USA > Massachusetts > Commonwealth history of Massachusetts, colony, province and state, volume 1 > Part 8
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III. Intheirjourney to the Kingdome of Namafchet, indefence of their greateff King Mallafoyt, againft the Narrobiggonfers, and torciangstbe Suppofed death of their Interpreter Tilquantum.
IIII. Their voyage to the Matfachufer's, and their entertainment there,
With an anfwer to all fuch obiectiops as are any way made againft the lawfulneffe of Enghith plantations in thofe parts.
G. 354. 52
17625
LONDON, Printed fordeim Rellame, " Marery be fold at his thop ar the two
From the Boston Public Library
MOURT'S RELATION CONTAINS THE EARLIEST EXTANT TEXT OF THE MAYFLOWER COMPACT
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THE LANDING
Nine weeks out, land was sighted which proved to be Cape Cod. Inasmuch as they were bound for the Hudson River they turned south, but encountering the dangerous shoals of Monomoy, they faced about and coasting along the Cape reached what is now Provincetown harbor November 21, after being at sea 67 days. There is no good reason to suppose that the change of destination came about through treachery of the captain of the ship. On the voyage one sailor died, and from the ship in the harbor the wife of William Bradford was drowned.
As the Mayflower was nearing the Cape Cod harbor some of the company, put on board from London and not in sym- pathy with the Pilgrim ways, went to the leaders and insisted that in taking the ship to another region than that provided for in the patent, they would be without authority over the group when a landing was made, and announced that they themselves in that case would act their own pleasure.
To provide against this contingency there was drawn up in the cabin of the Mayflower the famous Compact, in which the signers as loyal subjects of King James bound themselves into a civil body politic, and by virtue thereof to enact such laws as should be for the general good of the colony, and promised all due obedience and submission thereto. This was signed by 41 out of the 59 adult male passengers, seven of them being hired men; and immediately thereafter John Car- ver was confirmed as governor. This compact is a remarkable document such as only intelligent Englishmen or Dutchmen of that period could formulate. It shows the steadiness and self-reliance of the leaders of the colony in a trying emergency. It is sound political philosophy based on the fundamental rights of men, and well deserves the place it occupies amongst the foundation stones of the Republic.
THE LANDING (DEC. 21, 1620)
It was a glad day when the ship dropped anchor in the harbor at the tip of the Cape. The women had a grand wash- ing bee, which indeed was needed, while the men walked about and investigated the surroundings with the utmost interest. The thirty foot pinnace was put together ; then both by land
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PLYMOUTH PLANTATION
and water exploring parties were sent out to find in what sort of country they were, and to search for a suitable site for their plantation. Two short trips discovering nothing invit- ing, a third and better manned attempt was made with the pinnace and 18 men, 6 of them from the ship's crew. The first encounter with the Indians at Nauset was a skirmish with- out fatalities. Skirting the shores of the bay in a furious and blinding snow storm, the pinnace was beached late at night on Clark's island in Plymouth harbor, with the men wet, chilled and exhausted.
The next day which was Saturday they rested as best they could, and on Sunday worshipped. Monday morning Decem- ber 21, 1620 they crossed the harbor and landed on the now famous rock, a boulder at the water's edge, and itself a pil- grim, for it had come in the glacial drift from far to the north. It was winter and haste was necessary; but after an investigation of the spot and its vicinity it was deemed an excellent location for the building of their settlement. By a coincidence the place had already been named Plymouth on John Smith's map of 1616. The Indian name was Patuxet.
The location in every way save for the poverty of the soil proved as favorable as could be desired. It was unoccupied ground, for a deadly pestilence a year or two before had swept away the inhabitants of the neighborhood. Many acres of cleared ground had previously been cultivated. Numerous springs of clear, cold water gushed forth and a large brook emptied into the harbor. A short distance to the west was an extensive hill 165 feet in elevation. Surrounded on three sides by shore, brook and hill, the place was easily defended. The bay was full of fish, the beach of clams, and the great wilder- ness behind abounded in all sorts of game. And in the spring vast schools of alewives went up the brook to the lake to spawn. In the exigency it was an admirable place for them, as good as could have then been found on the southern coast of the bay.
FOUNDATIONS (1620-1621)
It was in January that the Pilgrims began putting in the foundations of the colony, but they were laid in sorrow, for before the unusually mild winter was ended, almost one-half
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FOUNDATIONS
their number were dead, and buried in graves smoothed over so that the Indians might not know the severity of their losses. The privations and unsanitary conditions of the voy- age, and their constant exposure with insufficient food and protection to the elements induced the scurvy and pneumonia that took this awful toll. At one time so many were sick, that but six or seven sound persons were left to do all the work, care for the sufferers, and bury the dead. And when the so welcome spring was come, only 21 adults and 6 large boys remained for the great task before them.
In April, 1921, the Mayflower left for her return passage. This had been delayed because the sailors suffered the same sickness as their passengers and with proportionate mortality. The survivors remained for some time weak and unequal to the sailing of the ship. And besides the burning of the thatch of the common-house had prevented a full landing of stores, and the enfeebled condition of many of the Pilgrims compelled living on the ship for most of the winter. The same month (April, 1621), Gov. Carver died and William Bradford was chosen his successor. As the sails of the May- flower dipped from sight, the tiny band of 53 sorrowing souls was left on the narrow strip of clearing between 3000 miles of ocean and 3000 miles of wilderness-their nearest neighbors the French 500 miles to the north, and the Virginia planters 500 miles to the south. A situation to dismay and appall all but the stoutest hearts. Yet not one Pilgrim returned on the departing ship.
Notwithstanding the numerical losses and abundant sor- rows in that first year there were built a common-house 20 feet square, three small structures for storage and general pur- poses, and seven houses, for which trees had to be felled and the logs dragged up without draft animals. Twenty-six acres were put into corn, wheat, rye and peas, for which the soil had to be broken up with hoes, and about forty tons of ale- wives basketed up from the town brook for fertilizer. Much time had to be spent in fishing, to which most of them were unaccustomed, and to hunting game and gathering fuel for subsistence.
With the help of the sailors, five cannon, the two largest weighing 1800 and 1000 pounds, were dragged up the hill and
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PLYMOUTH PLANTATION
mounted on a platform; and a palisade more than half a mile long was erected to the north and west of the village street extending from the shore to the town brook. They explored the country as far as Boston harbor and Narragansett Bay, and gathered in their crops, which proved so abundant that they held a harvest festival, the first of our Thanksgiving Days, Massasoit, the Indian chiefain and many of his war- riors being their guests for the better part of a week.
In November, 1621, the ship Fortune arrived with 35 pas- sengers, mostly lusty young men and some of them wild enough; but the ship brought "not so much as a bisket-cake or any other victuals for them," and even had to be revictualed for the return voyage. With their numbers increased by two- thirds this too much strained their food supplies. Ere the second winter was passed all were put on half allowance.
The Fortune also brought the Pierce patent of June 11, 1621, the first grant made by the Council for New England, still to be seen in the Pilgrim Hall, Plymouth. This patent established no boundaries, but gave Pierce and his associates 100 acres of land for each person who should remain in the settlement three years, all lots to be adjacent, and large allot- ments to the grantees for the support of churches, schools and hospitals. It remained in force only one year.
For the return trip the Fortune was loaded with two or three hogsheads of beaver and other skins, and with as many clapboards (barrel staves) as the ship would hold, a cargo valued at £500, which however, was captured by a French privateer and so profited the colonists not at all. Such were the labors and experiences of the first year. With means so little and numbers so few, with hearts so heavy and amid Indian alarms, their accomplishment tells the story of grit, industry and heroism of the little Pilgrim group.
How providential to the Pilgrim mind was it that except Gov. Carver all the leaders of the enterprise were alive and in good health. Bradford, who except for five one year terms given Winslow and Prence, was destined to hold the governor- ship for thirty-three years, so sane and strong and just; Brew- ster, the ruling elder in the church, broad minded and deeply spiritual; Standish, the soldier, brave, resourceful and equal to every emergency; Winslow, the accomplished diplomat;
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THE INDIANS
Fuller, the physician, equally ready and skilful in healing the hurt of the body and the hurt of the soul; and Howland, Alden and others. A remarkable group of plain, sagacious Englishmen, enterprising, resourceful, tenacious, heroic, godly.
THE INDIANS (1621-1623)
In the middle of March, 1621, the first winter, an Indian came boldly down the only street and greatly to the surprise of the Pilgrims welcomed them in broken English. It was Samoset from the Maine coast, who had picked up a little English from the fishing vessels. He told them of another Indian, who had been kidnapped with others from Nauset seven years before by Captain Thomas Hunt, and trans- ported to Spain to be sold into slavery, but who somehow got to England, learned the language and English ways. At last he was brought back in one of Sir Ferdinando Gorges' ships by Captain Dermer to these Patuxet parts, of which he was a native, and the sole known survivor of his tribe from the plague.
A little later Samoset came again, bringing this Indian Tis- quantum or Squanto, along with the great chief of the region, Massasoit, a noble minded savage. He also returned tools stolen by other Indians. A treaty of peace was signed be- tween the Pilgrims and Massasoit, which was never broken during that chieftain's lifetime. His friendship was strength- ened and confirmed forever by his being cured of a distress- ing illness by Winslow.
Squanto proved of great assistance to the colonists, espe- cially in showing the method of cultivating corn. Another native, Hobamack, was also helpful; but others were resent- ful and hostile. Corbitant a sachem at Nemasket, fifteen miles to the west, adopted a threatening attitude, but was soon over- awed by Standish. In the second spring (1622), a messenger came from the Narragansetts and presented a bundle of ar- rows tied about with a large snake skin. It was a defiance and a threat. He was answered in kind by being sent back carrying the same skin stuffed with bullets.
In the early part of 1623 trading goods were stolen from Standish's shallop on the Cape; he recovered them but on a
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PLYMOUTH PLANTATION
trip to the shore near Sandwich he was received with marked unfriendliness. While there Wituwamat, a redskin ruffian arrived from near Massachusetts Bay, and a Neponset native. It seems the visitors were there to induce the Nausets to join in a conspiracy to destroy the colony, a plot occasioned by the evil conduct of Weston's men at his Wessagusset settle- ment, which will be treated later. The Englishmen had started their plantation the summer or fall before, well fur- nished with supplies, but wasted them, plundered the Indians, beat them for depredations, lived riotously, and were vicious and hostile. When they became enfeebled, destitute, devoid of caution, and willing to get bread by doing menial service for the natives, they came to be despised and hated by the Neponsets, who were strong enough to destroy their place, although palisaded, only they feared the vengeance of the Pilgrims, and in order to be able to blot out both Wessagusset and Plymouth, they were seeking aid of other sachems.
At last fully aware of the peril, the little Plymouth town council sent Standish on April 4, 1623 with eight men to deal with the Neponsets. He found them contemptous, insolent and defiant, but by stratagem getting several of the fiercest spirits to enter a house, he and several of his men went in, locked the door, and in a tremendous hand to hand fight, killed them all. It is a thrilling tale. The rest appalled at the fate of their comrades became submissive, and being well used ceased their enmity. The head of Witawamat was taken to Plymouth and set up on the fort, begun the summer before on receipt of news of the frightful Indian massacre in Virginia. The lower part was being used for church and assembly purposes. The victory was a needed and salutary lesson to the Neponsets and other Indians far and near, and for fifty years thereafter the colony was free from serious Indian troubles.
It was the just and decent attitude of the Pilgrims that chiefly prevented such troubles. They found the site of their town unoccupied and without owners, and they took it. When lands elsewhere were wanted, they bargained and paid for them. They were scrupulously honest with the natives as well as firm, and treated them with justice, kindliness and friendship. As Gov. Josiah Winslow wrote in 1675: "I think I can clearly say that before these present troubles broke out,
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TROUBLESOME NEIGHBORS
the English did not possess one foot of land in this Colony but what was fairly obtained by honest purchase of the Indian proprietors." And as opportunity arose the Gospel was given to them. As a mark of the results, toward the end of the century more than 500 praying Indians were living on the Cape beyond Yarmouth.
TROUBLESOME FELLOW COUNTRYMEN (1622-1624)
Peace with the Indians did not relieve troubles, and trials a plenty and serious enough came from their own countrymen. In the famine period of 1622 the adventurers in England were so ill advised as to send thirty-five newcomers empty handed in the Fortune, and the ship victualed for only one way. A har- vest barely ample for 50 persons could not be stretched for 80, and in consequence for half the year all had only half rations. Their scanty store had to be eked out with gleanings from the fishing ships, purchases of corn from the Indians in cruisings of the shallop all around the bay shores. Some stores, together with trading goods, they got of the ship Dis- covery en route from Virginia to England. There was always recourse to fish, clams, and such game as their lack of skill could bring in. Sixty acres of corn were planted, but the colonists were weak and could scarcely care for it, and the crop proved light.
Hence the colonists had to enter the year 1623 with insuf- ficient reserves; and by spring the famine prospect was the worst ever experienced, and the outlook was darkened by a severe drought. Since the adventurers had not kept their part of the contract anent supplies, and had brought them into this plight, it was determined that no longer should the colo- nists be supplied out of a common store, but every one by his own exertions. In consequence, the record runs that all toiled to such good purpose that the harvests were abundant, and the gaunt spectre of famine vanished forever.
Weston, already mentioned, once their friend became a pest and plague. Though he was the man who originally organ- ized the merchant adventurers, early in 1622 he sent the Pil- grims word that he had withdrawn from the company and was to set up a colony of his own. In midsummer he arrived
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PLYMOUTH PLANTATION
with two ships, the Charity and the Swan, bringing some 60 men, a profane and brawling lot.
These men, under Weston's brother-in-law, Richard Greene, went to Weymouth and built their settlement at Wessagusset; soon after Standish's victory over the Indians there, it was abandoned and most of the men with their movable property joined the fishing fleet at Monhegan.
There was trouble attempted for them by another country- man also, and he too one of the adventurers, for John Pierce, in whose name in trust the patent of June, 1621, was made out, quietly managed to have this instrument exchanged for one is- sued directly to him, his heirs, associates and assigns, which constituted him the grand overlord of the region all around Plymouth. He equipped and sent out two expeditions with people to take possession of Plymouth, but both failed to reach America and he at last sold to the adventurers for £500 rights which had cost him £50. Late in July, 1623, arrived the ship Anne of 140 tons and the Little James of 44, with about 100 new settlers, many of them from Leyden. They came well supplied, but many were disappointed with the meagerness of the colony, and some were so ill disposed they had to be sent back. For the return the Anne was loaded with furs and "clapboards."
John Oldham, who bulks large in Pilgrim narrative, espe- cially for the picturesque and painful way in which he was taught to go mend his manners, came in the Anne, and along with the cattle came John Lyford in the Charity. Both men were destined to give no little trouble to the Pilgrims.
THE TURN OF THE TIDE (1625-1630)
By 1625 the foundation period of the colony was over. For the most part it had been hard and grievous, and at times the colonists had had only a toe hold on the continent. When the tide in their affairs turned, the Pilgrims began to come into economic comfort and security from disturbances both from without and within. Their outward lot was far happier than it had been in Holland; and it is doubtful if people in their walk in life in the old country lived in the midst of such plenty.
Bio Indenture masetfs
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From the original in Pilgrim Hall, Plymouth
THE PIERCE PATENT OF 1621
77
TURN OF THE TIDE
There were several reasons for this: one reason for the economic well-being is indicated more at length in the chap- ter of this work on Economic Organization; another was the abandonment of the communism foisted on them by the ad- venturers. Women and children as well as men toiled in the fields, and amply sufficient returns for daily needs followed. Contributory to the prosperity of the colony was the gradual breaking up of the association of merchant adventurers, and their willingness to get what they could out of the enterprise and be rid of it. It is a question if the colonists owed them anything, when their toil and sufferings were put against the little that was done for them by the adventurers after the fitting of the Mayflower; and it is impossible to discover the amount of that just debt. In the end the adventurers were willing to sell all their interests in the colony and all claims against it of every kind for £1800. This sum, together with £600 for money borrowed at enormous interest, was in 1627 assumed in payment by Bradford and seven others of the colony, who were called undertakers, and were really trustees for the whole body of settlers. To enable them to render this great public service, they received a trading monopoly with the Indians, and the little settlements along the coast. The busi- ness of the colony now passed from the adventurers to the undertakers.
To provide for the contingency that the colony trade in their hands might prove insufficient to clear the debts they had become personally responsible for, the newcomers, whether in sympathy with the church and its ideals or not, were added to the freeholders; and all heads of families and self-support- ing young men were enrolled as "purchasers." These men received each a share in the public property; and these shares were collateral for so much of the public debt as the trade should otherwise fail to pay. This action gave increased sta- bility to the plan, and enlisted wider interest in the colony's future. The profits of the trade paid the debt, the purchasers were never called on. Thenceforward Plymouth was a self- owning and self-sufficient colony.
Another influence making for prosperity was a further dis- tribution of land, so that every man came to possess enough to make a snug little farm, all his own to stock and till. A
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PLYMOUTH PLANTATION
patent, which proved a most valuable asset, was granted Jan- uary 23, 1630, over the signature of the Earl of Warwick, president of the Council for New England, Sir Ferdinando Gorges and others; hence it was called the Warwick patent. It ran to William Bradford, his heirs, associates and assigns. It made the bounds of the colony nearly coextensive with the present Massachusetts counties of Plymouth, Barnstable and Bristol, and also assigned a territory in Maine on the Ken- nebec, beginning at the site of Augusta, and running down 13 miles, and east and west of the river 15 miles. It conferred authority to make laws and in fact almost all the privileges possessed by the Council itself. In 1640 Gov. Bradford, on request of the people, transferred the patent to the colony.
A royal charter had long been desired and sought, and in this same year 1630, the agents of the colony in London brought such influences to bear on the king that he ordered a charter drawn for Plymouth as liberal as that of Massachu- setts Bay. It was sent to the lord treasurer for his approval as regards customs; but without authority the agents inserted provisions regarding these matters which that official refused to sanction, further action was dropped, and nothing came of a transaction which cost the colony £500.
The heavy task of clearing the obligations was made far more difficult by the lack of wisdom and the use of trickery and dishonesty on the part of Allerton and Shirley, who acted as their agents in England. Bradford says of the colonists that they were "abused in their simplicitie, and no beter then bought and sould, as it may seeme." Allerton was the only one among the colonial Pilgrim leaders who proved untrust- worthy.
Fraudulent transactions like these increased the debts and long deferred the final payment, so the day of freedom from burdensome obligations did not come until March, 1646, when the colony had been a quarter century established. As Good- win says, "Its debts had been inflated, its funds embezzled, its trade defrauded, and its confidence betrayed; but it had borne every burden without shrinking, and had preferred to endure fraud and robbery rather than risk any sacrifice of honor. Its leaders took care that every chance of wrong should fall
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THE PILGRIM CHURCH
on themselves rather than on the public creditors who had treated them so unjustly. Repudiation is not a plant of Old Colony growth."
THE PILGRIM CHURCH (1620)
Plymouth colony began in a church, the church of English separatists of Scrooby and Leyden. In doctrinal position they were Calvinists in accord with the Reformed Churches gener- ally, and even accepted the articles of the English church. A spiritual requirement for membership, and some matters of ecclesiastical administration separated them from the Angli- can and other communions. For membership some evidence of a religious life was necessary, and every group of people giving such evidence and uniting in a covenant relation, was considered an independent church, entirely free in the manage- ment of its affairs from outside interference. Fellowship in church meeting combined with independence was the touch- stone of the Plymouth organization.
From the start attempts were made to break down these principles and to force conformity to the Church of England. It was this pressure that compelled the withdrawal to Holland, and while there they were not entirely free from English in- terference. The adventurers were probably for the most part unaware that the Pilgrims were going to America to set up religious practices in the colony at variance with those of the national church. An Anglican clergyman, Rev. William Mor- rell, came to Plymouth with Robert Gorges in 1623, bringing with him a commission authorizing him to compel conformity to Anglican practices. Finding the church a feeble folk and not inclined to his services, like a man of sense and character, he preferred to be no troubler.
In March, 1624, came Rev. John Lyford, of the Puritan party in the English Church, and he soon began plotting with John Oldham for the subversion of both church and colony. They were a pretty pair of worthies. Lyford utterly belied his puritan connection in the national church, and in fact all professions to any moral or spiritual life. He was an un- scrupulous and grossly immoral hypocrite. He urged in let-
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