The Mayflower and the Pilgrims' New World* (14 page)

Once standish and Hopkins returned home, they decided it was time to mount “our great ordnances” on the hill. On Wednesday of the following week, Christopher Jones supervised the transportation of the “great guns” from the
Mayflower
—close to half a dozen iron cannons that ranged between four and eight feet in length and weighed as much as half a ton. With the cannons in place, each capable of hurling iron balls as big as three and a half inches in diameter as far as 1,700 yards, what was once a ramshackle collection of houses was on its way to becoming a well-defended fortress.

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Although the architectural details in this drawing are inaccurate (for example, the first houses had no chimneys), this nineteenth-century depiction of the Pilgrim settlement gives a good impression of Plymouth's topography and landscape.

Jones and the sailors had brought along a freshly killed goose, crane, and mallard, and once the day's work was completed, they all sat down to a feast and were, in Bradford's words, “kindly and friendly together.” Jones had originally intended to return to England as soon as the Pilgrims found a settlement site. But once disease began to ravage his crew, he realized that he must remain in Plymouth Harbor “till he saw his men begin to recover.”

In early March, there were several days of unseasonably warm weather, and “birds sang in the woods most pleasantly.” At precisely one o'clock on March 3, they heard their first rumble of American thunder. “It was strong and great claps,” they wrote, “but short.” They later realized that even though temperatures had been bitterly cold during their earlier explorations along Cape Cod, the winter had been, for the most part, unusually mild—a lucky break that undoubtedly prevented even more of them from dying.

On Friday, March 16, they had yet another meeting about military matters. And as had happened the last time they had gathered for such a purpose, they were interrupted by the Indians. But this time there was only one of them atop Watson's Hill, and unlike the previous two Indians, this man appeared to be without hesitation or fear. He began to walk toward them “very boldly.” The alarm was sounded, and still the Indian continued walking down Watson's Hill and across the brook. Once he'd climbed the path to Cole's Hill, he came past the row of houses toward the rendezvous, where the women and children had been assembled in case of attack. It was clear that if no one stopped him, the Indian was going to walk right into the entrance of the rendezvous. Finally, some of the men stepped into the Indian's path and indicated that he was not to go in. Apparently enjoying the fuss he had created, the Indian “saluted” them and with great enthusiasm spoke the now famous words, “Welcome, Englishmen!”

SIX

In a Dark and Dismal Swamp

THEY COULD NOT help but stare. He was so different from themselves. For one thing, he towered over them, “a tall straight man.” His hair was black, short in front and long in back, and his face was hairless. Interestingly, the Pilgrims made no mention of his skin color in their writings.

What impressed them most was that he was “stark naked,” with just a fringed strap of leather around his waist. When a cold gust of wind kicked up, one of the Pilgrims was moved to throw his coat over the Indian's bare shoulders.

He was armed with a bow and just two arrows, “the one headed, the other unheaded.” The Pilgrims do not seem to have attached any special significance to them, but the arrows may have represented the alternatives of war and peace. In any event, they offered him something to eat. He immediately requested beer.

With their supplies running short, they offered him some “strong water”—perhaps the aqua vitae they'd drunk during their first days on Cape Cod—as well as some biscuits, butter, cheese, pudding, and a slice of roasted duck, “all of which he liked well.”

He introduced himself as samoset—at least that was how the Pilgrims heard it—but he may actually have been telling them his English name, somerset. He was not, he explained in broken English, from this part of New England. He was a sachem from Pemaquid Point in Maine, near Monhegan Island, a region frequented by English fishermen. It was from these fishermen, many of whom he named, that he'd learned to speak English. Despite occasional trouble understanding him, the Pilgrims hung on samoset's every word as he told them about their new home.

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A nineteenth-century engraving of the Pilgrims meeting Samoset. While the Pilgrim and Native American dress here is based on later stereotypes, this image does show the cultural differences between the two groups.

He explained that the harbor's name was Patuxet, and that just about every person who had once lived there had “died of an extraordinary plague.” The supreme leader of the region was named Massasoit, who lived in a place called Pokanoket about forty miles to the southwest. samoset said that the Nausets controlled the part of Cape Cod where the Pilgrims had stolen the corn. The Nausets were “ill affected toward the English” after Hunt had abducted twenty or so of their men back in 1614. He also said that there was another Indian back in Pokanoket named squanto, who spoke even better English than he did.

With darkness approaching, the Pilgrims were ready for their guest to leave. As a practical matter, they had nowhere for him to sleep; in addition, they were not yet sure whether they could trust him. But samoset made it clear he wanted to spend the night. Perhaps because they assumed he'd fear abduction and quickly leave, they offered to take him out to the
Mayflower.
samoset cheerfully called their bluff and climbed into the shallop. Claiming that high winds and low tides prevented them from leaving shore, the Pilgrims finally allowed him to spend the night with stephen Hopkins and his family. samoset left the next morning, promising to return in a few days with some of Massasoit's men.

 

◆◆◆ All that winter, Massasoit had watched and waited. From the Nausets he had learned of the Pilgrims' journey along the bay side of Cape Cod and their eventual arrival at Patuxet. His own warriors had kept him updated as to the progress of their various building projects, and despite the Pilgrims' secret burials, he undoubtedly knew that many of the English had died over the winter.

For as long as any Indians could remember, European fishermen and explorers had been visiting New England, but these people were different. First of all, there were women and children—probably the first European women and children the Indians had ever seen. They were also behaving unusually. Instead of attempting to trade with the Indians, they kept to themselves and seemed much more interested in building a settlement. These English people were here to stay.

Massasoit was unsure what to do next. A little over a year before, the sailors aboard an English ship had killed a large number of his people for no reason. As a consequence, Massasoit had felt compelled to attack the explorer Thomas Dermer when he arrived the following summer with squanto at his side, and most of Dermer's men had been killed in fights on Cape Cod and Martha's Vineyard. squanto had been taken prisoner on the Vineyard, but now he was with Massasoit in Pokanoket. squanto had told him of his years in Europe, and once the
Mayflower
appeared at Provincetown Harbor and made its way to Plymouth, he had offered his services as an interpreter. But Massasoit was not yet sure whose side squanto was on.

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Early-twentieth-century painting of Massasoit.

Over the winter, Massasoit gathered together the region's powwows, or shamans, for a three-day meeting “in a dark and dismal swamp.” swamps were where the Indians went in time of war. They provided a natural shelter for the sick and old; they were also highly spiritual places, where unseen spirits mixed with the hoots of owls.

Massasoit's first impulse was to curse the English. Bradford later learned that the powwows had first attempted to “execrate them with their conjurations.” Powwows communicated with the spirit world in an extremely physical manner, through what the English described as “horrible outcries, hollow bleatings, painful wrestlings, and smiting their own bodies.” Massasoit's powwows were probably not the first and certainly not the last Native Americans to turn their magic on the English. To the north, at the mouth of the Merrimack River, lived Passaconaway, a sachem who was also a powwow—an unusual combination that gave him extraordinary powers. It was said he could “make the water burn, the rocks move, the trees dance, metamorphise himself into a flaming man.”

But not even Passaconaway was able to injure the English. In 1660, he admitted to his people, “I was as much an enemy to the English at their first coming into these parts, as anyone whatsoever, and did try all ways and means possible to have destroyed them, at least to have prevented them sitting down here, but I could in no way effect it; ... therefore I advise you never to contend with the English, nor make war with them.” At some point, Massasoit's powwows appear to have made a similar recommendation.

The powwows were not the only ones who discussed what to do with the Pilgrims. There was also squanto. Ever since the appearance of the
Mayflower,
the former captive had begun to work his own kind of magic on Massasoit, insisting that the worst thing he could do was to attack the Pilgrims. Not only did they have muskets and cannons, they possessed the seventeenth-century equivalent of a weapon of mass destruction: the plague. At some point, squanto began to insist that the Pilgrims had the ability to unleash disease on their enemies. If Massasoit became an ally to the Pilgrims, he would suddenly be in a position to free the Pokanokets from the Narragansetts. “[E]nemies that were [now] too strong for him,” squanto promised, “would be constrained to bow to him.”

Reluctantly, Massasoit decided that he must “make friendship” with the English. To do so, he needed an interpreter, and squanto—the only one fluent in both English and Massachusett, the language of the Pokanoket—assumed that he was the man for the job. Though he'd been swayed by squanto's advice, Massasoit didn't want to place his faith in the former captive, whom he regarded as a trickster with selfish motives. so he first sent samoset, a visiting sachem, to the Pilgrim settlement.