The Landing of the Pilgrims (6 page)

They soon came out on the beach, where they sighted the
Mayflower
. They fired off their muskets and were welcomed home by Masters Jones and Carver, who were waiting on shore with the longboat.

It was late November and the bleak northern winter was upon them. Landward lay the unknown wilderness where they must soon find a place for their settlement. The shallop was now seaworthy and ready to take the expedition down the Cape. Master Jones was made the leader of a party that would search for a good site. It consisted of ten sailors and twenty-four men from among the passengers.

As the shallop ran down the coast through a wild sea, it blew bitter cold with snow. The spray froze to the men’s clothing till they were covered with ice. A landing party went ashore at the place of the First Discovery, which they called appropriately Cold Harbor (the Pamet River). All day they marched up and down through the rugged snow-covered hills.

That night the hungry marchers feasted under the pines on three fat geese and six ducks they had killed. They slept in the snow by a fragrant juniper fire under a windward barricade.

The next morning they crossed the river in an abandoned Indian canoe and found the place where they had dug up the baskets of corn (Hopkins’ Cliff). Again they dug, breaking through the frozen ground with their cutlasses and levers until they found ten more baskets of precious seed corn.

“And sure it was God’s Providence that we found this corn; for else we know not how we should have done.”

More bad weather was coming and Master Jones grew anxious for his ship, so he went back with the sick members of the party and the baskets of corn. Before he left, he promised to return the next day with spades and mattocks.

The eighteen men who remained pushed on through the woods, finding a broad path that they thought might lead to an Indian village. The musketeers lighted their match cords to be ready for action, but the road proved to be only a deer path leading nowhere.

As they came out of the woods onto open, level ground, the men found old boards heaped on a long mound that looked like a grave. Digging down, they unearthed rush mats, bowls, trays, and dishes, a bow and a painted and carved stick,
then a new mat, and under that two bundles. In the larger bundle, wrapped in a sailor’s blouse and breeches, were the bones and skull of a man. The skull had strands of fine yellow hair still on it and some of the flesh unconsumed.

The discoverers looked at one another in wonder. What was the mystery behind this blond skull in the bottom of a lonely Indian grave on desolate Cape Cod?

Had this white man been a great chief, or was he a shipwrecked sailor who had been murdered? What strange tales about the wilderness, as it was before the
Mayflower
came, could these bones tell? In the other bundle were the bones of a child with wampum necklaces and bracelets. The men took some of the trinkets and covered the graves.

Then they made another discovery: two round lodges, scarcely visible under the blanket of snow. Inside the lodges were all the objects of an Indian household, including finely woven mats and earthen pots that had recently been in use. The discoverers took away what they fancied and, as it was growing dark, they hurried down to the shore, went aboard the shallop, and reached the
Mayflower
that night.

As the men told of their adventures and of the mystery of the Blond Skull, Elder Brewster’s Christian conscience twitched uneasily. They had robbed the Indian graves and stolen the natives’
corn, but he promised himself that “As soon as we can meet with them, we will give them full satisfaction.
Thus much for our second discovery.”

(December 1620)

November had passed. Winter lay over the Cape and the weather worsened. Each day there were fewer provisions. The sailors aboard the
Mayflower
were impatient to start on the return voyage to England. The Pilgrims were anxious to find a safe harbor and a good place to build a settlement.

Robert Coppin, the ship’s pilot, said he could take them to a good harbor across the bay where he had been on a previous voyage. The place was called Thieves’ Harbor because an Indian had there stolen a harpoon from them.

For a second time the shallop put off from the
Mayflower
and ran down the Cape coast before a stiff east wind that blew ever colder. The sea spray froze in the men’s beards. Miles Standish and his musketeers wrapped their heavy cloaks around their muskets to keep them dry. Brewster and
Carver huddled in the stern and the pilot, Coppin, manned the tiller. In all there were sixteen men. Two seasick men hung limply over the gunwales.

After a twenty-mile run they came to a sandy point of land running out into the Bay (Billingsgate Point) and found a fair harbor (Wellfleet Bay). As the sailors sought to make a landing among the sand flats, they spied, away down the beach, a little group of figures crowded around some dark object. When the seamen hailed them, they quickly disappeared into the woods.

Wading over the sand flats, the discoverers came ashore and built a landward barricade and a fire. Five miles inland they saw a smoke column rise in the evening sky from an Indian signal fire. The Indians had seen them and were warning their people. By this time, the discoverers were too tired to worry about them, so after a lean supper they slept on the frozen ground.

In the morning the party divided, some going in the shallop to explore the coast and the rest marching inland to seek a suitable place of settlement.

In the sea wash along the beach they came upon the fifteen-foot body of a strange sea creature. “It is a kind of whale called a Grampus,” said Coppin, cutting a strip of flesh with his knife from the carcass. It was two inches thick of solid fat.

Farther down the beach they found another Grampus half stripped of his coat of fat. The sand
about the creature’s body was printed with the feet of the Indians the men had seen from the boat. “We will call this place Grampus Bay,” said Captain Standish.

All day the men ranged over the rough country seeking a site for their New World home, but they found none. Their exploring was not useless, however, for it taught them one thing. Old corn fields, abandoned lodges, and a melancholy Indian cemetery, surrounded by a high palisade, were evidence enough that the mysterious Indians were near.

As the red sun sank in the gray west, the discoverers marched wearily back to the sea coast. Thank heaven they could see the brown sail of the shallop standing off shore!

As they made camp, there was a cheerful feeling in finding one another safe again. After warming their numb hands at the juniper fire behind the rough barricade, they ate their bit of cheese and biscuit. Soon they were asleep with their muskets under their cloaks.

It seemed they had hardly closed their eyes when a voice roused them. “Wake up, Captain! The Indians be upon us.” The sentinel was shaking Standish violently by the shoulder. “To arms, to arms!”

The cry brought every man to his feet in a moment. From the woods came a high-pitched yell in a wild inhuman cadence. The sentinels fired a
couple of musket shots toward the sound, and the crying suddenly ceased.

“It’s only the song of the wild wolves,” muttered a seaman, who had met wolves before in Newfoundland.

The fire was built up, a sentinel added to the watch, and they slept on uneasily through the night.

Before dawn the men turned out and knelt in a circle while Brewster said the morning prayers. As the cook prepared breakfast, several men took their muskets down to the shore, where they left them till the shallop would come in on the tide.

Suddenly a chorus of wild yells burst from the land side. They were the same yelping cries they had heard at midnight, but this time there was no mistaking the terrible Indian war cry. A shower of arrows fell around the campfire.

The four men at the barricade who had kept their muskets lighted their fuses at the fire, while the rest ran for the shore where they had left their firearms. Several shadowy figures broke from the woods in pursuit, and then turned and ran, as a half-dozen soldiers armed with cutlasses charged out from behind the barricade.

Captain Standish called to the shallop and the heartening cry came back, “Well, well. Be of good courage,” as the sailors fired two or three shots. Then someone called from the shallop for a firebrand to light their match cords. A soldier
picked a brand from the fire and ran down to the shallop. Arrows showered on the barricade and the war cries rose louder.

In the dim light, the men firing from the barricade could see a huge Indian behind the nearest tree. As the bullets whizzed about him, he kept coolly shooting his bow, till a shot hit the tree and sent splinters flying about his head. He gave a terrific yell and ran as the whole band vanished into the forest. The Englishmen followed them for a quarter of a mile, keeping up the firing.

The fight was over. The men came back and gathered up the arrows to send to England as a grim souvenir of how things were in New England.

The location was the present Eastham.

(December 1620)

The First Encounter was not the greatest battle of history, but for the hatters and weavers of Leyden it was a fiery baptism in peril and danger. As they sat in the shallop running before the wind, they recounted to one another all the excitements of their great adventure.

By mid-afternoon the shallop was bucking the rough sea like a wild horse and the wind bellying her sail in a full arc. It began to rain. Then the rain changed to snow. A great wave tore off the shallop’s rudder, leaving the tiller useless in Pilot Coppin’s hands. Two seamen grabbed up oars and held the little boat desperately on her course. The wind rose until the straining mast cracked and broke in three places.

For a few desperate moments it seemed that the shallop would capsize, but the seamen cut loose the
tangle of sail and tackle and she slowly righted herself.

“Good cheer, my hearties,” shouted Coppin. “I can see the harbor, and we shall soon be in.”

As the shallop came in to shore on the tide and wind, they could see the breakers dashing against the rocky cove. Coppin peered through the dusk. He realized he was mistaken and confused.