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

by Thomas Fleming

  Among the many letters Christopher Jones undoubtedly carried to friends in the Old World, there was one written by Governor John Carver to Sir Ferdinando Gorges and the Council for New England, asking them for a patent confirming the colonists right to settle in Plymouth and govern themselves as they saw fit. All during these months of agonizing struggle, this threat hung constantly over their heads. If Gorges and his friends failed to receive the royal seal of approval, they would have no power to grant this legalization - and the news could stir all the latent rebellion among the servants and wayward spirits of the colony, such as the Billingtons. Until their choice of Plymouth was confirmed, a shadow of uncertainty would hang over all their plans and decisions. It did not make life any easier.

  For the rest of April the colony worked hard at planting their corn under Squanto’s direction. During this crucial month the general routine of Plymouth’s early years gradually established itself. The days were spent in the innumerable small tasks which absorbs so much of life on any frontier. The fields had to be tended constantly. Most of the men and many of the women were assigned to them each day. Others were sent regularly to hunt and fish. The carpenters and others handy with their tools such as John Alden made furniture and put finishing touches on the houses and public buildings. The women were kept busy with cooking and washing and with repairing the precious supply of clothes, which there was small chance of replenishing for years to come. In their precious spare time, they toiled on the vegetable gardens around the houses.

  Each Sunday, at the beat of a drum, the entire town assembled in the main street, and with every man carrying his musket, they followed Governor Carver to the Common House where they attended church services. For the occasion, Carver probably wore his fine red cloak, and everyone else had on good if not their best clothes. Their colors were by no means the drab black and browns they supposedly favored. These people were Elizabethans and loved color in their dress. There were blue, red, and green cloaks and smocks. William Brewster had a violet suit and another man had a “saten” suit and “sky colored garters,” as well as “a cap with silver lace on it.” The “bands,” flat white collars worn by the men, were white and glistening. Some men and women favored the high crowned hats often pictured in traditional paintings, but they were by no means universally worn.

  In church, Elder Brewster served as pastor. Since he was not ordained, he was unable to give communion, but he was an excellent preacher. William Bradford says that, “in teaching he was very stirring, and moving the affections; also very plain and distinct in what he taught; by which means he became the more profitable to the hearers. He had singular good gift in prayer . . . in ripping up the heart and conscience before God. . . He always thought it were better for ministers to pray oftener, and divide their prayers, than to be long and tedious in the same.”

  Brewster preferred to dwell on God’s love and mercy rather than on His wrath. The Ruling Elder’s influence reached deep into Plymouth’s life, making the colony famous for the mildness of its laws. Like his disciple Bradford, he was of the opinion that no church had a monopoly on religious truth, and he despised the religious contentions that were tipping Europe apart.

  If we judge them by the standards of today, of course, the leaders of Plymouth could be (and have been) painted as intolerant. They did not encourage men and women of differing beliefs to settle in Plymouth. They were trying to create an ideal community, and within its boundaries they felt unanimity of religious belief was essential to achieving that goal. But they were perfectly willing to accept other people of differing beliefs as equals, outside Plymouth, or when they came to the colony as visitors. In later years they invariably pursued this live-and-let-live policy both with the easygoing Dutch in New York and the stern Puritans around Boston, with whom modern Americans have unfortunately confused them. At a time when harboring a Catholic priest was a death sentence in England, some French Jesuits visited Plymouth and were received with every courtesy. Although Brewster and his congregation ate meat on Friday to underscore their Protestantism, the Ruling Elder even saw to it that the Reverend Fathers were served fish.

  The hard labor in the cornfields soon caused a tragic loss. Despite of their ages, Governor Carver and William Brewster resisted on taking hoes and spades and working away at the planting with the rest. While Brewster had the rugged physique of the countryman, Carver had spent most of his adult life as a sedentary merchant. One particularly hot day in mid-April Carver suddenly dropped his hoe and complained of a terrific pain in the head. Everyone assumed that he had had too much sun. But he went into his house and lay down and in a few hours lapsed into a coma. He died within a few days and was buried with a guard of honor and a volley of small arms over his grave. His wife, a frail woman who was totally dependent on him, died about five weeks later. They generously left their entire estate to their servant, John Howland, who promptly bought his freedom and began a long life as one of Plymouth’s leaders.

  Now came a crucial choice for the fifty surviving members of the colony. They must elect a new governor. Carver had been an easy choice. He had been an older man, a successful merchant, a leading member of the church in Leyden. Now they must choose another man of no “special eminency” from their thinned ranks. The logical person, if personal qualities were the only consideration, might seem to be William Brewster. But he was automatically eliminated by his position as ruling elder of the church.

  One of these people’s deepest convictions was the necessity for maintaining careful separation between church and state. They had experienced at cruelly close range the disastrous effects of its union in England. So it was necessary to choose a man who had no churchly role. They also sensed that he had to be a man who would be more realistic and energetic than John Carver, who hesitated about so many things and hence often allowed decisions to relapse into undirected debates.

  Unanimously, the choice fell on William Bradford. It was in part a testament of gratitude for his leadership in bringing them to this fruitful, fortunate harbor. But it was also proof of his friends’ confidence in his dedication to their common enterprise. His election was the beginning of Bradford’s thirty-five years of service to Plymouth. From 1621 until his death in 1657, he was re-elected governor or assistant governor more than thirty times, serving without salary for most of his terms.

  From Bradford’s first days in office a new vigor entered Plymouth’s public affairs. The younger men who had volunteered for the great adventure in the New World now assumed their rightful leadership. Edward Winslow, Stephen Hopkins, Miles Standish, John Alden, all in their thirties or younger, would be Bradford’s staunch and energetic supporters in the years to come.

  Perhaps Bradford’s greatest achievement was his revision of the colony’s economic organization in 1623. Spurred by hunger, the colonists had worked hard in the fields during their first year, but in succeeding years it became more and more difficult to get them to put their best efforts into this essential task. Bradford decided that the reason was the stipulation in their contract with the London merchants that everything in the colony, including the crops, was to be held common for seven years. This crude communism was destroying individual enterprise. Boldly, on his own authority, Bradford abandoned the arrangement and announced that henceforth every family would raise its own corn. Plymouth never went hungry again. To Bradford this proved “the vanity of that conceit . . . that the taking away of property and bringing in community into a commonwealth would make [men] happy and flourishing.”

  The month of May began auspiciously with Plymouth’s first marriage. Governor Bradford performed the ceremony binding Susanna White, a widow of three months, and Edward Winslow, a widower of two months. The soft, sweet warmth of New England’s spring was all about them, and Plymouth was delighted to have something to celebrate after the long winter of sickness, disaster, and gloom.

  One of the most misleading myths about these early Americans is their supposed indifference to enjoying life. The
y took their religion seriously, to be sure. But they also relished good food, good liquor, and good conversation. Like all Elizabethans they loved music, and the Psalms were by no means the only songs they sang. At the Winslow wedding feast they undoubtedly showed their skill at singing those complex songs for many voices called madrigals. Some were simple ditties, no more profound than a modern popular song.

  My bonnie lass she smileth

  And she my heart beguileth

  Smile less, dear love, therefore

  And you shall love me more.

  Other songs were straight humor.

  Willie prithee go to bed

  For thou wilt have a drowsy head

  Tomorrow we must ahunting and betimes be stirring

  With a hey ho traloly.

  Others approached fine poetry.

  Weep you no more sad fountains

  What need you flow so fast

  Look how the snowy mountains

  Heavens sun cloth gently waste

  But my sun’s heavenly eyes

  View not your weeping

  That now lies sleeping

  Now softly lies sleeping.

  Many similar marriages would take place in the next few years as various members of the colony recovered from their personal sorrows. William Bradford would marry again in 1623, choosing as his wife the widow of a friend from the Leyden church. John Alden would many Priscilla Mullins in 1622 without any of the romantic diplomacy for which Henry Wadsworth Longfellow made them famous. If Captain Miles Standish ever expressed any interest in the young Priscilla, the evidence is lost to history. The captain also remarried again in 1623, choosing, according to one tradition, the younger sister of his dead wife Rose.

  Throughout the months of May and June the colonists concentrated on finishing the houses they needed and regaining their health in the spring sunshine. The three families still intact were each allotted houses, and they each took in several single men and women. Young Priscilla Mullins, for instance, lived with Elder Brewster and his family. The other four houses were divided among the remaining single persons. During these same months the colonists completed two other houses which they planned to use as storerooms, giving them a total of four public houses and seven dwellings. This was just enough to keep them going - the General Sickness had left so many weak that they decided against the heavy labor involved in any more building.

  Life in these tiny one-and-a-half-room dwellings was difficult. The entire house was not much bigger than the average living room today. There was the low room under the eaves for sleeping, but waking hours, during bad weather, had to be spent in the crowded quarters below. Stephen Hopkins’ household was typical. Beneath his small roof he crowded two children by his first wife, thirteen-year-old Giles and fifteen-year-old Constance, three-year-old Damaris, and six-month-old Oceanus and their mother Elizabeth, as well as his two servants Edward Dotey and Edward Leister.

  According to family tradition Constance was a pretty girl with her father’s high spirits. Dotey and Leister, equally high spirited - they had been among the chief mutterers of mutiny before the compact was signed - soon found themselves competing ferociously for a kind word from her. Soon, where there had been easy camaraderie and friendship, there was sullen jealousy. Young Constance, childishly playing at courtly love, coyly encouraged the strife, never suspecting she was close to becoming an accomplice to a murder.

  At dawn on June 18, Dotey and Leister seized their swords and daggers and crept quietly out of the crowded house. Down the beach to a deserted stretch of sand they stalked. There, sword in one hand, dagger in the other, they began Plymouth’s first duel. Snarling, cursing, they raged up and down the shore. Dotey sank his rapier deep into Leister’s thigh, and Leister, with a scream of rage and pain, slashed with his dagger at his friend’s sword hand, gashing him viciously. Ignoring the blood, they went back to their deadly work.

  By now their battle cries and clashing swords had awakened the colony, and several men came racing down the beach, led by Miles Standish. The captain was furious. With Indians all around them, no one had a right to risk his life, much less commit murder. Disarming the two culprits at the point of his own rapier, Standish marched them shamefacedly back to Governor William Bradford, who was as angry as the captain.

  Sitting as judge, Bradford gave the two young men a stern lecture, and then as punishment ordered them strung up with head and heels tied together to “cool off their hot blood.” They were also condemned to twenty-four hours of fasting. But within an hour their cries for mercy became so pitiful that Stephen Hopkins went to Bradford and asked him to pardon them, promising that he guaranteed their good behavior. Bradford was happy to agree and quickly ordered them cut down. Ironically, neither Dotey nor Leister ever married the Constance. Perhaps impressed by the dangers of idle flirting, she waited another seven years, and then chose a newcomer from England.

  Meanwhile the new governor was grappling with far more serious problems. Massasoit’s braves and their families continued to arrive in town in annoying numbers, and Bradford decided it was time to make some adjustments in their Indian relations. He therefore appointed Edward Winslow, their fledgling diplomat, and Stephen Hopkins, their man of experience in the New World, as envoys and ordered them to visit the great chief in his village.

  Bradford also felt that it was time to do a little more exploring. He was not entirely prepared to take Squanto’s word for everything about the Indians surrounding them. He also wanted to know the quickest route to Sowams, should they need to call on Massasoit for armed support. Finally, he was anxious to make peace with any other tribes in the vicinity, particularly the aggressive Nausets who had attacked them so ferociously on Cape Cod.

  Squanto agreed to accompany the envoys as guide and interpreter. Bradford provided them with a cloak of red cotton, fringed with lace, as a gift for their noble ally, plus some smaller presents. On Sunday, July 1, the whole colony joined in solemn prayer for the safety and success of the mission. It was no small task that these two men were undertaking, to travel alone through unexplored country, never certain that they might not meet hostile Indians, with nothing to protect them but Squanto’s tongue and their uncertain muskets.

  They set out on July 2 at 9 o’clock and tramped all day to reach a village called Namasket, near present-day Middleboro. It was from here that many of the visitors to Plymouth came, and the Englishmen were considerably surprised to discover that it was fifteen miles away. The citizens of Namasket received them in a most friendly manner, giving them corn bread and the “spawn of shads” which the white men found delicious when cooked with acorns. They then put on a brief exhibition of marksmanship for their Indian friends. Seeing a crow in the cornfield, one of the Indians asked the white men to kill it. Hopkins, an experienced shot, picked off the bird at eighty yards, which left the Indians gasping with astonishment.

  The envoys then continued their journey, passing many Indians fishing in the Taunton River and noticing with amazement the extensively cleared fields. Squanto explained that thousands had lived in this region but that the great plague of four years before had cut them down. Early Tuesday morning they met six of Massasoit’s braves, who decided to accompany them. They soon reached the bank of the Taunton River, and the Indians led them to a ford where they began to wade across. In the midst of this operation they suddenly heard a menacing shout from the high grass on the other side of the river. Two Indians, one close to seventy, rose up with drawn bows. They were the remnant of a once numerous village, but they were still prepared to defend their home site with all their traditional courage and ferocity.

  The Indians who were with Winslow and Hopkins quickly reassured them, and the two men were soon offering friendship and food. Leaving a few trinkets with these guardians of the ford, the envoys marched on. A little later one of their Indians spotted someone moving through the forest and quickly warned the rest. Everyone was instantly alert, and the two white men asked why they were so nervous. The Ind
ians explained that they feared even a single Narragansett.

  They pushed on, meeting several Indians along the way, all of whom generously shared what food they had with them. If they had any doubt about Massasoit’s promise of peace and friendship, it vanished by the time they reached the great chiefs village. There they found that Massasoit was off on a visit of his own, and they had to wait until Wednesday, July 4, for his arrival. They greeted him by firing off their muskets and then delivered their gifts to him.

  Winslow coolly pointed out that the gifts were not given out of fear but because Plymouth desired continued peace, especially with them, their nearest neighbors. The young envoy then took up the delicate topic of the Wampanoags frequent visits to Plymouth. He pointed out that most of the braves brought wives and children with them and since they were the great chief’s subjects, the colonists were anxious to entertain them well, but they were running short of supplies and had no idea what kind of corn harvest they might have. They therefore asked the chief to put a stop to this indiscriminate visiting.