By fall the Pilgrims had seven houses and four common buildings. At the common house, ready for shipping back to England, were great piles of wainscoting and clapboards, all sawed by hand and borne from the forests on the backs of the men. Their corn crop was good, though the peas were not worth harvesting. Fowl and fish were plentiful. Those who survived were all restored in health. They had food, shelter, and peace with the Indians. It hardly seemed possible that order and plenty could come out of such misery in such a short time. For all this they were thankful.
The spirit of peace and contentment prompted Governor Bradford to declare a season of thanksgiving. When the granary was under roof and the harvest safely gathered, Elder Brewster on the next Sabbath proclaimed that beginning with the following Tuesday there would be several days of grace and feasting in accordance with the custom of harvest festivals in the North Country of England.
Massasoit was invited and showed up with 90 of his people on Wednesday and stayed for four full days.
The feast lasted several days longer than originally planned as the Indians ranged the woods and brought in five fat deer to prolong the merriment. They had never had such eating and drinking and would have reveled in staying all winter, but, after the noon feast on Saturday, the governor took Massasoit by the hand bidding him “Farewell.” Some of the Indians made faces at the command to depart, but the king after much talk gathered all his subjects about him. They were escorted down to the brookside and given a salute by gun volley as they disappeared along the deer path.
The following week the ship Fortune arrived from London bringing 35 new settlers. They received an enthusiastic welcome but the merry tunes were soon changed to graver notes when the colonists learned the new arrivals had brought nothing but the clothes on their backs. Most of them were young lads who had sold even their extra clothing at Plymouth, England for money to enjoy the pleasures of the port. They put a fearful strain on the slender supply of food and contributed to the famine that bedeviled the colony that winter, spring, and early summer.
The savage Narragansett also threatened the settlement, necessitating the building of a palisade. A wall of pine logs, eight feet high, was constructed. To the drudgery of the day was added guard duty at night. That spring, the colony was bothered by wolves coming down the path, over-running the cornfields at night, digging up the fish which had been planted to fertilize the corn with so much labor during the day. They caused so much trouble that a guard had to be set over the cornfields as well as over the palisade.
By the first week in June the corn in store was exhausted and famine stared the colony in the face. The ducks, turkeys, and other wild fowl were gone, migrated for the season. One could range the shore and forests without hearing chatter. The fish, like the fowl, had also gone — to cooler and deeper water. Though ample enough in the spring and autumn months, fish were scarce in the summer.
The summer days came on apace and grew hotter. A fierce drought developed. When the second week without rain went into the third, and the third into the fourth, even the Indian allies began to prophesy coming evils.
On learning that the Sparrow, with a whole fleet of fishing vessels, lay at anchor 40 leagues to the north, Governor Bradford sent Winslow to try to get a supply of provisions. His utmost exertions obtained only enough to supply a little bread each day until harvest. On his return the distress had become extreme.
Had it not been for the clams, alewives, and tidal crabs which they were able to take by hand, the Pilgrims would have perished from starvation. The Indians, boasting how easy it would be to cut them off in their enfeebled condition, insulted them over their weakness; and even their ally, Massasoit, now looked on them coldly.
New trials awaited the Pilgrims, requiring the fullest exercise of their prudence and firmness; and this time they arose neither from sickness, famine, nor Indian hostility, but from the misconduct of their own countrymen. About the end of June 1622, two vessels, the Charity, and the Swan, arrived at the settlement, dispatched by Thomas Weston to establish a settlement on his own private account somewhere in the neighborhood of Plymouth. As had too often happened in the colonization of Virginia, the men sent out were mostly destitute of industriousness, economy, or principle; “so base,” to quote the words of one contemporary in describing them, “as in all appearance not fit for an honest man’s company.” Evils hitherto avoided by the strict integrity and unyielding firmness of the Pilgrims in their dealings with the Indians were now brought upon them by the reckless, cowardly, and dishonorable behavior of this new body of settlers.
Because Weston had once been among the most zealous friends of the Plymouth colonists, they thought themselves obliged to do all in their power to further his objectives. They treated the newcomers with hospitality consistent with their slender and precarious supplies. But the self-denial which the Pilgrims imposed upon themselves was too irksome to the selfish strangers who, not satisfied with the largest allowance of flour consistent with the little store on hand, basely stole the green corn, prematurely exhausting the resources of their hosts. At length, they moved to a spot called Wessagussett, in Massachusetts Bay, where they decided to plant their colony. The Pilgrims were glad enough to see them go, but unhappily they departed only to work greater mischief at a distance.
The arrival at the end of August of two other trading vessels, the Discovery and Sparrow, furnished the colonists with a welcome opportunity to obtain knives and beads to exchange with the Indians. Except for this providential supply, they would have been worse off than ever, not only having a scant store of corn for the ensuing winter but having no means of carrying on barter.
The wanton and lawless conduct of Weston’s people soon produced a conspiracy between the Massachusetts and Paomet Indians to cut off the whole body of the English. On one of his expeditions in search of corn, Captain Standish had a very narrow escape from the knife of an assassin. During his absence, news reached Bradford that Massasoit was deathly ill. He sent Winslow, Hobomack (Squanto’s runner), and others to see if they could help. They did save his life and he, in gratitude, exposed the plot among the Indians to exterminate all the white settlers along the coast.
Standish, with eight of the most courageous and trustworthy men at Plymouth, set out for Wessagussett and nipped the conspiracy in the bud by slitting the throats and decapitating four of the murderous ringleaders. Having broken up the confederacy by hacking it off at the top, Standish returned to Plymouth carrying with him the head of the bloodthirstiest conspirator, Wituwamat, which he set on a pike at the fort to terrorize the neighboring Indians. So deep an impression did Standish make by this bold move that the sachems involved in the plot fled to distant hiding places and the colony was delivered from further apprehension of attack.
It is regrettable that the Pilgrims were driven to such an act of summary vengeance by the misconduct of others, for their own dealings with the Indians were ever humane and conscientious. But there can be no doubt that the colonists were menaced with destruction, that Standish would have been murdered but for a providentially sleepless night, and that the ringleaders of such a plot deserved death.
Thus, through manifold trials bravely met, the colony survived into the month of April 1623. April found the settlers still struggling with the same hardships and privations which had beset them at intervals ever since their landing. The whole of their corn save what was reserved for seed was exhausted, and there appeared but little prospect of any immediate relief. Since their escape from starvation seemed wholly to depend upon the success of the coming harvest, they determined upon a new course.
In order to stimulate individual exertion, and “considering that every man, in a measure more or less, loveth and preferreth his own good before his neighbour’s,” it was decided that each should work for his own private benefit and not for the common good. The land was, therefore, equally divided among the colonists and they commenced their labors in the hope of an abundant return.
Bradford at this point wrote in his journal the often misinterpreted passage which follows:
The experience that was had in this comone course and condition, tried sundrie years, and that amongst godly and sober men, may well evince the vanitie of that conceite of Platos & other ancients, applauded by some of later times; — that ye taking away of propertie, and bringing in comunitie into a comone wealth, would make them happy and florishing; as if they were wiser then God. For this comunitie (so farr as it was) was found to breed much confusion & discontent, and retard much imployment that would have been to their benefite and comforte. For ye yong-men that were most able and fitte for labor & services did repine that they should spend their time & streingth to worke for other mens wives and children with out any recompence. The strong, or man of parts, had no more in devission of victails & cloaths, then he that was weake and not able to doe a quarter ye other could; this was thought injuestice ….
Brighter days now dawned for the Pilgrims. They had nobly borne the trials of the first settlement and persevered in spite of hardships and difficulties that would have overwhelmed others whose faith and patience were less deeply rooted. And their noble endurance was, at length, appreciated by the Company in England, which wrote, “Let it not be grievous to you, that you have been instruments to break the ice for others who come after with less difficulty. The honour shall be yours to the world’s end.”
Although Pastor Robinson himself was prevented from entering the promised land, a large number of the Leyden exiles eventually found the means to join their brethren at Plymouth and to take part in the success of that enterprise which had been undertaken in prayers and tears, and carried out at the cost of such toil, suffering, and mortality. The work they had proposed to themselves at Leyden, “to lay a foundation for the kingdom of Christ in these remote parts of the world,” was accomplished. They had no further ambition, for their treasure was in heaven; nor, with their simplicity of heart and singleness of aim, could they foresee the acclaim destined to clothe their names with glory, nor the extent of the great Republic that would commemorate them by perpetuating their festival of Thanksgiving.
The Pilgrims left no doubt about their preference of God’s way, that of individual responsibility in enterprise over communal ownership and control. Would that their spirit were dominant today! The world hath need of it.
What became of the ship Mayflower – Paul Harvey
Nobody could tell a story like Paul Harvey. Here he traces what soon became of the ship that carried the Pilgrims to America in 1620. Is it fact or fable?
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