Mayflower (11 page)

T
HE
. M
AYFLOWER
LAFT
Provincetown Harbor on Friday, December 15. Headwinds from the northwest prevented the ship from entering Plymouth Harbor until the following day. Both Plymouth Harbor and Duxbury Bay to the north are contained within two interlocking sickles of sand: the Gurnet, an extension of Duxbury Beach, to the north and Long Beach to the south. The
Mayflower
anchored just within Goose Point at the end of Long Beach, a mile and a half from Plymouth Rock.

Not until Wednesday, December 20, after three more days of exploration, did they decide where to begin building a permanent settlement. Some voted for Clark’s Island, their refuge during the shallop’s first night in the harbor, as the safest spot in case of Indian attack. Others thought a river almost directly across from the island was more suitable. Unfortunately Jones River, which they named for the
Mayflower
’s master, was not deep enough to handle a vessel of more than 30 tons (the
Mayflower
was 180 tons), and the settlement site (the current location of Kingston) would have been difficult to defend against the Indians. That left the area near the Rock.

The future site of Plymouth Plantation had much to recommend it. Rising up from shore was a 165-foot hill that provided a spectacular view of the surrounding coastline. On a clear day, it was even possible to see the tip of Cape Cod, almost thirty miles away. A stout, cannon-equipped fort on this hill would provide all the security they could ever hope for.

The presence of the Rock as a landing place was yet another plus. Even more important was the “very sweet brook” that flowed beside it, carving out a channel that allowed small vessels to sail not only to the Rock but up what they called Town Brook. Just inside the brook’s entrance was a wide salt marsh where, Bradford wrote, “we may harbor our shallops and boats exceedingly well.” There were also several freshwater springs along the high banks of the brook that bubbled with “as good water as can be drunk”—an increasingly important consideration now that they were forced to ration what remained of the beer.

The biggest advantage of the area was that it had already been cleared by the Indians. And yet nowhere could they find evidence of any recent Native settlements. The Pilgrims saw the eerie vacancy of this place as a miraculous gift from God. But if a miracle had indeed occurred at Plymouth, it had taken the form of a holocaust almost beyond human imagining.

Just three years before, even as the Pilgrims had begun preparations to settle in America, there had been between one thousand and two thousand people living along these shores. As a map drawn by Samuel Champlain in 1605 shows, the banks of the harbor had been dotted with wigwams, each with a curling plume of wood smoke rising from the hole in its roof and with fields of corn, beans, and squash growing nearby. Dugout canoes made from hollowed-out pine trees plied the waters, which in summer were choked with bluefish and striped bass. The lobsters were so numerous that the Indians plucked them from the shallows of the harbor. The mudflats were so thick with buried clams that it was impossible to walk across the shore without being drenched by squirting bivalves.

Then, from 1616 to 1619, disease brought this centuries-old community to an end. No witnesses recorded what happened along the shores of Plymouth, but in the following decade the epidemics returned, and Roger Williams told how entire villages became emptied of people. “I have seen a poor house left alone in the wild woods,” Williams wrote, “all being fled, the living not able to bury the dead. So terrible is the apprehension of an infectious disease, that not only persons, but the houses and the whole town, take flight.”

No Native dwellings remained in Plymouth in the winter of 1620, but gruesome evidence of the epidemic was scattered all around the area. “[T]heir skulls and bones were found in many places lying still above the ground…,” Bradford wrote, “a very sad spectacle to behold.” It was here, on the bone-whitened hills of Plymouth, that the Pilgrims hoped to begin a new life.

Samuel de Champlain’s map of Plymouth Harbor

They decided to build their houses on what is called today Cole’s Hill overlooking the salt marsh. Situated between the shore and the much higher hill, soon to be known as Fort Hill, Cole’s Hill was flat enough to accommodate a small settlement and was easily accessible from the brook. That night twenty people remained on shore. They planned to begin building houses the next morning.

But Thursday, December 21, proved so stormy that the
Mayflower
was forced to set an additional anchor. The people on shore were without food, so despite the gale-force winds, the shallop set out from the
Mayflower
“with much ado with provisions.” The terrible weather persisted throughout the following day, making it impossible to begin work on the houses. In the meantime, the wind-lashed
Mayflower
had become a grim hospital ship. In addition to colds, coughs, and fevers, scurvy tormented the passengers. James Chilton had died even before the
Mayflower
arrived in Plymouth Harbor. That Thursday, Richard Britteridge passed away, followed two days later by Christopher Martin’s stepson Solomon Prower. On Friday morning Mary Allerton gave birth to a stillborn son.

Not until Saturday, December 23, were they able to transport a work party from the
Mayflower
to shore. With their axes and saws they felled trees and carried the timber to the building site. The fact that Monday, December 25, was Christmas Day meant little to the Pilgrims, who believed that religious celebrations of this sort were a profanation of the true word of Christ. Of more importance to them, December 25 was the day they erected the frame of their first house. “[N]o man rested that day,” Bradford wrote. But toward sunset, the familiar cries of Indians erupted in the surrounding forest. The Pilgrims took up their muskets and stared tensely into the deepening darkness as the cries echoed briefly and died away.

Ahead of them was an unknown wilderness that they could not help but inhabit with all their fears. Behind them was the harbor and the distant
Mayflower,
lights beginning to twinkle through her cabin windows, a smudge of smoke rising up from the galley stove in the forecastle. What would have astounded a modern sensibility transported back to that Christmas Day in 1620 was the absolute quiet of the scene. Save for the gurgling of Town Brook, the lap of waves against the shore, and the wind in the bare winter branches, everything was silent as they listened and waited.

The Pilgrims’ intensely felt spiritual lives did not prevent them from believing in witches and warlocks and living with the constant fear that Satan and his minions were
out there,
conspiring against them. It was a fear that must have been difficult to contain as they stared into the deepening gloom of the American night.

After waiting a few more tense minutes, they decided to send the shallop back to the
Mayflower,
leaving the usual number of twenty ashore. That night they were drenched by yet another rainstorm.

It took them two more weeks to complete the first building, a twenty-foot-square “common house.” It didn’t have a proper foundation—there just wasn’t the manpower or the time for such a luxury. Known as an earthfast house, the Pilgrims’ first structure probably possessed walls of hewn tree trunks interwoven with branches and twigs that were cemented together with clay. This wattle-and-daub construction was typical of farmers’ cottages in rural England, as was the building’s thatched roof, which was made of cattails and reeds from the nearby marsh. The house’s tiny, barely translucent windows were made of linseed-coated parchment. The chimney—if, in fact, the house did have a chimney instead of a simple hole in the roof—was a primitive ductwork made of four soot-blackened boards that funneled the smoke from an open fire on the dirt floor. It was a most dark and smoky space, but for the first time, the Pilgrims had a real roof over their heads.

A steeple-crowned beaver hat attributed to Constance Hopkins

A cooking pot that may have come to America with Miles and Rose Standish

The wicker cradle reputed to have been brought to America by William and Susanna White