USA > Massachusetts > Plymouth County > Plymouth > Lives of the governors of New Plymouth, and Massachusetts bay; from the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth in 1620, to the union of the two colonies in 1692 > Part 3
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Others thought it best to go to a place called Aga- wam,* twenty leagues northward, where they had heard of an excellent harbour, good fishing, and a better soil for planting. To this it was answered, that there might possibly be as good a place nearer to them. Robert Coppin, their pilot, who had been here before, assured them that he l.new of a good harbour and a navigable river, not more than eight leagues across the bay to the westward. Upon the whole, they resolved to send the shallop round the shore of the bay on discovery, but not beyond the harbour of which Coppin had informed them.
On Wednesday, the sixth of December, Governor Carver, with nine of the principal men, well armed, and the same number of seamen, of which Coppin was one, went out in the shallop. The weather was so cold that the spray of the sea froze on their coats, until they were cased with ice, " like coats of iron." They sailed by the . eastern shore of the bay, as they judged, six or seven leagues, without finding any river or creek. At length they saw "a tongue of land.t being flat off from the
* The Indian name of Ir-wirh, Muss. + This " tongue of land," is Billings- gate Point, the western shore of Westh et Harbor.
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shore, with a sandy point; they bore up to gain the point, and found there a fair income, or road of a bay, being a league over at the narrowest, and two or three in length ; but they made right over to the land before them." As they came near the shore, they saw ten or twelve Indians cutting up a grampus, who, on sight of them. ran away, carrying pieces of the fish which they had caught. They landed at the distance of a league or more from the grampus with great difficulty, on account of the flat sands. Here they built a barricade, and, placing senti- nels, lay down to rest.
The next morning, Thursday, (December 7,) they divided themselves into two parties, eight in the shallop, and the rest on shore, to make farther discovery of this place, which they found to be "a bay, without either river or creek coming into it." They gave it the name of Grampus Bay, because they saw many fish of that species. They tracked the Indians on the sand, and found a path into the woods, which they followed a great way, till they came to old cornfields, and a spacions burying-ground enclosed with pales. They ranged the woods till the close of the day, and then came down to the shore to meet the shallop, which they had not seen since the morning. At high water, she put into a creek ; and. six men being left on board, two came on shore and lodged with their companions, under cover of a barricade and a guard.
At dawn of day, on Friday, (December 8.) while at their devotions, they were surprised with the war cry of the savages, and a flight of arrows. Those of the En- glish who had retained their arms, immediately stood on the defensive; two muskets were discharged, and the
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other men who were armed were ordered not to shoot un- til they could take sure aim, there being but four who bad retained their muskets. The Indians, seeing the others run to the shallop, attacked them again, but being secured by armor and armed with curtel-axes, they sustained themselves until they obtained their muskets from the boat-when a general discharge being made, the Indians were intimidated, and all fled but one stout warrior, who continued to discharge his arrows from behind a tree ; but a bullet having struck the tree and scattered the bark and splinters about his ears, he took to his heels, and they € all fled. The English pursued them a short distance with shouts, to show that they were not intimidated, and then returned to their shallop. Thus terminated the first encounter between the English and aboriginals, without bloodshed on either side, and the place was named First Encounter.
This unwelcome reception, and the shoal water of the place,* determined the company to seek farther. They sailed along the shore as near as the extensive shoals would permit, but saw no harbour. The weather began to look threatening, and Coppin assured them that they might reach the harbour of which he had some knowledge before night. The wind being southerly, they put them- selves before it .; After some hours, it began to rain ; the storm increasing, their rudder broke, their mast
* Morton says, " This is thought to be a place called Vamskeket." (Page 19.) A creek, which now bears the name of skukit, lies between Eastham and Harwich, distant about three or four miles westward from Nauset, the seat of a tribe of Indians, who (as they afterward learned) made this attack. Dr. Free- man, in his notes on Mourt, I Mass. Hist. Coll. viii. 219, supposes this to be Great Meadow Creck, in Truro, Mass.
t The distance directly across the bay from Skakit, is about 12 leagues; in Prince, (p. 77,) it is said they sailed 13 leagues " along the coast."
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sprung, and their sails fell overboard. In this piteous plight, steering with two oors, the wind and the flood tide carried them into a cove full of breakers, and it being dark, they were in danger of being driven on shore. The pilot confessed that he knew not the place ; but a stout seaman, who was steering, called to the rowers to put about and row hard. This effort happily brought them out of the cove into a fair sound, and under a point of land, where they came safely to anchor. They were divided in their opinions about going on shore ; but about midnight, the severity of the cold made a fire necessary. They therefore got on shore, and with some difficulty kindled a fire and rested in safety.
In the morning they found themselves on a small un- inhabited island, within the entrance of a spacious bay. Here they stayed all the next day (Saturday) drying their clothes, cleaning their arms, and repairing, as well as they could, their shallop. The following day, being the Christian Sabbath, they rested.t
* This island has ever since borne the name of Clark's Island, from the mate of the ship, the first man who stepped on shore. The cove, where they were in danger, lies between the Gurnet Head and Saguish Point, at the entrance of Plymouth Bay.
t This was the FIRST CHRISTIAN SABBATH in New England. "The . May. flower,' a name now immortal, had crossed the ocean. It had borne its hundred passengers over the vast deep, and after a perilous voyage, it had reached the bleak shores of New England in the beginning of winter. The spot which was to furnish a home and a burial-place, was now to be selected. The shallop was unshipped, but needed repairs, and sixteen weary days elapsed before it was ready for service. Amidst ice and snow, it was then sent out, with some half a dozen Pilgrims, to find a suitable place where to land. The spray of the sea, says the historian, froze on them, and made their clothes like coats of iron. Five days they wandered about, searching in vain for a suitable landing.place. A storm came on, the snow and rain fell; the sea swelled ; the rudder broke ; the mast and the sail fell overboard. In this storm and cold, without a tent, a house, or the shelter of a rock, the Christian Sabbath approached-the day which they regarded as holy unto God-a day on which they were not to ' do
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On Monday, December 11th, they surveyed and sounded the bay, which is described to be in the shape of a fishhook ; a good harbour for shipping, larger than that of Cape Cod ; containing two small islands without inhabitants, innumerable store of fowls, different sorts of fish, besides shellfish in abundance. As they marched into the land,* they found cornfields and brooks, and a very good situation for building.t With this joyful news they returned to the company, and on the 16th of
any work.' What should be done? As the evening before the Sabbath drew on, they pushed over the surf, entered a fair sound, sheltered themselves under the lee of a rise of land, kindled a tire, and on that island they spent the day in the solemn worship of their Maker. On the next day their feet touched the rock now sacred as the place of the landing of the Pilgrims. Nothing more strikingly marks the character of this people, than this act. The whole scene-the cold winter-the raging sea-the driving storm-the houseless, homeless island- the families of wives and eluldren in the distance, weary with their voyage and impatient to land-and yet, the sacred observance of a day which they kept from principle, and not from mere feeling, or because it was a form of reli- gion, shows how deeply imbedded true religion is in the soul, and how little it is affected by surrounding difficulties."-[ Barnes' Discourse at Worcester.]
* The rock on which they first stepped ashore at high water, is now enclosed with a wharf. The upper part of it was separated from the lower part, and drawn into the public square of the town of Plymouth, where it was known by the name of The Forefathers' Rock. The 22d of December, (Gregorian style) has been regarded by the people of Plymouth as a festival. That portion of the rock remaining in the square at Plymouth, was on the 4th July, 1834, removed to the new Pilgrim Hall, erected in Plymouth, and placed in front of that edifice, under the charge of the Pilgrim Society. A procession was formed on the occasion, and passed over Cole's Hill, where lie the ashes of those who died the first winter at Plymouth. A miniature representation of the Mayflower followed in the procession, placed in a car decorated with flow- ers, and drawn by six boys-the whole being preceded by the children of both sexes of the several schools in town. The Rock is now enclosed within a rail- ing, formed of wrought iron bars, five feet high, resting on a base of hammered granite. The heads of the perpendicular bars are harpoons and boat hooks al- ternately-the whole embellished with emblematic figures of cast iron. The upper part of the railing is encircled with a wreath of iron castings, in imitation of heraldry curtains, fringed with festoons ; of these there are forty-one, bearing the names of the forty-one puritan fathers, who signed the memorable compact while in the cabin of the Mayflower, at Cape Cod, in 1620. Thacher, 199.
t Mourt's Relation, in I Mass. Hist. Coll. viii. 220.
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December, the ship came to anchor in the harbour, with all the passengers, except four, who died at Cape Cod.
Having surveyed the land as well as the season would permit, in three days, they pitched upon a high ground on the southwest side of the bay, which was cleared of wood, and had formerly been planted. Under the south side of it was "a very sweet brook, in the entrance of which the shallop and boats could be secured, and many delicate springs of as good water as could be drank." On the opposite side of the brook was a cleared field, and beyond it a commanding eminence, on which they intended to lay a platform and mount their cannon.
They went immediately to work laying out house-lots, and a street ; felling, sawing, riveing, and carrying timber ; and before the end of December, though much inter- rupted by stormy weather, by the death of two, and the sickness of many of their number, they had erected a store-house, with a thatched roof, in which their goods were deposited under a guard. Two rows of houses were begun, and, as fast as they could be covered,* the people, who were classed into nineteen families, came ashore, and were lodged in them. On Lord's day, the 31st of December, they attended Divine service for the first time on shore, and named the place PLYMOUTH, partly because this harbour was so called in Capt. Smith's map, published three or four years before, and partly in remembrance of the very kind and friendly treatment
* The first houses in Plymouth were on each side of a single street, which loads from the old church to the water side. "We agreed that every inan should build his own house, thinking by that course men would make more haste than working in common." Mourt, in I Mass. Ilist. Coll. vii. 2.3. On the place where it is supposed the common house stood, in digging a cellar in 1:01, there were discovered several tools, and a plate of iron, seven fret below the surface of the ground. Hohines, i. 166.
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which they had received from the inhabitants of Ply- mouth, the last port of their native country from which they sailed .*
At this time, some of the people lodged on shore, and cthers on board the ship, which lay at the distance of a mile and a half from the town, and, when the tide was out, there could be no communication between them. On the 14th of January, very early in the morning, as Governor Carver and Mr. Bradford lay sick in bed at the storehouse, the thatched roof, by means of a spark, caught on fire, and was soon consumed ; but, by the timely assistance of the people on shore, the lower part of the building was preserved. Here were deposited their whole stock of ammunition and several loaded guns; but, happily, the fire did not reach them. The fire was seen by the people on board the ship, who could not come
* The original Indian name of the place was .Accomack, which means orer the water. It is evident that Accomack and Plymouth correspond ; but when the Pilgrims arrived, they were told by Samoset that the place was called Pa- turet. See, in Smith's General History, folio edition, the Map of New England as " observed and described in 1014." Smith's " Description of New England," was published in 1615. "I took (says he) the description as well by map as writing, and called it New England." He dedicated his work to Prince Charles, begging him to change the " barbarous names." In the list of Indian names given by Smith, which were changed by Prince Charles, Accomack was altered to Plimouth. See Force's Tracts, vol. ii. p. xii, of No. I. Smith, in his " Generall Historie," edition of 1626, page 247, describes " the Present estate of New Plimoth, in 1624;" and in his " True Travels," edition of 1630, page 46, he speaks of the condition of ".Vere Plymouth," in 1629. In III Mass. Hist. Coll. iii., Smith's " Pathway to a Plantation," published in 1631, is re- printed with a map, upon which Plimouth appears. The folio edition of his " Generall Historie," published in 1632, has apparently the same Map, with several corrections, and among others, the words " New Plimouth," for " Pli- mouth." In a map, entitled " The South part of New England, as it is planted this year, 1631," inserted in the first edition of Wood's New England Prospect, a place near Narraghanset Bay is named Old Plymouth ; and in the same map, the Plymouth, which was settled in 1690, is called New Plymouth. By Old Plymouth, though not correctly placed on the map, was probably meant the ephemeral settlement of Gosnold, on Elizabeth Island, in 1602. Holmes' Ann. i. 119.
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on shore till an hour afterwards. They were greatly alarmed at the appearance, because two men, who had strolled into the woods, were missing, and they were apprehensive that the Indians had made an attack on the place. In the evening the strollers found their way home, almost dead with hunger, fatigue, and cold.
The bad weather and severe hardships to which this company were exposed, in a climate much more rigorous than any to which they had ever been accustomed, with the scorbutic habits contracted in their voyage, and by liv- ing so long on shipboard, caused a great mortality among them in the winter. Before the month of April, nearly one half of them died .* At some times the number of the sick was so great, that not more than six or seven were fit for duty, and these were almost wholly employed in attending the sick. The ship's company was in the same situation, and Captain Jones, though earnestly de- sirous to get away, was obliged to stay till April, having lost one half of his men.
By the beginning of March, the governor was so far recovered of his first illness, that he was able to walk three miles to visit a large pond, which Francis Billington had discovered from the top of a tree on a hill. At first it was supposed to be a part of the ocean, but it proved to be the headwater of the brook which runs by the town. It has ever since borne the name of its first discoverer.+ which might otherwise have been forgotten.
Hitherto they had not seen any of the natives at this
. The exact bill of mortality, as collected by Prince, is as follows : In De. cember, 6; January, 8; February, 17; March, 13-total, 41. Of these, 21 were subscribers to the civil compact ; and 23 were women, children, and rer- rants.
' It is to this day called Billington Sea.
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place. The mortal pestilence which raged through the country four years before, had almost depopulated it. One remarkable circumstance attending this pestilence, was not known till after the settlement was made. A French ship had been wrecked on Cape Cod. The men were saved with their provisions and goods .* The natives kept their eye on them, till they found an oppor- tunity to kill all but three or four, and divide their goods. The captives were sent from one tribe to another as slaves. One of them learned so much of their language as to tell them, that." God was angry with them for their . cruelty, and would destroy them and give their country to another people." They answered, that "they were too many for God to kill." He replied that, "if they were ever so many, God had many ways to kill, of which
they were then ignorant." When the pestilence came among them, (a new disease, probably the yellow fever, t) they remembered the Frenchman's words, and, when the Plymouth settlers arrived at Cape Cod, the few survivors imagined that the other part of his prediction would soon be accomplished. Soon after their arrival, the Indian priests or powows convened, and performed their incan- tations in a dark swamp three days successively, with a view to curse and destroy the new comers. Had they known the mortality which raged amongst them, they would have doubtless rejoiced in the success of their endeavours, and might very easily have taken advantage
* Morton, 27.
t Of the peculiar nature of this pestilence, we have no certain information. Gookin says he "had discoursed with some old Indians who were then youths, who told him that the bodies of the sick were all over exceeding yellow (which they described by pointing to a yellow garment) both before they died and afterward." I Mass. Ilist. Coll. i. 143.
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of their weakness to exterminate them .* But none of them were seen till after the sickness had abated, though some tools which had been left in the woods were miss- ing, which they had stolen in the night.
On the sixteenth of March, when the spring was so far advanced as to invite them to make their gardens, a savage came boldly into the place alone, walked through the street to the rendezvous or storehouse, and pro- nounced the words, Welcome, Englishmen! Ilis name was Samoset; he belonged to a place distant five days' journey to the eastward, and had learned of the fisher- men to speak broken English. 1
He was received with kindness and hospitality, and he informed them "that, by the late pestilence, and a ferocious war, the number of his countrymen had been so diminished, that not more than one in twenty remained ; that the spot where they were now seated was called Patuxet, and, though formerly populous, yet every human being in it had died of the pestilence." This account was confirmed by the extent of the fields, the number of graves, and the remnants of skeletons lying on the ground.
The account which he gave of himself was, " that he had been absent from home eight moons, part of the time among the Nausets, their nearest neighbours at the south- east, who were about one hundred strong, and more lately among the Wampanoags at the westward, who were about sixty ; that he had heard of the attack made on them by the Nausets at Namskeket ; that these people
* During the first winter, the settlers buried their dead on the banks of the shore, since called Cole's hill, near their own dwellings, taking especial care by levelling the earth to conceal from the Indians the number and frequency of the deaths. Dr. Holmes mentions a tradition, that the graves at that spot, after the great mortality alluded to, were levelled and sown over by the settlers, to conceal their loss from the natives. Thacher, 28.
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were full of resentment against the Europeans, on account of the perfidy of Hunt, master of an English vessel, who had some years before the pestilence decoyed some of the natives (twenty from Patuxet and seven from Nauset) on board his ship, and sold them as slaves; that they had killed three English fishermen, besides the Frenchmen afore mentioned, in revenge for this affront. He also gave information of the lost tools, and promised to see them restored, and that he would bring the natives to trade with them."
Samoset being dismissed with a present, returned the next day with five more of the natives, bringing the stolen tools, and a few skins for trade .* They were dismissed with a request to bring more, which they promised to do
* " But, being the Lord's day, we would not trade, but, entertaining them, bid them come again." Monit. The same author, speaking of this friendly sachem, whose salutation of " WELCOME!" must have been grateful to the in- habitants, says he was naked, "ouly a leather about his waist, with a fringe about a span long." The weather was very cokl, and " we cast a horseman's coat about him." " He had a bow and two arrows, the one headed and the other unheaded. Ile was a tall straight man; the hair of his head black, long be- hind, only short before : none on his face at all. He asked some beer, but we gave him strong water and biscuit, and butter and cheese, and pudding, and a piece of mallard ; all which he liked well." Samoset's companions, "had every man a deer skin on him ; and the principal of them had a wild cat's skin, or such like, on one arm. They had most of them long hosen up to their groins, close made ; and above their groins to their waist, another leather : they were altogether like the Irish trousers. They are of complexion like our English gipsies ; no hai:, or very little on their faces ; on their heads long hair to their shoulders, only cut before : some trussed up before with a feather, broad- wise like a fan ; another a foxtail, hanging out." The English had charged Samo- sct not to let any who came with him bring their arms; these, therefore, left " their hows and arrows a quarter of a mile from our town. We gave them entertainment as we thought was fitting them. They did cat liberally of our English victuals ;" and appeared very friendly ; " sang and danced after their manner, like antics." "Some of them had their faces painted black, from the forehead to the chin, four or five fingers broad; others after other fashions, as they liked. They brought three or four skins, but we would not truck with them all that day, but wished them to bring more, and we would truck for all. So because of the day [Sunday] we dismissed them so soon as we could."
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in a few days. Samoset feigned himself sick, and re- mained ; but as his companions did not return at the time, he was sent to inquire the reason.
On the 22d, he returned, in company with Squanto, or Squantum, a native of Patuxet, and the only one then living. He was one of the twenty whom Hunt had car- ried away ; he had been sold in Spain ; had lived in Lon- don with John Slaney, merchant, treasurer of the New- foundland Company ; had learned the English language, and came back to his native country with the fishermen .* These two persons were deputed by the sachem of the Wampanoags, Mas-sas-o-it, whose residence was at Sowams or Pokanoket, on the Narragansett Bay, to an-
" Thomas Hunt, the first kidnapper and slave-dealer on the coast of North America, commanded one of the ships, with which Captain Smith came to New England in 1614. Smith sailed for England in July, and left Innt with directions to procure a cargo, and proceed to Spain. His atrocious conduct is thus related by Prince, fiom Smith, Mourt, &e. "After Smith Jent New England, Hunt gets twenty Indians on board him at Patuxet, one of whom is called Squanto, or Squantum, or Tisquantum, and 7 more of Nauset, and carried them to Malaga, sells them for slaves at £20 a man, which raises such an en- mity in the savages against our nation, as makes further attempts of commerce with them very dangerous." "Smith, generous and humane as he was in- trepid, indignantly reprobates the base conduct of Hunt." Many of these helpless captives, it appears, were rescued from slavery by the benevolent in- terposition of some of the Monks in Malaga. Squanto was probably one who was thus relieved and liberated. He found a friend in Mr. Slancy in England, by whose assistance he was enabled to return to his native land, on board of Capt. Thomas Dermer's vessel in 1619. Thacher, 33. Drake supposes that Squanto, or Tisquantum, was carried away by Weymouth, in 1605, and cites Sir F. Gorges, as his authority. Book of the Indians, b. ii. 4. The Tasquan- tum seized by Weymouth, was probably not among those who were kidnapped by Hunt, unless, nine years having intervened, we may suppose him to have been twice seized and carried away.
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