One Small Candle: The Pilgrim's First Year in America (The Thomas Fleming Library)

by Thomas Fleming

  On the Mayflower the sick were at first sent ashore - which caused some bitterness among the colonists because ashore they had only water to drink and they thought that beer was helpful medicine. When one of the sailors came ashore, William Bradford asked him for a small flask of beer. The fellow answered curtly, “If you were my own father, you would get none.” But when Christopher Jones heard this, he was outraged and sent word ashore to Governor Carver that he should send for beer for anyone that needed it, “though he drunk water homeward bound.”

  The Mayflower’s crew soon found they were not immune to the epidemic. It swept through the ship, prostrating almost everyone in the next month. The colonists who were still aboard did what they could to help the sick sailors, and their charity made a profound impression on them. Those like the young boatswain’s mate who had scoffed and cursed at the piety of their passengers now found that their “boon companions in drinking and jollity” would not come near them while they lay dying. The boatswain said he did not deserve help from the passengers. He had abused them in word and deed. “You, I now see,” he said, “show your love like Christians indeed one to another but we let one another lie and die like dogs.”

  One sailor spent his last hours cursing his wife, saying if it had not been for her, he never would have made this unlucky voyage. Then he cursed his mates, remembering the money he had loaned them, the help he had given them - and they were now “weary of him.” Another man promised his best friend all his possessions when he died, in return for some help. “He went and got a little spice and made him a mess of meat once or twice,” Bradford says, “and because he died not so soon as he expected, he went among his fellows and swore . . . he would see him choked before he made him any more meat; and yet the poor fellow died before morning.”

  During this terrible time, while he slowly recovered from his own sickness, William Bradford began his career as a historian. He started to jot in his notebook small things that happened, beginning at first with little more than a melancholy record of deaths. “Jan. 21. Dies Rose, the wife of Capt. Standish . . . N.B. This month 8 of our number die.” What was it that stirred this young, comparatively uneducated man to record the details - and eventually the lives - of these humble people? Was it a reaction to his wife’s death? Did he wish to expiate his personal failure by assuming a larger responsibility? Or did he sense in the depths of their unlovely anguish the magnificence of their spirit? Perhaps both, perhaps neither. But these primitive notes were another step in William Bradford’s commitment to a lifetime of service.

  February was Plymouth’s worst month. Seventeen persons died. Work came to a complete standstill. The weather continued to be miserably cold and rainy. On February 9, during an especially bad cold spell, another spark from a fire kindled the roof of one of the small houses that was being used as a hospital. As before, the sick had to flee into the cold, but the fire was “quickly doused with no great harm done.” T hat same day Captain Jones, still anxious to do what he could to ease his friends’ suffering, went ashore and killed five geese which he distributed among the sick. On that same hunting trip Jones found something more ominous in the woods – “a good deer” killed by the Indians and left to be eaten by the wolves; the savages had contented themselves with cutting off the horns. It was another unnerving reminder that the Indians were all around them. Ten days before, Captain Jones and his sailors had spotted two braves studying the Mayflower from Saquish Head. They tried to communicate with the silent visitors, but the savages quickly slipped away. On February 16, there was a far more serious alarm. One of the few healthy men went into the woods to hunt for fresh food. Crouching in the reeds by Jones River about a mile and a half from the plantation, he was horrified to see twelve Indians pad silently past him in single file heading toward Plymouth. In the woods nearby he heard the noise of many more.

  Wisely the hunter lay absolutely quiet until they passed, then raced home to give the alarm. For a moment it looked like the final disaster. The few men still on their feet, such as Miles Standish and Francis Cooke, were working in the forest cutting firewood for the sick. Shouts from the plantation brought them back at top speed, and for several hours the handful of defenders crouched at the probable points of attack around the colony, waiting for the Indian onslaught.

  But once more the woods remained silent. Not a single red man appeared. Not even a war whoop was heard. Only toward evening did they see signs of a great fire burning along the creek near where the hunter had discovered the Indians. Standish and Cooke now went back into the woods to get their axes and saws and found, to their great chagrin, that the stealthy visitors had stolen them.

  The next day, they held a council of war “for the establishing of military orders.” They chose Miles Standish as their captain and gave him absolute authority in military affairs. Standish immediately ordered a refurbishing of muskets and armour which, with the sickness and heavy construction, had been left to the mercy of wind and rain and were in deplorable condition. As they listened to the captain lecture them on weapons and other military matters, their conference was interrupted by the appearance of two gaudily painted braves upon the top of a hill less than a quarter of a mile away on the other side of the Town Brook.

  They stood there emblazoned against the sky, while the little band of white men stared at them in silent astonishment. Then the Indians began making gestures. The white men, totally unused to their sign language, took several minutes to decide that they were inviting them up on the hill for a parley. The colonists made similar signs inviting the Indians to visit them, but the results was negative. The red men did not move a foot.

  All this was at the height of the General Sickness and there could not have been more than a dozen men on their feet. Nevertheless Standish and Stephen Hopkins decided that they would cross the Town Brook and accept the Indians’ invitation. Only Standish carried his musket, but the rest of the men held their guns ready while the two ambassadors crossed the shallow brook and began to mount the hill.

  Captain Standish made an elaborate performance of placing his musket on the ground in full sight of the savages “in sign of peace.” But the two white men were wearing their armour and had swords at their belts. The sight of them clanking up the hill was too much for the Indians, and just before Standish and Hopkins reached speaking distance, they turned and ran. In the forest behind the hill there were sounds of a small stampede indicating that there were many more braves backing up these ambassadors.

  This strange performance, which seemed to be mixed equally with hostility and fear, enabled Miles Standish to turn the colony’s labors toward military defense for a few days. On the hill behind their houses, they finally finished the construction of a sturdy platform with emplacements for cannon. They had already brought one cannon ashore from the Mayflower, a saker, but they lacked the manpower to haul its fifteen hundred pounds up the hill and wrestle it into place on the platform.

  On Wednesday, February 21, Christopher Jones came ashore with many of his sailors and brought with him one of his “great pieces” called a minion. Sailors and colonists together dragged this twelve-hundred-pound monster and their saker up the hill and secured them in position. They also emplaced two smaller cannon called bases. When the work was finished, Captain Standish strode back and forth across the platform with a highly satisfied air. From this vantage point, these guns could sweep the surrounding forests and the harbor. Plymouth had taken a long stride toward survival.

  But the sickness continued to ravage them. February 21 was one of their worst days. In his Pocket Book, William Bradford somberly noted: “Feb. 21. Die Mr. William White, Mr. William Mullins, with 2 more.” Mullins made a will, leaving his twenty-five-dozen pairs of shoes and thirteen pairs of boots to the joint stock company for forty pounds, if “they like them at that rate.” He divided his estate equally between his wife, two sons (one was still in England), and daughter Priscilla, and appointed John Carver and “Mr. Williamson” as his executors, ask
ing them also “to have an eye over my wife and children to be as fathers and friends to them.” That this “stranger” from London should ask this of John Carver and William Brewster shows how close the two groups had grown in their common toil and suffering.

  Like the others who had died, these two leaders were buried at night on the hill above the rock in shallow, unmarked graves. Convinced that the Indians were watching them constantly, the colonists were afraid that if their mysterious hosts saw how fearfully death was decimating them, it would be an invitation to attack. If only they could somehow communicate with these red men and let them know they wanted peace! But how can you talk to a will-o’-the-wisp, a face on the hill, a fleeting shape in the forest, a haunting cry by night? For the time being they could only bury their dead and endure.

  The month of March began hopefully. On the third, the wind shifted to the south, and after a misty morning the sun came out, and it was a warm, fair, almost spring-like day. “The birds sang in the woods most pleasantly,” William Bradford tells us. But sickness continued to plague them, and work on the remaining houses moved forward slowly. Four months after their arrival in the New World, some of their people were still living on the Mayflower. Wednesday, March 7, was another good day, colder than the third but fair and sunny. It looked so promising that several families decided to plant garden seeds around their houses.

  A few days later the colonists had to deal with their first case of public discipline. Every able-bodied man was required to stand watch during the night on a rotating basis under the direction of Miles Standish. But when John Billington’s turn came he damned the captain and swore he was not going to lose his sleep looking for invisible Indians.

  Standish instantly put Billington under arrest, and he was called before the whole company, with Governor John Carver sitting as judge.

  Carver ordered him punished by having his neck and heels tied together - a relatively mild sentence compared to what Standish was undoubtedly recommending. Before the trial was over, Billington’s bravado melted away, and he humbly promised to obey the captain’s orders henceforth. Since it was his first offense, Governor Carver quickly commuted his sentence. It might have been better for Billington if he had been treated with Standish’s severity. This was the first of many offenses for this quarrelsome man. He was continually clashing with those in authority. At one point he was involved in a plot to overthrow the government by armed revolt. Finally, in 1630, he had a bitter quarrel with a recent arrival, one John Newcomen. Billington waylaid him in a lonely part of the forest and shot him dead. Billington was tried by a jury of his peers for Newcomen’s murder, and became the first American to die at the end of a hangman’s rope.

  Billington’s first rebellion prompted the colonists to complete their conference on Military Orders which they had begun in the previous month and had been interrupted by the appearance and disappearance of the sign-language ambassadors beyond the brook. Once more the men gathered in the Common House to draw up the rules and regulations which Captain Standish said he needed for the security of the colony.

  But they had only begun to talk when out of the woods strode a tall, handsome Indian wearing nothing but a fringe of leather about his waist. While the white men stared in amazement, the red man came straight toward them up their main street as casually and calmly as a Sunday stroller out for a promenade. They met him at the door of the Common House; otherwise he would have certainly walked right in. There was an awkward pause; then the Indian stepped back, raised his hand in friendly salute, and said “Welcome!”

  The colonists were struck dumb. After all these months of pursuing at a distance, exchanging signs, following cold trails, here was an Indian standing in their doorway speaking English!

  Manfully suppressing their joy, they greeted the visitor with gravity, but made it clear he was welcome. He promptly amazed them by asking for some beer. They explained that there was none, but they offered him brandy, a biscuit, butter and cheese, some pudding, and a piece of a mallard. To their astonishment, he ate them all. Where had he acquired his taste for English food? Eagerly they began to question him “of many things.” His English was somewhat broken, but he knew enough to explain that he had learned their language and tasted their food among the English fishermen who had visited his country off and on over the last four or five years. To prove it, he was able to name a dozen or so captains and mates whom he had met.

  His country was Morattigon (present-day Pemaquid Point, Maine), and he was one of the Sagamores or lords of the Algonkian there. His name was Samoset, and he had been visiting for the past eight months in these parts. He had sailed down the coast with a Captain Dermer, a name the colonists knew well. He had been sent out by the Council for New England to explore the coast, but he had not returned when the colonists sailed from Plymouth. Samoset seemed to have had no special reason for coming with Dermer beyond a simple love of travel. He had apparently made many similar trips since he knew the whole country between Plymouth and Maine. “He discoursed,” Bradford tells us, “of every Province and of their Sagainores and their number of men and strength.”

  All this time he had been standing in the doorway of the Common House. The white men were a little leery about letting this tall, husky Indian inside the building. The March wind whipped at them, and they offered Samoset a “horseman’s coat,” assuming that in his naked state he was freezing to death.

  Now they questioned him about Plymouth. Where were the Indians who lived here and had cleared these cornfields but failed to plant them in recent years? Gravely Samoset explained that in the Indian language this place was called Patuxet, and here there had lived a tribe that were numerous and strong. They had been hostile to white men and barbarously murdered everyone that landed on their shores. But four years ago an extraordinary plague had broken out among them. Every man, woman, and child had died. The entire tribe had been wiped out, and nearby tribes, certain that the place was haunted by evil spirits, had shunned the land, so there was no one to contest their possession or lay claim to it.

  Samoset also gave the colonists a clear picture of their neighbors. The nearest were the Wampanoags, a small tribe of about sixty warriors headed by a wise chief named Massasoit, who largely through skillful diplomacy was also the ruling sachem of numerous minor tribes in the area. He had been Samoset’s host for the past eight months. To the northeast, out on Cape Cod, were the Nausets with about a hundred warriors. They were the ones who had attacked the colonists on their third voyage of discovery.

  Last July, Samoset told them, the Nausets had attacked Captain Darner and his men and had slain three of them. They hated the English because several years before, one Captain Hunt, a fisherman who visited their shores, lured seven of their men and twenty of the Patuxets aboard his ship on pretense of wanting to trade and then kidnapped them to Spain where he sold them as slaves for twenty pounds a man.

  The colonists spent the whole afternoon talking to Samoset. When night began to fall he presented a problem. They would have “gladly been rid of him,” but he showed no indications of going. They finally decided he ought to go aboard the Mayflower. They were not at all sure about trusting his friendly manner. He might be a spy under orders to attack them from behind while his friends charged from the forest. But Samoset was perfectly content to go aboard the ship, and he climbed into the shallop without a murmur.

  However, the wind was high and the tide was out and the shallop proved impossible to launch. They had to take their visitor back into the settlement and lodge him at Stephen Hopkins’ house. A man stood guard outside the house all night with orders to kill Samoset if he made a single hostile move. But the chief slept the sleep of the innocent and the next morning rose early announcing that he would return to Massasoit, his host.

  The colonists gave him a knife, a bracelet, and a ring as testimony of friendship and urged him to bring with him some of Massasoit’s tribe, hopefully with beaver skins to trade. If they came, they were to leave their bows a
nd arrows a quarter of a mile away, as a sign of peace.

  The next day Samoset returned, bringing with him five tall braves. They were better dressed than their guide, each wearing deer skin and long leather leggings which ran from ankles to waist. One wore a feather in his hair, another a fox’s tail. All were highly painted, some with long black stripes on their faces, others with more ingenious decorations.

  The colonists greeted the visitors outside the town and found that they had abandoned their bows and arrows as directed. In the little settlement, everyone gathered around, and both sides exchanged sign language of “friendship and amity.” They offered the Indians food, and “they did eat liberally of our English victuals.” In return they sang and danced for the white men. They had brought with, them four or five beaver skins, but because it was Sunday, the colonists could not trade with them.

  Diplomatically they explained to the Indians, using Samoset as their interpreter, that they wished them to bring more skins and then they would trade freely and generously for all. The Indians promised to return within a night or two and, as proof of their trust, said they would leave behind the skins they had brought, which they did, over the protests of the colonists. The red men also promised to return the tools that Standish and his assistant had left in the woods.