he could manage with a hoe in his hand. He began to dig at the edge of a large swamp, pretending to search for groundnuts. He looked to his right and to his left and, seeing no Indians, disappeared into the swamp.

He ran till about three o’clock in the afternoon. There were patches of snow everywhere, and he feared the Indians had followed his footprints and would soon be upon him. Clouds moved in, making it difficult to determine the position of the sun and the direction in which he was traveling. “I wandered,” he wrote, “not knowing my way.” But at sunset, the western sky became tinged with red, providing him with the orientation he needed.

As darkness overtook him, he heard “a great howling of wolves.” He came to a river and, skittering over the rocks, drenched himself in the chilly water. He was tired, hungry, and cold, but he feared to light a fire, since it might be seen by the Indians. He came to a deep gorge into which several trees had fallen. “Then I said in my thoughts,” he wrote, “this is God’s providence that here I may make a fire.” As he attempted to warm himself beside the feeble blaze, the sky above miraculously cleared, and he stared up at the stars. Recognizing Ursa Major, he was able to determine the direction he should go the next morning.

By three in the afternoon he had reached the site of what would become the village of Duxbury, just to the north of Plymouth. As he ran across the shallows of the Jones River, haunted by the fear that the Indians were about to catch up to him, he said to himself, “[N]ow am I a deer chased [by] wolves.” He found a well-worn path. He was bounding down a hill when up ahead he saw an Englishman walking toward him. It was John Hamden, the gentleman from London who had recently returned from Pokanoket with Edward Winslow. Suddenly overcome by exhaustion, Pratt collapsed onto the trunk of a fallen tree. “Mr. Hamden,” he called out, “I am glad to see you alive.”

Hamden explained that Massasoit had told them of the plot against Plymouth and Wessagussett and that Governor Bradford had recently convened a public meeting to discuss how the plantation should proceed.

It was irritating in the extreme to know that they had been put into this mess not by anything
they
had done but by the irresponsible actions of Weston’s men. The one encouraging bit of news was that thanks to Winslow’s efforts at Pokanoket, Massasoit was once again on their side. There was little doubt what the sachem expected of them: they were to launch a preemptive strike against the Massachusetts and snuff out the conspiracy at its source.

The fact remained, however, that thus far no Indians had even threatened them. If they were to initiate an attack, it would be based on hearsay—and they all knew from experience how misleading and convoluted the rumors could be. Then again, with a sachem as trustworthy and powerful as Massasoit telling them to act, what more justification did they need? Yes, they decided, their future safety depended on a swift and daring assault.

Edward Winslow later claimed that “it much grieved us to shed the blood of those whose good we ever intended.” In truth, however, there were some Pilgrims who felt no such misgivings. Miles Standish had been itching to settle a score with Wituwamat ever since the Massachusett warrior had snubbed him at Manomet. For the captain, the matter was personal rather than diplomatic, and he was going to make the most of it. Bradford, normally careful to restrain his combative military officer, appears to have given Standish free rein. It was agreed that the captain should make an example of “that bloody and bold villain” and bring back Wituwamat’s head to Plymouth, “that he might be a warning and terror to all of that disposition.”

Standish put together a force that included Hobbamock and seven Englishmen; any more and the Massachusetts might suspect what the English were about. They would sail for Wessagussett pretending to be on a trading mission. Instead of launching a full-scale attack, they would, after secretly warning Weston’s men, “take [the Indians] in such traps as they lay for others.”

They were scheduled to leave the same day Pratt staggered out of the forest. Standish postponed their departure so that he could extract as much information as possible from the young man. The Pilgrims found Pratt’s story “good encouragement to proceed in our intendments,” and with the help of a fair wind, Standish and his men left the next day for Wessagussett.

Before landing, they stopped at the
Swan,
anchored just offshore. The little vessel was deserted, but after Standish’s men fired off a musket, the ship’s master and several other men from Wessagussett walked down to the water’s edge. They had been gathering groundnuts and seemed distressingly nonchalant given what the Pilgrims had been led to believe. Standish asked why they had left the ship without anyone on guard. “[L]ike men senseless of their own misery,” they replied that they had no fear of the Indians. In fact, many of them were living with the Massachusetts in their wigwams. If this was indeed the case, then why was Standish about to launch an attack? Had Pratt simply told the Pilgrims what they wanted to hear?

Standish was not about to allow anything—not even evidence that all was peace at Wessagussett—dissuade him from his plan. He marched to the fort and demanded to speak to whoever was in charge. Once he’d done his best to quell the Indians’ suspicions, he explained, he was going to kill as many of them as he could. With the completion of the mission, the settlers could either return with him to Plymouth or take the
Swan
up to Maine. Standish had even brought along some corn to sustain them during their voyage east.

It was their hunger, not their fear of the Indians, that was the chief concern of Weston’s men. It was not surprising, then, that they quickly embraced Standish’s plan, since it meant they would soon have something to eat. Swearing all to secrecy, the captain instructed them to tell those who were living outside the settlement to return as soon as possible to the safety of the fort. Unfortunately, the weather had deteriorated, and the rain and wind prompted several of the English to remain in the warmth of the Indians’ wigwams.

In the meantime, a warrior approached the fort under the pretense of trading furs with Standish. The fiery military officer tried to appear welcoming and calm, but it was clear to the Indian that Standish was up to no good. Once back among his friends, he reported that “he saw by his eyes that [the captain] was angry in his heart.”

This prompted the Massachusett pniese Pecksuot to approach Hobbamock. He told the Pokanoket warrior that he knew exactly what Standish was up to and that he and Wituwamat were unafraid of him. “[L]et him begin when he dare,” he told Hobbamock; “he shall not take us unawares.”

Later that day, both Pecksuot and Wituwamat brashly walked up to Standish. Pecksuot was a tall man, and he made a point of looking disdainfully down on the Pilgrim military officer. “You are a great captain,” he said, “yet you are but a little man. Though I be no sachem, yet I am of great strength and courage.”

For his part, Wituwamat continued to whet and sharpen the same knife he had so ostentatiously flourished in Standish’s presence several weeks before at Manomet. On the knife’s handle was the carved outline of a woman’s face. “I have another at home,” he told Standish, “wherewith I have killed both French and English, and that has a man’s face on it; by and by these two must marry.”

“These things the captain observed,” Winslow wrote, “yet bore with patience for the present.”

The next day, Standish lured both Wituwamat and Pecksuot into one of the settlement’s houses for a meal. In addition to corn, he had brought along some pork. The two Massachusett pnieses were wary of the Plymouth captain, but they were also very hungry, and, as Standish had anticipated, pork was a delicacy that the Indians found almost impossible to resist. Wituwamat and Pecksuot were accompanied by Wituwamat’s brother and a friend, along with several women. Besides Standish, there were three other Pilgrims and Hobbamock in the room.

Once they had all sat down and begun to eat, the captain signaled for the door to be shut. He turned to Pecksuot and grabbed the knife from the string around the pniese’s neck. Before the Indian had a chance to respond, Standish had begun stabbing him with his own weapon. The point was needle sharp, and Pecksuot’s chest was soon riddled with blood-spurting wounds. As Standish and Pecksuot struggled, the other Pilgrims assaulted Wituwamat and his companion. “[I]t is incredible,” Winslow wrote, “how many wounds these two pnieses received before they died, not making any fearful noise, but catching at their weapons and striving to the last.”

All the while, Hobbamock stood by and watched. Soon the three Indians were dead, and Wituwamat’s teenage brother had been taken captive. A smile broke out across Hobbamock’s face, and he said, “Yesterday, Pecksuot, bragging of his own strength and stature, said though you were a great captain, yet you were but a little man. Today I see you are big enough to lay him on the ground.”

But the killing had just begun. Wituwamat’s brother was quickly hanged. There was another company of Pilgrims elsewhere in the settlement, and Standish sent word to them to kill any Indians who happened to be with them. As a result, two more were put to death. In the meantime, Standish and his cohorts found another Indian and killed him.

With Hobbamock and some of Weston’s men in tow, Standish headed out in search of more Indians. They soon came across sachem Obtakiest and a group of Massachusett warriors. Situated between the English and the Indians was a rise of land that would afford a strategic advantage, and both groups began to run for it. Standish reached it first, and the Indians quickly scattered along the edge of the nearby forest, each man hiding behind a tree. Arrows were soon whizzing through the brisk afternoon air, most of them aimed at Standish and Hobbamock. Being a pniese, and therefore supposedly invulnerable, Hobbamock looked scornfully at the Indians behind the trees. Throwing off his coat, he began to chase after them, and most of them fled so quickly that none of the English could keep up with them.

There was a powwow who stood his ground and aimed an arrow at Standish. They later learned that he had been one of the original instigators of the plot against them. The captain and another Englishman fired simultaneously at the powwow, and the bullets broke his arm. With that, the remaining Indians, which included sachem Obtakiest, ran for the shelter of a nearby swamp, where they paused to hurl taunts and expletives at the Plymouth captain. Standish challenged the sachem to fight him man-to-man, but after a final exchange of insults, Obtakiest and the others disappeared into the swamp.

Several women had been captured during the scuffle with Pecksuot and Wituwamat. Now that the killing spree had finally come to an end, Standish decided to release the women, even though he knew there were at least three of Weston’s men still living with the Indians. If he had kept these women as hostages, Standish could easily have bargained for the Englishmen’s lives. But killing Indians, not saving lives, appears to have been the captain’s chief priority at Wessagussett, and all three Englishmen were later executed.

Now that Standish’s terrifying whirlwind of violence had come to an apparent end, the vast majority of the Wessagussett survivors decided to sail for Monhegan. The Pilgrims waited until the
Swan
had cleared Massachusetts-Bay, then turned their shallop south for Plymouth, with the head of Wituwamat wrapped in a piece of white linen.

Standish arrived at Plymouth to a hero’s welcome. After being “received with joy,” the captain and his men marched up to the newly completed fort, where Wituwamat’s head was planted on a pole on the fort’s roof. As it turned out, the fort contained its first prisoner: an Indian who had been sent in pursuit of Phineas Pratt. Unable to find Pratt, who had saved his own life by becoming so hopelessly lost, the Indian had continued past Plymouth to Manomet, then backtracked to the English settlement in hopes of obtaining some information about the Pilgrims. By this time, Standish had already departed for Wessagussett, and suspicious of the Indian’s motives, Bradford had thrown him in irons until the captain’s return.

The Indian was released from his shackles and brought out for examination. After looking “piteously on the head” of Wituwamat, the captive confessed everything. The plot had not originally been sachem Obtakiest’s idea. There were five—Wituwamat, Peksuot, and three powwows, including the one Standish had injured at Wessagussett—who had convinced their sachem to launch an attack against the Pilgrims. Bradford released the prisoner on the condition that he carry a message to Obtakiest: If the sachem dared to continue in “the like courses,” Bradford vowed, “he would never suffer him or his to rest in peace, till he had utterly consumed them.”