The Pilgrim (16 page)

We reported the three thieves to Governor Bradford. He ordered the magistrates to tie their wrists and ankles together and condemned them to lie that way without meat or drink for twenty-four hours. Master Brewster preached a two-hour sermon to them on the text from Scripture, Exodus 20:15, “Thou shalt not steal.”

Their limbs swelled; they were in great pain. They swore to the Governor that they would never steal again. At sunset, I requested him to free them and he did.

Abigail said to me, “You have a kind heart.”

I said, “I asked the Governor to release them because Hook threatened to murder Rigdale and me if we betrayed him. I thought if I secured his freedom, he would forswear taking vengeance on us.”

“Thank you for being honest with me.”

“I could not do otherwise,” said I. “I love you.”

“I think you were born with ‘I love you' in your mouth. You have it as ready as a nightingale hath his song. I love to hear you say it. Say it again.”

I said, “I love you.”

“And I love you.”

“That is the first time that you have said so. What day of the week is it?”

Abigail said, “Wednesday.”

“What day of the month?”

“I warrant it's about the fourteenth of July.”

“Let us then declare that Wednesday, the fourteenth of July in the year of Christ 1622, is the birthday of our mutual love.”

We asked Master Brewster to consult his Almanac. He did so, and then said, “Today is Wednesday, the thirty-first of July.”

Abigail and I accordingly changed the birthday of our mutual love.

Abigail said to Hook, “Forswear taking revenge on Master Wentworth and Rigdale. If they come to harm through you, I shall report you both to Governor Bradford and have you hanged.”

Hook said, “God forfend such a punishment! I forswear taking revenge on Master Wentworth and Master Rigdale.”

On Thursday afternoon, I left off labouring in the cornfields and walked about the Plantation with Abigail. About three of the clock, it thundered. The claps were loud, but short. Then it rained. We waited under a pine tree for the storm to end. Afterwards, the birds in the tree sang most pleasantly.

We walked west up the Street between the two rows of houses and their garden plots.

On the south side, we passed Edward Winslow's house, Francis Cook's house, Isaac Allerton's house, and John Billington's house. With their clapboard walls, thatched roofs, and chimneys made of logs daubed with clay, they all looked alike.

Abigail said, “Cousin Edward told me that they cast lots for the plots, each of them being of the same size. Every man built his own house, but they built the common house together, some making mortar and some gathering thatch.”

We continued walking west until we came upon a bush of wild strawberries in a sunny glade. We each picked a handful and ate them while sitting in the shade of a great oak.

Abigail said, “God be blessed. These New English strawberries are heavenly.”

I said, “The Plymouth Plantation is heavenly.”

Seated in the cool shade, we compiled a list of some of the base and earthly things that the Saints of the Plymouth Plantation had left behind them in England:

Item.
Money

Item.
Moneylenders

Item.
Debtors

Item.
The poor

Item.
Beggars

Item.
The rich

Item.
Nobles

Item.
Members of the Church of England

Item.
Papists

Item.
Surplices

Item.
Altars

Item.
Crucifixes

Item.
Heretics

Item.
Blasphemers

Item.
Murderers

Item.
Thieves

Item.
Prostitutes

Item.
Brothels

Item.
Drunkards

Item.
Taverns

Item.
Stews

Item.
Maypoles

Item.
Lawyers

Item.
Actors

Item.
Theatres

Item.
Sodomites

Item.
Buggers

Item.
Cutpurses

Item.
Cutthroats

Item.
Prisons

Item.
Divers and sundry instruments of torture

Item.
Gibbets

Item.
Heads stuck on pikes

Finally, Abigail said, “Would that I had some fresh English cream with my strawberries. Our heavenly Plantation sorely wants a few earthly cows. And a mill. Why is there no mill here? We must grind our corn in stone mortars like the savage Indians are obliged to do.

“We have Indian corn, boiled pumpion, and boiled turnips in the morning, and boiled turnips, boiled pumpion, and Indian corn pudding at noon, and sometimes Indian corn pudding and boiled parsnips for supper. If it was not for those victuals, and the shellfish and cod, we should be undone.

“I pray God for a quiet and contented mind.”

• • •

Captain Standish invited Abigail and me to dine upon an eagle that he had shot and dressed. It tasted like mutton.

The Captain said to me, “I know something of you from Master Brewster. You followed your father to study at Cambridge. He was a Minister. My father was the second son of the house of Standwich Hall in Lancashire. My university was war.

“I was bred a soldier in the Low Countries, where as a drummer boy and musketeer I fought for the Dutch Protestants against the Spanish papists for twelve years. Then God called me to join his exiles in Leyden, from whence I sailed with them hither on the
Mayflower
.

“I fought for the space of almost a year at the siege of Ostend under Sir Francis Vere. Look you! This dent in my helmet is from a Spanish musket ball that glanced off it at the Northwest Bulwark. Another ball brake my collar bone. But I will tell you this: I would rather be besieged for a year at Ostend by twenty thousand Spanish papists than sail for eight weeks in that leaking, unwholesome
Mayflower
. We were battered by storms for three weeks. I lived in dread of our God who makes the deep boil like a pot.”

Abigail said, “I live in dread of the Indians here on land.”

Captain Standish said, “Fear not, Mistress. God is with us. His hand hath already fallen heavily upon the Massachusetts. Five years ago, they were smitten by a plague and died in heaps. The living who were fit ran away without burying their dead. They abandoned thousands of bloated corpses to rot above ground where the wolves, crows, kites, and vermin battened on them. I have seen their bones and skulls scattered among the many places of their empty habitations. By the grace of God, there is now but a small number of Massachusetts left. A plague sent by the Lord hath made the wilderness so much more fit for us Saints of the English nation to inhabit and erect in it Temples to the glory of God.”

Abigail said, “God be praised!”

The very next morning, Massasoit, the
sachem
of the Pokanokets, our neighbors to the southeast, arrived at the Plymouth Plantation with ten of his unarmed men. Captain Standish told Abigail and me that Massasoit had made a peace treaty with Governor Bradford at the beginning of the summer. According to the Governor's charge, the savages had left their bows and arrows a mile from the town.

Abigail clung to my arm at the sight of them—tall men, with faces painted black or red from their chins to their foreheads. Massasoit's face was painted dark red. Hanging about his neck was a wide necklace made of white sea shells and a long English knife on a thong. He carried a wildcat's skin over his right arm. He and the others wore deerskins over their right shoulders and leathern leggings, altogether like Irish trousers. Their long black hair reached their shoulders. Some had their hair trussed up with a feather; some had fox tails hanging down behind.

After exchanging salutations, the savages drank liberally of the colony's diminished supply of Aqua Vitae. Then they sang and danced after their manner. They sang in high, girlish voices. Massasoit guzzled two great draughts of Aqua Vitae, but neither sang nor danced. He made semblance unto Governor Bradford of friendship and amity and traded with him. Governor Bradford gave Massasoit a hatchet, a Monmouth cap, and a long length of red cloth, which he tied about his waist. Massasoit gave Governor Bradford four beaver skins and an otter skin.

Squanto was Governor Bradford's translator. Bradford said to Massasoit, “Try to keep yourself from those vices to which Indians are given and which will bring the wrath of God and men upon you, namely drunkenness, falseness, idleness, and thievery.”

Massasoit said, “Give me a coat like yours.”

Governor Bradford said, “Take mine as a token of our friendship.”

He put off his blue coat with brass buttons and gave it to Massasoit. Then Governor Bradford dispatched the Indians from the Plantation.

He said to Abigail and me, “Just before you arrived here in June, the Narraganset Indians, to the west of Plymouth, made preparations to make war upon us. Reported to be many hundred strong, they made many threats against us. They cast forth many insulting speeches at us, glorying in our weakness. We built a stockade around our town. I made an ally of Massasoit and his Pokanokets. I agreed that if any did unjustly war against him, we would aid him. If any did war against us, he should aid us.”

Captain Standish said to me, “I was appointed military commander of the Plymouth Plantation on Friday, the sixteenth of February in the year 1621, a day I will always remember. I divided our strength into four companies of ten men each and chose four men whom I thought most fit to take command. The next morning at a General Muster, I appointed each to his place. I gave each his Company and charged him upon every alarm to obey my orders.

“You and your men, Mr. Wentworth, will face the Indians alone in your new colony. Beware of them! The Indians are cunning and treacherous. Your drunken Master Weston is ill prepared to deal with them. What hath he done about planning for a fort? You must have a carpenter in your company. Is he working on our fort? I warrant not. I am working there and have not heard of him. I suggest that you immediately set him to work on our fort so that he may learn to build one for your company.

“I also suggest that you choose twenty of your most reliable and sober men to join with me and my four Companies next Wednesday at noon upon yonder bank of the Town brook. Each of you bring a musket, five musket balls, two flasks of powder, and a forked gun rest. I will train you to become disciplined musketeers, and you, in your turn, will each train two more companies of twenty men each to defend your plantation.”

The next day, I put forth the two proposals to Weston, who was drunk at eleven of the clock in the morning.

He said, “Why, those are fine ideas. Tell the carpenter—what's his name?—to start work on the fort on the morrow. As for the other matter, I leave it in your hands. What was the other matter? Ah, yes, the training of musketeers. Doest thou know the song called ‘The Old Musketeer'?”

He sang,

His head as white as milk,

All flaxen was his hair.

But now he is dead,

And laid in his bed,

And never will come again.

So shed a tear

For the old Musketeer.

Then he said, “Mark me, I will not die old.” He sang again, “So shed a tear…”

He stopped and said, “My throat squeaks this morning for want of liquoring,” and took a swig of Aqua Vitae.

I spake with Phineas Pratt in the evening. He said, “But I am working on the fort. I took it upon myself to do so, in order to learn how to build one for us.”

I said, “God be at your labour.”

“I have not had the honor of meeting Captain Standish.”

I said, “I shall arrange it.”

And so I did. Thereafter, Pratt worked with Captain Standish at building the fort.

Pratt said to me, “Before the Governor's house in the center of the town we are building a square stockade upon which four patereros will be mounted. They are small, breech-loaded swivel guns, which will enfilade the streets. Upon the hill, we are building a forty-eight-foot square house, eighteen foot in height, with a flat roof, built of sawn planks stayed with oak beams. Upon the top of that, they will mount six cannon which shoot iron balls of four and five pounds that will command the surrounding country. The lower part of the fort, ten foot in height, will be used for a church.”

On Saturday morning, Master Brewster preached a sermon on Genesis 17:8, “And I will give thee, and thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, even all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God.”

“Let us pray daily for the conversion of the heathen Indians. We must consider whether there be other means for us to take to convert them. It seems to me that we must endeavor to use other means to convert them. But these means cannot be used unless we go to them, or they come to us. They cannot come to us because our land is full. We may go to them for their land is empty.

“This then is a sufficient and lawful reason to go thither unto them. Their land is spacious and a void, the haunt of foxes and wild beasts. The Indians are not industrious, neither do they have art, science, or skill to use the land. Everything spoils there and rots for want of manuring and cultivation.

“As the ancient patriarchs removed from empty places into more roomy spaces, where the land lay idle and waste, even though there dwelt inhabitants therein, as Genesis 13:6, 11, 12 and 34:21 tells us, so it lawful for us now to take a land which none useth and make use of it.

“Let us then by friendly usage, love, peace, and honest and good counsel live together in peace with the Indians on that land. May they subject themselves to our earthly prince and be persuaded at length to embrace the Prince of Peace, Christ Jesus, and rest in peace with him forever. Amen.”