The Pilgrim (20 page)

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 water, 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.

I said, “God forgive us for being felons.”

Butts said, “A felon, you say? A felon? Fie, sir! I am already a murderer. My mother died on a January night when I was twelve years old, and my drunken father cast me out onto a freezing street in the Borough of Colchester in Essex. I lived upon the victuals that I stole from starving beggar children smaller than me. Once, when I hadn't eaten in three days, I strangled a red-haired girl half my age for a stale crust of bread that she was saving for her supper.”

• • •

We made our way back to Wessagusset, wherein there was now a score of Indians living in small wattle-and-daub houses in the glade around the stockade. There were no sentinels standing watch at the gates.

We found Captain Green and three sailors tending eight prostrate men stricken with the catarrh. They were all suffering from high fever, chills, running at the nose, and chronic coughs. Green and his sailors were weak from hunger and hadn't changed the sick men's soiled bedclothes in three days.

I asked Captain Green why there were not sentinels in the stockade. He said, “I'm ashamed to say that the men will not take orders from me.”

Rigdale and I set about changing the foul bedclothes. Butts went off with Martin Hook to gather shellfish on the muddy beach.

Butts said, “I dare not steal any corn for a while from the Indians. They are on their guard. I'm starved for
nokake
. Look at me! I am all skin and bones!”

Indeed, Butts looked thinner. His cheekbones now protruded from his face.

Rigdale and I concealed our stolen corn in our hats. Green and his three sailors shared their victuals with us: ground nuts, acorns, mussels, and clams. The four men shuffled along with their heads bowed, gasping for breath. Their gums bled, and their eyesight had deteriorated. Green could not see objects farther away than the length of his arms.

Two of his sailors, Andrew Kellway and a boy named Nicholas Pittfold, were stricken by the catarrh. Rigdale and I nursed them for six days. Pittfold's lungs became congested. He sank into a delirium and cried out, “Anon, anon! I'll come to you by and by.” Then he said, “Bid me, farewell, mother.”

I said, “Go to sleep, my son, go to sleep.”

He brought forth a guttural, gurgling death rattle from deep in his throat and died.

Captain Green told me that, like himself, Pittfold was a member of the Church of England and would be buried according to its rites. Pratt made a coffin. Green ordered a grave dug in the glade without the south gate and conducted the funeral according to the Book of Common Prayer. Held late in the afternoon of the same day, it was attended by two score of our famished company, many of whom were stricken by scurvy and the bloody flux. Some had swelled faces; others had sunken cheeks covered with black stubble. Rigdale and I absented ourselves from the papist service.

Kellway died the next morning at about four of the clock. Six of us had barely enough strength to dig a shallow grave. He was hastily buried without a coffin next to Pittfold in the freezing rain. Green conducted the lengthy service of the Church of England that was attended by five of Kellway's friends. Afterwards, one of them named John Sheave asked me about Puritan funerals, and I explained that we Separatists consider them, like marriages, to be civil, not religious services.