The Mayflower and the Pilgrims' New World

by Nathaniel Philbrick

  ◆ The musket lock of the gun that supposedly killed King Philip.

  ◆◆◆ The first noise of the musket took Church by surprise. He thought one of his soldier’s guns might have gone off by accident. But other shots soon followed, and he knew the ambush had begun.

  In the eastern part of the swamp stood two men, Caleb Cook and the Pocasset Indian named Alderman. They could see an Indian coming toward them. He was running, they later reported, “as fast as he could scamper.” He was dressed in only his breeches and stockings. They waited until he had come within range, and now confident that he was one of the enemy, Cook pulled the trigger of his musket. But his weapon refused to fire. It was up to Alderman.

  The Pocasset pulled the trigger, and his musket fired two bullets, one of which hit Philip’s rapidly beating heart. He fell facedown into the mud with his gun beneath him. The warriors coming up from behind heard the shots and turned in the opposite direction. Hidden in the dark shadows of the swamp and not yet aware of his sachem’s death, Annawon could be heard calling out in a booming voice, “Iootash! Iootash!”—“Fight! Fight!”

  Alderman and Cook rushed over to Church and told him that they had just killed Philip. He ordered them to keep the news a secret until the battle was over. The fighting continued for a few more minutes, but finding a gap in the English line on the west end of the swamp, most of the enemy, now led by Annawon, escaped.

  Church gathered his men on the hill where the Indians’ shelter had been built and told them of Philip’s death. The army, Indians and English alike, shouted “huzzah!” three times. Taking hold of the sachem’s breeches and stockings, the sakonnets dragged his body through the mud and dumped him beside the shelter—“a doleful, great, naked, dirty beast,” Church remembered.

  ◆ A nineteenth-century engraving of King Philip’s death from a shot fired by a Pocasset Indian.

  With his men around him and with Philip’s mud-smeared body at his feet, Church declared, “That for as much as he had caused many an Englishman’s body to lie unburied and rot above ground, that not one of his bones should be buried.” He called forward a sakonnet who had already executed several of the enemy and ordered him to draw and quarter the body of King Philip.

  soon the body had been divided into four pieces. One of Philip’s hands had a distinctive scar caused by an exploded pistol. Church awarded the hand to Alderman, who later placed it in a bottle of rum and made “many a penny” in the years to come by showing the hand to curious New Englanders.

  ◆◆◆ On Thursday, August 17, Plymouth Pastor John Cotton led his congregation in a day of Thanksgiving. soon after the end of public worship that day, Benjamin Church and his men arrived with the biggest trophy of the war. “[Philip’s] head was brought into Plymouth in great triumph,” the church record states, “he being slain two or three days before, so that in the day of our praises our eyes saw the salvation of God.”

  The head was placed on one of the palisades of the town’s one-hundred-foot-square fort, built near where, back in 1623, Miles standish had placed the head of Wituwamat after his victory at Wessagussett. Philip’s head would remain in Plymouth for more than two decades, becoming the town’s most famous sight long before anyone took notice of the hunk of granite known as Plymouth Rock.

  ◆◆◆ Philip was dead, but Annawon, the sachem’s “chief captain,” was still out there. Old as Annawon was, the colony would not be safe, Governor Winslow insisted, until he had been taken. There was yet another well-known warrior still at large: Tuspaquin, the famed Black sachem of Nemasket.

  Church was expected to hunt down and kill these two warriors, but he had other ideas. He had recently been contacted by Massachusetts Bay about helping the colony against the Abenakis in Maine, where fighting still raged. With Tuspaquin and Annawon at his side, Church believed, he might be able to beat the mighty Abenakis.

  On August 29, he learned that the Black sachem was in Lakenham, about six miles west of Plymouth. But after two days of searching, he’d only managed to take Tuspaquin’s wife and children. He left a message for the sachem with two old Nemasket women that Tuspaquin “should be his captain over his Indians if he [proved to be] so stout a man as they reported him to be.” With luck, Tuspaquin would turn himself in at Plymouth, and Church would have a new Native officer.

  About a week later, word came from Taunton that Annawon and his men had been seen at Mount Hope. On Thursday, september 7, Church and just five Englishmen, including his trusted lieutenant Jabez Howland, and twenty Indians left Plymouth to hunt for Annawon.

  They searched Mount Hope for several days and captured a large number of Indians. One of the captives reported that his father and a girl had just come from Annawon’s headquarters. The old man and the girl were hidden in a nearby swamp, and the Indian offered to take Church to them. Leaving Howland and most of the company with the prisoners, Church and a handful of men went in search of the prisoner’s father.

  That afternoon they found the old man and the girl, each of whom was carrying a basket of food. They said that Annawon and about fifty to sixty men were at squannakonk swamp, several miles to the north between Taunton and Rehoboth. If they left immediately, they could be there by sundown. The old man and the girl walked so quickly over the swampy ground that Church and the rest of the company had difficulty keeping up. The old man insisted that since Church had spared his life, he had no choice but to serve him, and if Church’s plan was to work, they needed to get there as quickly as possible.

  By the time they reached Annawon’s camp, it was almost completely dark. Annawon, the old man explained, had set up camp at the base of a steep rock, and the surrounding swamp prevented entry from any other point. In the gathering darkness, Church and the old man crept up to the edge of the rock. They could see the fires of Annawon’s people. There were three different groups, with “the great Annawon” and his son and several others sitting nearest the rock. Their food was cooking on the fires, and Church noticed that their guns were leaning together against a branch with a mat placed over the weapons to keep them from getting wet. He also noticed that Annawon’s feet and his son’s head were almost touching the muskets.

  ◆ A nineteenth-century engraving depicting Church’s capture of Annawon.

  No one in his right mind would dare climb down from the rock to enter Annawon’s camp. But if Church could hide himself behind his two Indian guides, who were known to Annawon and his warriors, he might be able to grab the Indians’ guns before they realized who he was.

  With the two guides leading the way, Church and his men climbed down the rock face, sometimes grasping bushes to keep from falling down the steep descent and using the noise of women grinding corn to hide the sounds of their approach. As soon as he reached the ground, Church walked over to the guns with his hatchet in his hand. seeing who it was, Annawon’s son pulled his blanket over his head and “shrunk up in a heap.” Annawon leaped to his feet and cried out “howoh?” or “who?” Realizing that the Englishman could easily kill his son, Annawon sadly surrendered.

  Now that he had captured Annawon, Church sent the sakonnets to the other campsites to inform the Indians that their leader had been taken and that Church and “his great army” would grant them mercy if they gave up quietly. As it turned out, many of the enemy were related to the sakonnets and were more than willing to believe them. soon, Church and his company of half a dozen men had won a complete and bloodless surrender.

  Church then turned to Annawon and through an interpreter asked what he had to eat—“for,” he said, “I am come to sup with you.” In a booming voice, Annawon replied, “taubut,” or “it is good.” sprinkling some of the salt that he carried with him in his pocket on the meat, Church enjoyed some roasted beef and ground green corn. Once the meal had been completed, he told Annawon that as long as his people cooperated they would all be allowed to live, except perhaps Annawon himself, whose fate must be decided by the Plymouth courts.

  As the meal came to an end, Chur
ch realized he desperately needed sleep. He’d been awake now for two days straight. He told his men that if they let him sleep for two hours, he would keep watch for the rest of the night. But as soon as he lay down for a nap, he discovered that he was once again wide awake. After an hour or so, he looked up and saw that everyone else was fast asleep, with one exception: Annawon.

  For another hour, they lay on opposite sides of the fire “looking one upon the other.” since Church did not know the Indians’ language, and, he assumed, Annawon did not know English, neither one of them had anything to say. suddenly the old warrior threw off his blanket and walked off into the darkness. Church assumed he had left to relieve himself, but when Annawon did not return for several minutes, Church feared he might be up to no good. Church moved next to Annawon’s son. If his father should attempt to attack him, he would use the young man as a hostage.

  A full moon had risen, and in the ghostly silver light, he saw Annawon approaching with something in his hands. The Indian came up to Church and dropped to his knees. Holding up a woven basket, he said in perfect English, “Great Captain, you have killed Philip and conquered his country, for I believe that I and my company are the last that war against the English, so [I] suppose the war is ended by your means and therefore these things belong unto you.”

  Inside the basket were several belts of wampum. One was nine inches wide and showed a picture of flowers, birds, and animals. Church was now standing, and when Annawon draped the belt over his shoulders, it reached down to his ankles. The next belt was one that Philip had often wrapped around his head and had streamers that had hung at his back; the third was meant for his chest and had a star at either end. There were also two powder horns and a rich red blanket. These, Annawon explained, were what Philip “was wont to adorn himself with when he sat in state.”

  The two warriors talked late into the night. Annawon spoke with particular fondness of his service under Philip’s father, Massasoit, and “what mighty success he had formerly in wars against many nations of Indians.” They also spoke of Philip. Annawon blamed the war on two factors: the lies of the Praying Indians, especially John sassamon, and the young warriors, whom he compared to “sticks laid on a heap, till by the multitude of them a great fire came to be kindled.”

  At daybreak, Church marched his prisoners to Taunton, where he met up with Lieutenant Howland, “who expressed a great deal of joy to see him again and said ’twas more than ever he expected.” The next day, Church sent Howland with the majority of the prisoners to Plymouth. In the meantime, he wanted Annawon to meet his friends in Rhode Island. They remained in Newport for several days and then finally left for Plymouth.

  In just two months’ time, Church had brought in a total of seven hundred Indians. Given his efforts toward ending the war, he hoped that Governor Winslow might listen to his pleas that Annawon and, if he should turn himself in, Tuspaquin be granted mercy.

  Massachusetts governor John Leverett had requested to meet with him to discuss again the possibility of his leading a company in Maine, and Church quickly left for Boston. But when he returned to Plymouth a few days later, he discovered “to his grief” that the heads of both Annawon and Tuspaquin had joined Philip’s on the palisades of Fort Hill.

  ◆◆◆ In september of 1676, fifty-six years after the sailing of the Mayflower and a month after the death of Philip, a ship named the Seaflower left from the shores of New England. Like the Mayflower, she carried a human cargo. But instead of 102 colonists, the Seaflower was bound for Jamaica with 180 Native American slaves.

  More than a thousand Indians were sold into slavery during King Philip’s War, with over half the slaves coming from Plymouth Colony alone. But by september 1676, plantation owners in the Caribbean had decided that they did not want slaves who had already shown a willingness to revolt. We don’t know what happened to the Indians aboard the Seaflower, but we do know that the captain of one American slave ship was forced to venture all the way to Africa before he finally sold his cargo. And so, fifty-six years after the sailing of the Mayflower, a vessel from New England completed a voyage of a different sort.

  EPILOGUE

  The Rock

  WHEN I BEGAN writing this book, I wanted to tell the story of how the voyage of the Mayflower led to the voyage of the Seaflower. It would be a very different story from the one I was taught in school about the First Thanksgiving and Plymouth Rock. This is not to say that what I learned as a child was all wrong. As we have seen, the Pilgrims and the Wampanoags did join in a celebration in the fall of 1621, during which they ate ducks, geese, deer, and perhaps turkeys. There is also a boulder beside Plymouth Harbor that is still known today as Plymouth Rock. But unlike the First Thanksgiving, there is no direct evidence connecting Plymouth Rock with the Pilgrims. As it turns out, the story of Plymouth Rock is not about what actually happened in Plymouth Colony. It’s a story about how a hunk of granite became one of America’s most popular—and powerful—myths.

  The Pilgrims never mentioned a rock in their own accounts of their arrival in Plymouth Harbor. Not until 121 years later, in 1741, did ninety-five-year-old Thomas Faunce claim that his father (who didn’t even arrive in Plymouth until 1623) told him that the Mayflower passengers used a boulder at the edge of Plymouth Harbor as a kind of stepping-stone to America. so was born the legend of Plymouth Rock. several decades later, just before the start of the American Revolution, a group of patriots known as the sons of Liberty decided that the rock was the perfect symbol for their cause. They decided to move the rock from its original location beside the harbor to the center of town. Unfortunately, when the sons of Liberty pulled the rock from the mud, it broke in half. Leaving half the rock behind, they carted the other half to the town square.

  ◆ A photograph of Plymouth Rock in front of Pilgrim Hall.

  In the years to come, souvenir hunters used hammers to knock pieces from the rock in the center of town until it was about half its original size. In 1834, the Plymouth town fathers decided that they should move what was left of the rock to the front of a newly built museum called Pilgrim Hall. Once again, disaster struck: After being loaded onto a cart, the rock was passing by the town’s courthouse when it fell to the ground and broke in two. With the help of some cement, it was put back together and placed in front of the museum.

  By 1880, it had been decided to build a fancy monument around the other half of the rock, which was still beside Plymouth Harbor. It was also decided that it was now time for the two pieces of the rock to be put back together. That year, the half in front of Pilgrim Hall was moved down to the waterfront (this time without being dropped), and the two halves were finally reunited after more than a hundred years apart.

  Today, the town of Plymouth is a place of historic houses, museums, restaurants, and gift shops. A few miles away on the north bank of the Eel River is Plimoth Plantation, a re-creation of the Pilgrim settlement as it looked in 1627, the last year the original settlers all lived within the great wall. The design and construction of the buildings have been carefully researched, and historical interpreters dress and act as if they were English men and women from 1627. Outside the wall is the re-creation of a small Native settlement known as the Wampanoag Homesite. Here the interpreters are busy with the many daily tasks of a typical Wampanoag village in the early 1600s, which includes carving a large log into a beautifully crafted dugout canoe.

  Also part of Plimoth Plantation is the Mayflower II, a replica of the ship that brought the Pilgrims to America. It is now tied to a dock beside the fancy granite monument that encloses what remains of Plymouth Rock. The monument is large and impressive, but the actual rock is much smaller than most people expect. some have even claimed that Plymouth Rock is one of the biggest letdowns in American tourism.

  And yet, even if the Pilgrims never did set foot on the rock, it is still, I believe, an important part of this story. Plymouth Rock has been broken, moved, chipped away, broken again, and put back together, but in the end it is still ther
e, reminding us that in 1620 something important happened at this spot, something that eventually led to the making of America.

  TIME LINE

  1524 • Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazano stops at Narragansett Bay.

  1602 • English explorer Bartholomew Gosnold visits New England and names Cape Cod.

  1605 • French explorer samuel Champlain explores the Cape and creates detailed maps of the region.

  1607 • Jamestown settlement founded in Virginia.

  1608 • English separatists from scrooby decide to emigrate to more religiously tolerant Holland.

  1611 • William Bradford turns twenty-one and becomes a leading member of the separatist congregation in Leiden, Holland.

  1614 • Captain John smith visits New England and creates maps of the region. Thomas Hunt captures Natives and sells them as slaves in spain.

  June 1619 • John Carver and Robert Cushman secure a patent from the Virginia Company to start settlement in America.

  July 1620 • The Pilgrims depart from Delfshaven, Holland, aboard the Speedwell.

  September 6, 1620 • The Mayflower sets out from Plymouth, England, for America.

  November 9, 1620 • The Mayflower passengers see land on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.

  November 11, 1620 • The Mayflower arrives in Provincetown Harbor. Forty-one men sign the Mayflower Compact.

  December 1620 • The Pilgrims have the First Encounter with Natives when they meet the Nausets of Cape Cod. The next day they find Plymouth Harbor.

  December 15, 1620 • The Mayflower leaves Provincetown Harbor to sail for Plymouth Harbor.