The Mayflower and the Pilgrims' New World* (7 page)

As had been true for more than a decade, it was Pastor John Robinson who pointed them in the direction they ultimately followed. In his farewell letter, Robinson had seen the need to create a government not based on religion. With so many strangers in their midst, there was no other way. They must “become a body politic, using amongst yourselves civil government,” i.e., they must all agree to submit to the laws drawn up by elected officials. Just as a spiritual covenant had marked the beginning of their congregation in Leiden, a civil covenant would provide the basis for government in America.

Written clearly and briefly, the Mayflower Compact bears the unmistakable signs of Robinson's influence, and it is worth quoting in full:

◆
A writing cabinet said to have been brought on the
Mayflower
by the White family in 1620.

They were nearing the end of a long and frightening voyage. They were bound for a place about which they knew nothing. It was almost winter. They didn't have enough food. some of them were sick, and two had already died. still others were threatening to leave, which would have probably meant the end of the settlement and, most likely, their deaths. The Leideners might have looked to their military officer, Miles standish, and ordered him to subdue the rebels. Instead, they put pen to paper and created a document that ranks with the Declaration of Independence and the United states Constitution as an essential American text.

But there was one more critical decision to make. They must choose a leader. The Leideners were barely a majority, but they could be counted on to vote together, guaranteeing that their leader would
not
be the
Mayflower
's governor, Christopher Martin. The only other person aboard the
Mayflower
who had played a central role in organizing the voyage was deacon John Carver. Carver was, according to one account, “a gentleman of singular piety, rare humility, and great condescendency.” He was also wealthy and had contributed much of his personal fortune to the congregation in Leiden and to this voyage. He and his wife, Katherine, who had buried two children in Leiden, had brought five servants on the
Mayflower,
one of whom was John Howland, who had almost died when he fell overboard. John Carver, it was decided, would be their governor.

As the Pilgrims created their compact, Master Jones pointed the
Mayflower
north. By nightfall, the ship was nearing the northern tip of Cape Cod. Jones wanted to enter Provincetown Harbor, known to them as Cape Cod Harbor, as close as possible to sunrise so that they'd have most of the day for exploring the surrounding countryside. But before they could set foot on land, every man who was healthy enough to write his name or, if he couldn't write, scratch out an X, had to sign the compact.

They awakened very early on the morning of November 11, 1620. sunrise was at 6:55 A.M., and the passengers probably met in the
Mayflower
's great cabin—approximately thirteen by seventeen feet, with two windows in the stern and one on either side. Beginning with John Carver and ending with the servant Edward Leister, a total of forty-one men signed the compact. Only nine adult males did not sign—some had been hired as seamen for only a year, while others were probably too sick to put pen to paper. The ceremony ended with the official selection of a leader. Bradford informs us that “they chose or rather confirmed, Mr. John Carver (a man godly and well approved amongst them) their Governor for that year.”

In the meantime, Master Jones guided the
Mayflower
into Provincetown Harbor, one of the largest and safest natural harbors in New England. Tucked within the curled wrist of Cape Cod, the harbor is so large that Jones estimated that it could accommodate at least a thousand ships.

But on the morning of November 11, they were the only vessel in the harbor. Jones found a deep spot with good holding ground for the anchor to grip. No matter from what direction the wind blew, the
Mayflower
was now safely at rest beside what is known today as Long Point.

Many of the passengers knew that Master Jones was already impatient to get them off his ship and head the
Mayflower
back for home. But the land that surrounded them was low and sandy—a most unpromising place for a plantation. Bradford called it “a hideous and desolate wilderness.” And then there were the native people of this place, who they feared were “readier to fill their sides full of arrows than otherwise.”

Years later, Bradford looked back to that first morning in America with wonder. “But here I cannot stay and make a pause,” he wrote, “and stand half amazed at this poor people's present condition.... [T]hey had now no friends to welcome them nor inns to entertain or refresh their weatherbeaten bodies; no houses or much less towns to repair to, to seek for succor.” And in the next four months, half of them would be dead.

◆
Nineteenth-century illustration of the Pilgrims landing in the New World.

But what truly astonished Bradford was that half of them would somehow survive. “What could now sustain them,” Bradford wrote, “but the spirit of God and His Grace? May not and ought not the children of these fathers rightly say: ‘Our fathers were Englishmen which came over this great ocean, and were ready to perish in this wilderness; but they cried unto the Lord, and He heard their voice and looked on their adversity.'”

It was time to go ashore. They had brought with them an open boat that could be both rowed and sailed, known as a shallop. About thirty-five feet long, it had been cut up into four pieces and stored below—where it had been “much bruised and shattered” over the course of the voyage. It would take many days for the carpenter to assemble and rebuild it. For the time being, they used the smaller ship's boat. Loaded with sixteen well-armed men, the boat made its way to shore.

It was only a narrow neck of land, but for these sea-weary men, it was enough. “[T]hey fell upon their knees,” Bradford wrote, “and blessed the God of Heaven who had brought them over the vast and furious ocean, and delivered them from all the perils and miseries thereof, again to set their feet on the firm and stable earth, their proper element.”

They wandered over hills of sand and found birch, holly, ash, and walnut trees. With darkness coming, they loaded their boat with red cedar. The freshly sawed wood “smelled very sweet and strong,” and that night aboard the
Mayflower,
for the first time in perhaps weeks, they enjoyed a warm fire.

It had been, for the most part, a reassuring introduction to the New World. Despite the barren landscape, they had found more trees than they would have come across back in Holland and even coastal England. But there had been something missing: Nowhere had they found any people.

THREE

The Plague

ABOUT SIXTY MILES southwest of Provincetown Harbor, at a place called Pokanoket at the head of Narragansett Bay in modern Rhode Island, lived Massasoit, the most powerful Native leader, or sachem, in the region. He was in the prime of his life—about thirty-five, strong and imposing, with the quiet dignity that was expected of a sachem.

During the three years that the Pilgrims had been organizing their voyage to America, Massasoit's people, the Pokanokets, had been devastated by disease. It may have been the bubonic plague, introduced by European fishermen in modern Maine. Whatever the disease was, it quickly spread south along the Atlantic seaboard to the eastern shore of Narragansett Bay, killing in some cases as many as 90 percent of the region's inhabitants. so many died so quickly that there was no one left to bury the dead. Portions of coastal New England that had once been as densely populated as western Europe were suddenly empty of people, with only the whitened bones of the dead to indicate that a community had once existed along these shores.

The Pokanokets had been particularly hard hit. Before the plague, they had numbered about twelve thousand, from which Massasoit could gather three thousand fighting men. After three years of disease, his force had been reduced to a few hundred warriors. Making it even worse was that the plague had not affected the Pokanokets' neighboring enemies, the Narragansetts. Their homeland was on the western portion of the bay, and they numbered about twenty thousand, with five thousand fighting men. Just recently, Massasoit and ten of his warriors had suffered the humiliation of being forced to pay homage to the Narragansetts, whose sachem, Canonicus, now considered the Pokanokets his subjects.