The Landing of the Pilgrims (11 page)

Christmas Day was no exception. That morning the newcomers came to the Governor and explained it was against their conscience to work on
Christmas Day. “Very well, until you learn better,” said the Governor as he marched off with the workers to the woods.

When the workers came home at noon, they found some of the newcomers playing games in the street, “some pitching ye bar and some at stoole-ball and suchlike sports.” The Governor gathered up the gaming implements and drily announced that it was against
his
conscience for some to play while others worked. Through the bleak winter months, the men soon learned that hard work was not a virtue in Plymouth. It was a necessity.

In March a meeting was called to plan the second spring planting. The Governor divided up their common land and gave to each his lot, together with his share of the seed corn. This had been carefully saved from the common supply. It was now clear that they would not have enough food to last until the harvest. For weeks to come they would again have to fight off starvation as best they could while they waited for the crops to ripen.

Although Bradford’s bold answer to Canonicus had discouraged the Narragansetts from making war, there was still danger. Standish pointed out that the little group of houses on the hill slope was unprotected. His plan was to build a log palisade to enclose the mount, as well as the town, down to the water’s edge. Everybody agreed to the plan.
Axmen felled the straight pine trunks, and others worked on the six-foot-deep trench encircling the town.

Within a month, a stout log palisade twelve feet high enclosed the town. At the corners were projecting bastions that commanded the sides. At sunset the gates were closed and a guard kept watch during the night.

Captain Standish was very proud of the new fortification. He proceeded to organize his fighting men into four companies with a leader for each. Each soldier was assigned his post for defense, in case of an attack or fire. From now on the settlers slept more peacefully in their beds at night.

(Spring 1622)

Miles Standish was not a captain to sit idly in the shelter of the new palisade. He decided they should let the Indians know that the English would not remain shut up in the town fearfully awaiting an attack. The Captain would go forth boldly among them, for Plymouth was badly in need of provisions and the Indians of Massachusetts were known to have much corn. The shallop was fitted out for this trip with trading goods, guns, and gunpowder.

The Captain and his ten musketeers, together with Squanto and Hobomok, sailed out of the harbor for Massachusetts Bay. As they rounded the point called Gernet’s Nose, the wind died down. Standish threw out the anchor while the men got out their oars.

Suddenly a distant cannon shot sounded across the water. Then another and then a third. It was a signal from Plymouth telling them to come back. They loaded their muskets and rowed with all speed.

At Plymouth they found every man and boy standing at his post prepared for an Indian attack. Squanto’s brother had come running into the town, his face covered with blood, to warn them that the Narragansetts, together with Corbitant and Massasoit, were on the way to attack the town. The Indians, he said, were close behind him.

All night they stood watch. No Indians appeared. The messenger who brought the news had disappeared. It was a false alarm.

Not long after, Hobomok came secretly to Standish, saying he knew that his chief, Massasoit, would not make war on the English. It was a plot by Squanto to turn the English against Massasoit.

When Standish said he could not believe this of their faithful friend, Squanto, Hobomok revealed that Squanto, for a long time, had been terrifying the Indians. It had been his boast that he had great power to influence the English to destroy the tribes. He had told them that the English kept the dreadful plague hidden in the ground. Only he could prevent them from loosing it on the Indians. Squanto was blackmailing the Indians and influencing them against Massasoit.

To prove his story, Hobomok said he would send his wife secretly to Massasoit’s village to discover whether he was plotting against the English. She came back with word from Massasoit that he always had and always would keep the peace treaty with his friends, the English. Squanto was a bad man and should die, Massasoit declared.

At this news, Standish angrily told Squanto that he deserved death. But he realized the Indian was too valuable to the English as an interpreter to be killed.

The expedition now set off again for Massachusetts and in a short time came back with a good supply of corn. On his return Standish found Massasoit in Plymouth, angrily demanding that Squanto be killed for his treachery. In fact Massasoit wanted to murder the traitor on the spot with his own ax. Bradford refused to surrender Squanto, saying that he was “the tongue of the English.” Without him they would not be able to talk with the Indians. Massasoit left in a rage.

A few days later messengers came from the Chief with Massasoit’s knife. With it the English should kill Squanto and send his severed head and hands to Massasoit. Squanto stood silently by, awaiting his fate. The Indians claimed that he was Massasoit’s subject and according to the peace treaty must be turned over to them.

At this moment a cannon shot announced a sail
on the horizon. The lookout reported that it appeared to be a pirate ship. The Governor ordered everyone on the alert. Bradford told the Indians that they must await his decision about Squanto.

The sail did not belong to a French pirate ship, but to a shallop with an English crew from one of Mr. Weston’s fishing vessels,
The Sparrow
. It had come to deliver seven passengers from Leyden. The visitors brought no supplies other than enough for the return of the shallop’s crew.

These new arrivals added seven more mouths for Plymouth to feed, besides the thirty-five men from the
Fortune
. The Plantation’s provisions were nearly exhausted.

In desperation, Bradford decided to send to the fishing fleet for provisions. He appointed Winslow to this difficult business. He had been a wise ambassador on all occasions.

Winslow now took the long trip up the east coast in the shallop and found the
Sparrow
and the fishing fleet. When he told them of Plymouth’s
desperate need, the fishermen gave him what they could spare. Winslow returned with enough food to provide a lean diet till harvest time.

In this crisis, Standish, Bradford, and Elder Brewster sat in the meeting house considering future plans. “The Indians, knowing of our poor condition, grow daily more insolent, and Massasoit hath taken much offense and cometh no more unto us as formerly,” said the Governor gloomily. Then he added, “Hunger and weakness doth greatly discourage our people.”

“And the sin of idleness will do worse,” said Captain Standish, rising and pacing the floor.

Brewster opened the great brass-studded Bible on the table before him.

“ ‘Lift up the hands that hang down, and strengthen ye the feeble knees,’ ” he read. “Thus sayeth the Prophet Isaiah.”

“Methinks this is the Lord’s counsel to us to arise and build a fort on top of the mount, and there place our cannon. It will greatly set back our enemies,” mused the Captain, looking out the window toward the mount.

“Such a fort could serve as a meeting house and would greatly encourage our people in their worship of God,” replied Elder Brewster vigorously.

At the town meeting every man’s vote was cast in favor of building the fort. Soon the hills echoed with the clamor of ax and saw and hammer. Work
took men’s minds off the gnawing emptiness under their belts. They talked gaily, or grimly, and jested as they worked. It gave them a lift of heart to see the wooden walls rise higher day by day.

May came, and with it planting time. Shifts of workers left the fort and went to the fields to set corn. On the flat roof of the fort were planted four cannons. Within were a goodly meeting hall, a gun room for muskets and ammunition, and a guardhouse where lawbreakers were to be kept.

“Now the fort is finished, we shall keep a guard there,” said Mr. Winslow to the Captain as they stood on the roof of the new building and looked out over their fields green with new corn. “It will utterly discourage the Indians from rising against us.”

One day toward the end of June, two ships sailed into Plymouth Harbor. They were the
Charity
and the
Swan
, sent by Mr. Weston in England to begin a plantation on Massachusetts Bay. The sixty newcomers asked to stay at Plymouth until their surveyors could find a good place to settle somewhere in Massachusetts.

The long-suffering colonists of Plymouth took these visitors into their homes and shared with them their lean rations in Christian charity. The Weston men proved themselves a graceless crew. Some helped to weed and tend the corn fields by day. Others by night stole and ate the unripe ears of corn.

At last this band of ruffians departed in the
Swan
for their new colony on the Bay, and the
Charity
returned to England. Before leaving for Massachusetts,
the newcomers left their sick in the care of surgeon Samuel Fuller at his own charge. As they recovered, the doctor sent them to Massachusetts.

Shortly after, the Bay Indians came to Bradford with bitter complaints that the newcomers were robbing the Indian corn fields. The Governor could do no more than advise the new settlers to deal honestly with the Indians. Before the coming of Weston’s men, the Plymouth settlers had planned to start a trading post on the Bay.

By August, the provisions at Plymouth were exhausted. Two more ships arrived—the
Discovery
, Thomas Jones, Master; and the
Sparrow
, a smaller ship belonging to Weston. The
Sparrow
carried a cargo of fish.

Captain Jones of the
Discovery
had plenty of supplies which he was willing to sell, at top prices, though he demanded in exchange beaver skins at below their current market value.

These unlooked-for provisions were enough to keep them till harvest time.

“Had not the Almighty in his all-ordering Providence, directed him to us; it would have gone worse with us than ever it had been, or after was.”

The unruly Weston colony at Wessagussett (Weymouth) on the Bay soon used up all their provisions. Winter was at hand. They sent to Plymouth, proposing that the two plantations join in trading along the coast with the Indians for corn. The Weston men would furnish their ship
Swan
for this purpose and the proceeds would be divided between them.

The Plymouth Colony agreed, but Standish, their usual leader, was sick with fever, and so Governor Bradford led the expedition. Squanto, too, went along, promising to guide the
Swan
around the Cape and through the shoals of Pollack’s Rip. Not long after they left the harbor, fierce winter storms beat down on them, and forced them to turn back. However, they traded with the Cape Indians and collected some twenty-eight hogsheads of corn.