by Rod Gragg
Carrying early-style firearms, the Pilgrim explorers moved cautiously through the bayside woodlands, hoping for a peaceful first encounter with the region’s Native American inhabitants. But it was not to be.
AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY
About five o’clock in the morning we began to be stirring, and two or three which doubted whether their pieces would go off or no, made trial of them and shot them off, but thought nothing at all. After prayer we prepared ourselves for breakfast and for a journey, and it being now the twilight in the morning, it was thought meet to carry the things down to the shallop. Some said it was not best to carry the armor down. Others said, they would be readier. Two or three said they would not carry theirs till they went themselves, but mistrusting nothing at all. As it fell out, the water not being high enough, they laid the things down upon the shore, and came up to breakfast. Anon, all upon a sudden, we heard a great and sudden cry, which we knew to be the same voices, though they varied their notes. One of our company, being abroad, came running in, and cried, “They are men! Indians! Indians!” and [soon] their arrows came flying amongst us. Our men ran out with all speed to recover their arms, as by the good providence of God they did. In the meantime Captain Miles Standish, having a [flintlock firearm] ready, made a shot, and after him another. After they two had shot, other two of us were ready; but he wished us not to shoot till we could take aim, for we knew not what need we should have; and there were four only of us which had their arms there ready, and stood before the open side of our barricade, which was first assaulted. They thought it best to defend it, lest the enemy should take it and our stuff, and so have the more vantage against us. Our care was no less for the shallop, but we hoped all the rest would defend it. We called unto them to know how it was with them, and they answered “Well! Well!” every one, and, “Be of good courage!” We heard three of their pieces go off, and the rest called for a firebrand to light their matches. One took a log out of the fire on his shoulder and went and carried it unto them, which was thought did not a little discourage our enemies. The cry of our enemies was dreadful, especially when our men ran out to recover their arms. Their note was after this manner, “Waath woach ha ha hach woach.” Our men were no sooner come to their arms, but the enemy was ready to assault them.
“Their arrows came flying amongst us”
There was a lusty man, and no whit less valiant, who was thought to be their captain, stood behind a tree within half a musket-shot of us, and there let his arrows fly at us. He was seen to shoot three arrows, which were all avoided, for he at whom the first arrow was aimed saw it, and stooped down, and it flew over him. The rest were avoided also. He stood three shots of a musket. At length one took, as he said, full aim at him, after which he gave an extraordinary cry, and away they went all. We followed them about a quarter of a mile; but we left six to keep our shallop, for we were careful of our business. Then we shouted all together two several times, and shot off a couple of muskets, and so returned. This we did that they might see we were not afraid of them, nor discouraged.
Indian warriors release a shower of arrows on their enemies in this late sixteenth-century illustration. While searching for a site to establish their colony, the Pilgrims experienced firsthand the prowess of Indian bowmen.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
Thus it pleased God to vanquish our enemies and give us deliverance. By their noise we could not guess that they were less than thirty or forty, though some thought that they were many more. Yet, in the dark of the morning, we could not so well discern them among the trees, as they could see us by our fireside. We took up 18 of their arrows, which we have sent to England by Master Jones; some whereof were headed with brass, others with [deer] horn, and others with eagles’ claws. Many more no doubt were shot, for these we found were almost covered with leaves; yet, by the especial providence of God, none of them either hit or hurt us, though many came close by us and on every side of us, and some coats which hung up in our barricade were shot through and through. So after we had given God thanks for our deliverance, we took our shallop and went on our journey. . . .2
“[We] Saw Many Indians”
The Pilgrims Encounter Native American Culture
Although the Pilgrims would be the first Europeans to successfully colonize New England, they were not the first to explore it. Nor were they the first to make contact with its Native American inhabitants. Hundreds of years before Columbus landed in the New World in 1492, Viking adventurers such as Leif Ericson may have explored the New England coastline. A few years after Columbus’s epic voyage, Italian navigator John Cabot sailed along the coast of New England in the service of England’s King Henry VII. In 1524, Giovanni de Verrazano, another Italian, explored the region on a long voyage up the American East Coast for France’s King Francis I. French seaman Jacques Cartier cruised the region’s waters ten years later, and French navigator Samuel Champlain, who would be famous as the founder of Canada, also explored the New England coast and the Cape Cod region in 1604, noting that the Native Americans who inhabited Cape Cod Bay were skilled fishermen and farmers.
In 1602, English explorer Bartholomew Gosnold attempted to establish the first English colony in New England. He failed, but did give Cape Cod its name. A popular account of his exploration may have aided the Pilgrims.
CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
Between Cabot and Champlain, numerous English explorers sailed the waters off Cape Cod, probed its interior, and made contact with the Indians of the region. Among them were Bartholomew Gosnold in 1602, and Martin Pring in 1603—both of whom reported peaceful exchanges with Native Americans. On his 1614 voyage along the coast of what would become Massachusetts, Captain John Smith counted dozens of Indian villages, and noted numerous seaside fields of corn and flourishing gardens. Smith’s personal contact with the region’s Indians was mostly positive, and he condemned other English explorers for “treachery among the savages” that would complicate future relations with the Indians. Among those engaging in such “treachery” was Captain George Weymouth, who kidnapped Indians from the coast of Maine in 1605. More notorious, and much more damaging to future relations with New England’s Indians, was Captain Thomas Hunt—“a worthless fellow” in the words of a contemporary—who commanded one of Smith’s two ships on his 1614 expedition. After Smith had returned to England, Hunt ruthlessly captured a large number of Cape Cod area Indians and sold them to Spanish buyers as slaves.
In response, some of the region’s Indian tribes routinely attacked European strangers for years to come, wiping out almost the entire crew of a shipwrecked French ship in 1615. At about the same time, English sailors ambushed and killed a group of local Indians, which further embittered the area’s tribes. In 1619, the year before the Pilgrims landed, English explorer Thomas Dermer and his crew were attacked and suffered serious casualties while exploring the area. Dermer blamed the attacks on Hunt and other European explorers who had needlessly provoked the Indians’ hostility. “We had not now that fair quarter among the savages as before . . . ,” he wrote, “for now almost everywhere, where [the Indians] were of any strength, they sought to betray us.” The English losses were minor, however, compared to the massive death that had swept through the region’s Native American population in the early 1600s, following contact with European explorers. An unknown epidemic killed the region’s native inhabitants by the thousands, reducing the local Indian population to a fraction of its former size and leaving the region marked by barren clearings where Indian villages had once existed.
French explorer Samuel Champlain explored the Cape Cod region more than fifteen years before the Pilgrims arrived, and made note of the area’s Native American population.
TORONTO PUBLIC LIBRARY
The Indians seen by the Pilgrims on their first venture ashore were from the small Pamet tribe, which had a reputation for being peaceable. Ironically, one of the reasons the Pilgrims decided to locate the colony across Cape Cod Bay from their original anc
horage was because they feared they had offended the Pamet by taking their corn. Their decision to keep looking led them into the territory occupied by the more combative Nauset tribe, and the violent exchange of the “First Encounter.”
Despite their debatable decision to raid the Indians’ store of corn and other items, many historians would credit the Pilgrims with establishing a far better record of relations with Native Americans than that of most other European colonists in America. The English monarchy reportedly did not want to imitate the brutal methods by which the Spanish had conquered and occupied their New World claims. Even so, the territory claimed by England in the New World was inhabited by Native Americans. While they viewed land ownership dramatically differently than Europeans, the fact that they had battled one another for tribal territory over the ages demonstrated that Native Americans did recognize territory—a fact that many European colonists ignored. The English justified their claims in North America in large measure based on the ancient Roman doctrine of vacuum domicilium—that the continent was a wilderness inhabited by people of primitive cultures who were unable to develop or civilize it.
Under existing English law, the Pilgrims could legally lay claim to wilderness land in America based on the English Doctrine of Discovery by which King Henry VII commissioned famed explorer John Cabot to explore the New World in 1496. Henry VII had declared that “whatsoever islands, countries, regions or provinces of heathens and infidels, in whatsoever part of the world” discovered by English explorers thereafter belonged to the English monarchy and could therefore be colonized. The Doctrine of Discovery, like vacuum domicilium, was based on the argument that native populations could not possibly cultivate more than a fraction of available New World lands, and that unoccupied wilderness was therefore open to colonization. “In the interior of America,” wrote English philosopher John Locke in his Two Treatises on Government, “there are individuals and families living in conditions not unlike the first peopling of the world. . . . That old rule of propriety—that everyone should have as much land as he could make use of—would still hold in the modern world without [inconveniencing] anyone.”
English King Henry VII commissioned navigator John Cabot to explore the New World, and in 1497 Cabot discovered North America. To lay claim to the continent, Henry VII proclaimed a “Doctrine of Discovery” that governed future explorations as well.
NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY
Unlike many European colonists, who had no regard for Indian lands, the Pilgrims tried to do more than was required by the Doctrine of Discovery, claiming only what appeared to be unused land, and treating Indian-occupied property with comparative respect. Acting within those controversial parameters, the Pilgrims established a model for dealing with Native American people that would be unsurpassed by most European and American authorities in the three centuries to come. As twenty-first-century Pilgrim expert Jeremy D. Bangs would observe of Plymouth Colony: “There is no general pattern of ruthless defrauding of the Indians, despite the obvious expectation that in the end most of the territory would become the property of the English. . . .”
Although its Native American population had been devastated by recent epidemics, the region of the future American state of Massachusetts—which included Plymouth Colony—was still inhabited by thousands of the Massachuset, the Pamet, the Nauset, the Mahican, the Pennacook, the Nipmuc, the Mashpee, and the Pocomtuc. A detailed description of the Native American culture that awaited the Pilgrims was recorded by John Brereton, a clergyman with Bartholomew Gosnold’s 1602 expedition, which unsuccessfully attempted to establish the first English colony in New England. Gosnold landed briefly at Cape Cod, which he reportedly so named, then sailed southward to Buzzard’s Bay and the islands on the southern coast of Massachusetts. Back home in England, Brereton published a popular account of the voyage, which fascinated readers with a colorful depiction of the Native Americans he had encountered. The tribe he described lived to the south of Cape Cod, but their dress and customs were undoubtedly similar to those of the Indian peoples encountered by the Pilgrims in 1620:
“They also gave us their tobacco, which they [smoke] green”
[We] saw many Indians, which are tall, big-boned men, all naked save they cover their private parts with a black-tewed skin, much like a blacksmith’s apron, tied about their middle and between their legs in behind. They gave us of their fish, already boiled, which they carried in a basket made of twigs. . . . They also gave us their tobacco, which they [smoke] green, but dried into powder, very strong and pleasant, and much better than any I have tasted in England. The necks of their pipes are made of hard dried clay, both red and white, [and] the other part is a piece of hollow copper very finely closed and cemented together. We gave them certain trifles, such as knives, points and such like, which they much esteemed. . . .
Now the next day . . . we sighted nine canoes or boats with fifty Indians in them, coming towards us from this part of the mainland, where we two days before had landed. We went out on the seaside to meet them; and coming somewhat near them, they all sat down upon the stones, calling aloud to us (as we rightly guessed) to do the like, a little distance from them. Having sat a while in this order, Captain Gosnold willed me to go unto them, to see what countenance they would make; but as soon as I came up unto them, one of them . . . spoke unto their lord or captain, which sat in the midst of them, who presently rose up and took a large beaver skin from one that stood about him, and gave it unto me, which I requited for that time the best I could: but I pointed towards Captain Gosnold [and] made signs unto him that he was our captain, and desirous to be his friend, and enter league with him, which (as I perceived) he understood, and made signs of joy. Whereupon Captain Gosnold with the rest of his company, being twenty in all, came up unto them, and after many signs of congratulations (Captain Gosnold presenting their lord with certain trifles which they wondered at, and highly esteemed), we became very great friends. [We] sent for meat aboard our shallop, and gave them such meats as we had then already dressed, whereof they disliked nothing but our mustard, for which they made many a sour face. While we were thus being merry, one of them conveyed a target of ours into one of their canoes, [but] speaking angrily about him (as we perceived by his countenance), [their lord] caused it presently to be brought back again.
So the rest of the day we spent in trading with them for furs—beavers, lucerns, martins, wildcat skins, very large and deep fur, black foxes, [rabbit] skins the color of our hares but somewhat less, very large deerskins, seal skins and other beasts’ skins unknown to us. They have also great store of copper, some very red and some of a paler color. [All] have chains, earrings or collars of this metal. They head some of their arrows with it, much like our broad arrow heads, very workmanlike. Their chains are many hollow pieces cemented together, each piece of the size of one of our reeds, a finger in length, ten or twelve of them together on a string, which they wear about their necks. Their collars they wear about their bodies like bandoliers . . . four hundred pieces in a collar, very fine and evenly set together. Besides these, they have large drinking cups, made like sculls, and other thin plates of copper made much like our boar spear blades, all which they so little esteem as they offered their fairest collars or chains for a knife or such like trifle. . . . I was desirous to understand where they had such store of this metal, and made signs to one of them (with whom I was very familiar). Taking a piece of copper in his hand, he made a hole with his finger in the ground, and pointed to the mainland from whence they came.
Explorer John Cabot
THE CABOTS AND THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA
They strike fire in this manner: everyone carries about him in a purse of tewed leather, a mineral stone (which I take to be their copper), and with a flat emery stone tied fast to the end of a little stick, gently strikes upon the mineral stone. Within a stroke or two, a spark falls upon a piece of touchwood (much like our sponge in England) and with the least spark makes a fire. We also had of their flax, with
which they make many strings and cords, but it is not so bright of color as ours in England. I am persuaded they have great store [of it] growing upon the mainland, as also mines and many other rich commodities, which we, wanting both time and means, could not possibly discover. . . .
Decades before the Pilgrims landed at Cape Cod, various European explorers had kidnapped and otherwise mistreated local Indians, provoking their distrust of all newcomers. As a result, European expeditions to the region on the eve of the Pilgrims’ arrival had been attacked by local tribes.
WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
These people are exceeding courteous, gentle of disposition and well conditioned, excelling all others that we have seen for shape of body and lovely favor. I think they excel all the people of America. Of stature [they] are much higher than we [and] of complexion or color much like a dark olive. Their eyebrows and hair are black, which they wear long, tied up behind in knots, whereon they prick the feathers of fowls in the fashion of a crown. Some of them are black thin-bearded. They make beards of the hair of beasts, and one of them offered a beard of their making to one of our sailors for his that grew on his face, which because it was of a red color, they judged to be none of his own. They are quick-eyed, and steadfast in their looks, fearless of others harming them, as intending none themselves. Some of the meaner sort are given to pilfering, which the very name of savage (not weighing their ignorance in good or evil) may easily excuse. Their garments are of deerskins, and some of them wear furs round and close about their necks. They pronounce our language with great facility. One day I spoke to one of them these words: “How now, sir, are you so saucy with my tobacco?” Without any further repetition, he suddenly spoke so plain and distinctly as if he had been a long scholar in the language. Many other such trials we had which are here needless to repeat. . . .3
