Despite earlier optimism, the settlers face near-starvation
as new colonists arrive without food;
but in time the colony achieves freedom from want.
The delight of that
first Thanksgiving, and the Pilgrims' high hopes that they would
henceforth have an abundant larder and the blessing of assured
peace, quickly faded.
Freedom from hunger would not be gained until after the unexpected
rain that saved the harvest of 1623. And the comforting proof
that Massasoit was completely sincere would not come until that
same year, when an alert from the chief, conveyed by Hobomok,
would help to preserve the very life of the colony.
Celebration of the first Thanksgiving was hardly over when the
Pilgrims, at first alarmed and then overjoyed, caught sight of
the sails of the 55-ton ship Fortune as it entered their harbor
on Nov. 11, 1621. It was the first ship from overseas since the
Pilgrims arrived. Aboard were thirty-five passengers, including
twelve Pilgrims, nine of whom were from Leyden. Twenty-three of
the passengers had been assembled by the adventurers and were
from the London area.
The newcomers' arrival created a problem, for they had no food.
Winslow noted that the Fortune even had to receive food
from the Pilgrims for their voyage home. When the Fortune left,
on Dec. 13, Bradford felt forced to put the colony on half-rations--quite
a sudden reversal from the festive Thanksgiving Day.
The Fortune had not been gone long when a messenger from
the belligerent Narragansetts appeared at the plantation carrying
a mysterious "bundle of new arrows lapped (wrapped) in a rattlesnake's
skin."
Squanto explained that this was a challenge from the Narragansett
sachem, Canonicus. Bradford, prompt to act in time of crisis,
consulted with the colony's leaders. Then, said Winslow, "the
Governor stuffed the skin with powder and shot, and sent it back,
returning no less defiance to Canonicus," who most likely was
angry over his enemy Massasoit's links with the Pilgrims.
Dread of musket fire had spread to even the Narragansetts. When
the snakeskin arrived in the Indian camp, said Winslow, "it was
no small terror to this savage king; insomuch as he would not
once touch the powder or shot, or suffer it to stay in his house
or country...and having been posted (sent) from place to place
a long time, at length came whole back again.”
To increase their security, the Pilgrims enclosed "their dwellings
with a good strong pale, and made flankers (fortications adjoining
the main fences) to convenient places with gates to shut, which
were every night locked, and a watch kept." Capt. Standish divided
his men into four squadrons and assigned them places to which "they
were to repair upon any sudden alarm." This work was completed
in March.
Then in June, a passing fishing vessel brought the shocking news
that on March 22, 1622--the same month the Pilgrims had finished
their eight-foot palisade--the Indians in Virginia had massacred
347 Jamestown settlers. This "deadly stroake" would contribute
two years later to the bankruptcy of the Virginia Company of London,
which had created the first permanent English colony in America.
On receipt of the news of the massacre the Pilgrims, despite their "weakness
and time of wants," started on a 10-month effort to build, on
top of Burial Hill,
"a fort with good timber, both strong and comely, which was of
good defense, made with a flat roof and battlements, on which
their ordnance were mounted, and where they kept constant watch." The
structure, said Bradford, also served the Pilgrims "for a meeting
house and was fitted accordingly for that use." Here the revered
Elder Brewster, the colony's religious leader, "taught twice every
Sabbath" for many years.
Danger to the colony's existence did not come, however, at this
timber fort-meetinghouse. Rather, the danger had been fore-shadowed
the previous November when the Fortune had brought a letter form
the adventurer Thomas Weston, an enterprising man now grown callous
and deceitful.
He rebuked the Pilgrims for wasting their time in "discoursing,
arguing and consulting," as he imagined they must be doing, because
the Mayflower had returned with no cargo. He warned that
lack of profit could terminate support from the adventurers.
This heartless letter was addressed to Gov. Carver, whose dedication
and toil had cost him his life. Bradford's response was prompt
and pointed. He wrote Weston that as great as were the costs to
the adventurers, the loss of Carver's life
"and many other honest and industrious men's lives cannot be valued
at any price." He told of the Pilgrims' suffering, so severe "that
the living were scarce able to bury the dead." As for any who
said the Pilgrims were idle,
"their hearts can tell their tongues lie."
Weston, always protesting friendship, had written in his hard
letter, "I promise you I will never quit the business." Yet the
Pilgrims gathered in the months that followed that he had done
just that, and was adventuring on his own.
In May 1622, seven men in a shallop came from Damariscove off
the Maine coast, where Weston had a large ship fishing. The men
brought "no victuals nor any hope of any." Weston sent word that
he was planning a colony, and asked the Pilgrims meantime to house, "entertain
and supply" these men. Weston did not stop there. Toward the end
of June he sent two ships with "some 50 or 60" more men to stay
with and be fed by the Pilgrims, themselves hungry and confronted
by famine. Some of these men were deserving, said Winslow, but
most were a "stain on old England that bred them."
The Pilgrims fed them, out of "compassion to the people...come
into a wilderness," and in consideration of what Weston had "been
unto them" and had done for them in the past. But the newcomers
stole corn, made trouble, and repaid kindness, with "secret backbitings
and revilings."
They even left their sick and lame behind in Plymouth when they
took off at summer's end to establish Weston's colony at Wessagusset
(Weymouth).
Weston's men, through waste, disorder and lack of leadership,
gradually fell into such misery and dire straits--literally grubbing
for food, some starving, some dying--as to bring upon themselves
contempt and enmity of the Indian neighbors they had wronged by
their stealing corn.
Leaders of the Massachusetts tribe began scheming with their Indian
neighbors to rid themselves of Weston's colony. They quickly realized,
however, said Winslow, that even if they spared the Plymouth colony,
the Pilgrims "would never leave the death of our countrymen unrevenged;
and therefore their safety could not be without the overthrow
of both plantations."
One of the leading conspirators--husky, tall Wituwmat--was so
confident of the outcome that, while seeking allies among the
Cape Cod Indians, he declared in his native tongue, in the presence
of the uncomprehending Capt. Standish, that the English "died
crying...more like children than men."
At this juncture, in March of 1623, word reached Plymouth that
Massasoit was sick and "like to die." Bradford at once sent Winslow "with
some cordials (invigorating medicines) to administer to him." Hobomok
went as guide.
Massasoit, blinded and suffering from days of constipation, was
surrounded by his distressed followers, with medicine men making "a
hellish noise." The chief stretched out his hand to Winslow and
said, "O Winslow, I shall never see thee again."
A cordial bottle had broken en route, but Winslow gave the sachem "a
confection of many comfortable conserves" and dissolved some of
the confection in water for him to drink. Then, on Massasoit's
sight returning, Winslow made the chief some duck broth. Massasoit's
health, as by magic, was restored after a few hours sleep. Whereupon
he declared, "I see the English are my friends...whilst I live
I will never forget this kindness."
When Winslow was about to leave, Massasoit called Hobomok to the
inner council of his warriors, "revealed the plot of the Massachusetts...and
advised us to kill the men of Massachusetts." Hobomok was to tell
this to Winslow on their way home.
To thwart the plot, Bradford dispatched Capt. Standish, along
with eight colonists and Hobomok, to go in the shallop to Wessagusset.
There Standish helped the surviving Weston men quit their plantation
after a fight that left seven Indians dead, among them Wituwamat.
The Pilgrims speedy action "terrified and amazed" some of the
absent conspirators, among them some of the nine chiefs who had
signed the Sept. 13, 1621 peace accord. These ran away "like men
distracted, living in swamps and other desert (isolated) places," where
some died. Others sent peace gifts to Plymouth. [If this isn't
continued Divine protection over the Pilgrims, I don't know what
is. The Coincidence of Massasoit getting royally constipated,
bringing the Pilgrims to his aid, so they could learn of this
plot. And then backing up their speedy response and putting a
fear and dread in the conspirators that ended up making them do
foolish things that caused their own deaths. Think about that
one for awhile. The Pilgrims had no way of knowing about this
conspiracy that was being hatched. They were just about their
business of staying close to the Lord in prayer, Bible study,
going to worship without fail in Sunday church services, and working
hard to survive. The Lord was their shield.]
Massasoit, said Winslow, had saved the Pilgrims
"when we were at the pit's brim and...knew not that we were in
danger." Any uncertainty about Massasoit's pledge of peace was
now gone. Massasoit would live into his 80's, to the fall of 1661,
outlasting all the early leaders of the Pilgrim plantation; and
always he kept peace with the Pilgrims.
Nearly two years would pass between the first and second Thanksgivings.
At times, famine would be almost as close as during the worst
days at Wessagusset, with the Pilgrims, their corn supply low, "enforced
to live on groundnuts, clams, muscles [sic] and such other things
as naturally the country afforded." They even had to draw on their
precious seed corn to furnish provisions for Standish during his
rescue mission to Wessagusset.
The Fortune's arriving with "not so much as a biscuit
cake or any other victuals," resulting both from penuriousness
of the adventurers and the four-month length of the passage, meant
that the 1621 harvest so joyfully celebrated at the first Thanksgiving
had, virtually overnight, become painfully inadequate. Bradford's
ordering "six months at half allowance" seemed inadequate by May
1622, when the Pilgrims' "provisions were wholly spent and they
looked hard for supply but none came."
By the time Weston's men arrived--the seven forerunners in May
1622 and 50 to 60 more in June--the Pilgrim colony found famine
had begun "to pinch them sore."
The arrival, also in June, of the fishermen's boat, though it
brought the terrible news about the Jamestown massacre, was providential.
Bradford sent Winslow in a Pilgrim boat, getting pilotage from
the fishermen, to the Maine waters off Monhegan and Damariscove
to get some provisions.
Several benefits came from this trip. The fishing captains in
Maine, even to the point of straining their own supplies, gladly
contributed, and Winslow returned with "good quantity." The Pilgrims
also learned the route to Maine.
Still, to make the food supply hold until harvest, Bradford limited
distribution to "only a quarter-pound of bread a day to each person...till
corn was ripe."
The 1622 harvest was a poor one, chiefly because of the Pilgrims'
inability to tend their crop as they should have because of "their
weakness for want of food."
The harvest had also been reduced by the theft of green corn by
Weston's men. As for purchasing corn, the Pilgrims faced a dilemma: "Markets
there were none--to go to but only the Indians," and the Pilgrims "had
no trading commodities."
PROVIDENCE AGAIN CAME
TO THE RESCUE, THE 60-ton Discovery, on its way from
Jamestown to England, came into Plymouth Harbor. Its captain,
though he proved a greedy, unprincipled trader, did sell the Pilgrims
a good supply of beads and knives that were "then good trade" with
the Indians.
That fall and during the winter of 1623, the Pilgrims made several
trips to barter for corn with the Indians. In this period--before
the colonists had taught the Indians how to increase their corn
crops by use of the English hoe--the Indians had not planted corn
to excess. Still, the Pilgrims were able to acquire "about 26
or 28 hogsheads of corn and beans"--which, said Bradford, "was
more than the Indians could well spare in these parts."
On the very first trips, in September, while Bradford was trading
in Cape Cod's present Pleasant Bay, Squanto was stricken with
a fever. He died within a few days. He was buried, deeply mourned,
somewhere on the present Chatham-to-Orleans shore.
[Free enterprise system embraced over communal or communist
type system--and found to yield great success.]
Planting time came in April 1623, when, with little corn supply
left but "that preserved for seed...we thought best to leave off
all other works and prosecute that most necessary."
Bradford and the "chiefest amongst them" made a basic decision
aimed at speeding, if possible, the Pilgrims' freedom from famine. Despite
the agreements made with the now-wavering adventurers, the Pilgrim
leaders decided that the best way to get a better crop was to
forgo holding it in common and to let each be responsible for
his own supply. As Bradford told it, "they should set
corn every man for his own particular, and in that regard to trust
to themselves, in all other things to go on in the general way
as before."
So, without its entailing any inheritance of land, the Pilgrim
leaders "assigned to every family a parcel of land according
to the proportion of their number. This," said Bradford, "had
very good success, for it made all hands very industrious, so
as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been
by any means the Governor or any other could use."
Two ships from London--the 240-ton Anne, which came in
mid-July 1623, and the accompanying (for a while) Little James,
a 44-ton pinnace that arrived two weeks later--brought 93 more
men, women and children to the colony.
These passengers, on arriving in their promised land and seeing
the Pilgrims' "Low and poor condition ashore...were much daunted
and dismayed, and according to their divers humors were diversely
affected. Some wished themselves in England again; others fell
aweeping, fancying their own misery in what they saw now in others;
others pitying the distress they saw their friends had been long
in, and still were under. In a word, all were full of sadness.
'AND TRULY IT WAS NO MARVEL THEY should be
thus affected, for they (the Pilgrims) were in a very low condition;
many were ragged in apparel and some little better than half naked.
But for food they were all alike, save some had got a few peas
of the ship that was last here."
The colony had been suffering a great drought since mid-May, so
that the cornstalks that had been first set "began to send forth
the ear before it came to half growth and that which was later
not like to yield any at all." The beans were "parched away as
though they had been scorched before the fire. Now were our hopes
overthrown and we discouraged..."
The devout Pilgrims, "in this great distress," gathered in
mid-July in the new meetinghouse for a day of humiliation [fasting]
together, the heavens were as clear, and the drought as like to
continue as ever it was, yet (our exercise continuing some eight
or nine hours), before our departure, the weather was overcast,
the clouds gathered together on all sides, and on the next morning
distilled such soft sweet, and moderate showers of rain, continuing
some 14 days...as it was hard to say whether our withered corn,
or drooping affections, were most quickened and revived; such
was the bounty and goodness of God.
"Of this the Indians, by means of Hobomok, took notice," said
Winslow. The transformation, added Bradford, "made the Indians
astonished to behold."
Neither writer gave a precise date for the second Thanksgiving
Day they then held in Plymouth; it was late July or early August.
But of the celebration, Bradford rapturously observed:
"Instead of famine now God gave them plenty, and the face of things
was changed, to the rejoicing of the hearts of many...
"Any general want or famine hath not been amongst them since to this day."
Among the passengers who arrived on the Anne was one
who brought joy to the face of Gov. Bradford. She was 33-year-old
Alice Carpenter Southworth, a widow about a year his junior. Southworth
was of the Leyden congregation and had been living in London.
She had come with her sister, Juliana, who was married to George
Morton and had four children. It was Morton who had most likely
arranged the publication of early writings by Bradford and Winslow
that became known as Mourt's Relation.
Not many days passed after the arrival of the ship before the
widow, on Aug. 14, 1623, became the bride of Bradford.
Our only description of the wedding, and that brief, comes from
a 23-year-old member of the gentry, Emmanuel Altham, one of the
colony's adventurers and a military captain who had arrived in
Plymouth as the supercargo of the Little James, intending
to use the pinnace for trading and fishing.
In a letter to his brother, Sir Edward, young Capt. Altham told
first of the arrival of Massasoit for the wedding: The sachem, "as
proper a man as ever was seen in this country," came with his
squaw-sachem, the queen.
Massasoit was attired, "like the rest of his men, all naked but
only a black wolf skin he wears upon his shoulder and about the
breadth of a span he wears beads about his middle.
"With him came four other kings and about six score men with their
bows and arrows--where, when they came to our town, we saluted
them with the shooting off of many muskets and training our men.
And so all the bows and arrows was brought into the Governors
house, and he brought the Governor three or four bucks and a turkey.
And so we had very good pastime in seeing them (the Indians) dance,
which is in such manner, with such noise that you would wonder. "
And now to say somewhat of the great cheer we had at the Governor's
marriage. We had about 12 pasty (meat pie) venisons, besides others,
pieces of roasted venison and other such good in such quantity
that I could wish you some of our share. For here we have the
best grapes that ever you saw--and the biggest, and divers sorts
of plums and nuts..."
Any threat of famine--indeed, to the Pilgrims' survival--seemed
gone at last from Plymouth.