The Pilgrim (18 page)

Late one afternoon, at low tide, I gathered two bushels of mussels, oysters, and clams. I shared them with Abigail and Henry.

She said, “Sea shells! Henry once said that the Indians flay their prisoners alive with sea shells like these. How long do you suppose it would take a flayed man to die?”

“Too long,” said I.

At that time, a messenger from the Narraganset
sachem
, Conanacus, arrived in Plymouth with a bundle of new arrows wrapped in a rattlesnake's skin, which he gave to Governor Bradford. Squanto told the Governor that it was an Indian message that imported enmity. Squanto then translated a long insulting speech that the messenger cast forth at Bradford, glorying in the weakness of the Englishmen of Plymouth and saying how easy it would be to slaughter all of us.

The Governor stuffed the skin with powder and shot and returned it to the messenger, saying, “My answer speaks for itself.”

Now also Massasoit, the
sachem
of the Pokanokets, frowned on us and did not come to Plymouth as before. We feared that our supposed friend would join with our enemy Conanacus in a confederation against the colony.

Governor Bradford put all of us men to work on the fort, hoping that when it was finished and a continual guard kept there, it would discourage the savages from rising against us. But this drew us away from weeding the Indian corn, and the crop suffered.

• • •

The
Swan
returned to Plymouth on Wednesday, the eleventh of September. Andrew Weston reported that he had enjoyed a favorable tide and a fair wind. He turned the point of the harbor called the Gurnet, then sailed ten leagues north around the north end of Nantasket. Then he turned west into the Bay of Massachusetts and south to a landing.

Weston told us he had exchanged presents with Wittuwamat, the
sachem
of the local Massachusetts who had survived the pestilence. Weston chose for our settlement a site known by the Indians as Wessagusset, meaning “the place wherein the North River flows,” which was near the mouth of a little stream, called the Monatiquot, that empties into the Bay. He chose the place because it lies south of all the principal streams that separate the surviving Massachusetts from the Plymouth territory, thus making intercourse between the settlements comparatively easy.

One day, Abigail said to me, “I'm always hungry.”

I borrowed Captain Standish's fowling piece and shot down two wild pigeons, which I gave to Abigail.

She said, “Thank you, Charles.”

“I would do anything for you.”

“Would you kill an Indian to protect me?”

I said, “Gladly.”

“God forgive me, that delights me.”

On the night before I left Plymouth on the
Swan
, Abigail, Henry, and I supped with the Winslows in their little clapboard house on the south side of the Street. After supper, Susanna Winslow nursed her babe on the bench beside me.

She said, “Come, my sweet Peregrine. Take my breast and taste that the Lord is good.”

Abigail said to me, “Oh, Charles, we shall be parted for a year. A whole year! I shall miss your little rhymes and your pitted face. With God's grace, we shall one day have a son of our own like little Peregrine. May we name him Thomas Arthur for my father?”

I said, “Thomas Arthur, it will be.”

When we were alone, she asked, “Will our love endure our separation?”

I sang,

Hey down a-down, down-derry,

Among the leaves so green, o!

In love we are, in love we'll stay,

Among the leaves so green, o!

The
Swan
set sail from the Plymouth Plantation at dawn on Monday, the twenty-third of September in the year of Christ 1622. I bade Abigail farewell on the beach. She gave me her white kerchief to wear about my neck.

Then she said, “It was so late ere I fell asleep last night that I can scarce open my eyes. Nay, sweetheart, do not look at them. They are red and swelled from weeping.”

I next took my leave of Governor Bradford, Master Brewster, Henry and Edward Winslow, and Captain Standish.

Governor Bradford said, “I'm sorry that you did not have the chance to read my book,
Exercises
in
Hebrew
Grammar
. I should particularly like your opinion of my chapter on the passive voices of verbs.”

Then he said, “I learned Hebrew in Leyden.”

“You told me. Why did you do so?”

He said, “Hebrew is the language of revelation. God revealed Himself to Moses in Hebrew upon Mount Sinai, and Jesus revealed Himself to Saul in Hebrew upon the road to Damascus. He said in Hebrew, ‘Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?' Did you know that the Hebrew verb for persecute is
tirefuni
? And Saul said, ‘Who are thou, Lord?' And the Lord said, ‘I am Jesus whom thou persecutest.'

“Those few words from God, in Hebrew, converted Paul, the Hebrew-speaking Jew who brought the world to Christ. I sometimes pray in Hebrew. It maketh me to feel closer to God. I prayed in Hebrew after my wife, Dorothy, died. I am anxious to learn your opinion of my book of Hebrew grammar.”

I said, “I shall be pleased to provide it when, with God's grace, I return to Plymouth in a year. It is here that, with your permission, I intend to spend the rest of my life.”

He said, “I heard as much from Mistress Abigail. You shall be most welcome.”

“I thank you, sir, with all my heart.”

“And how can that be? For I also heard that you have lost your heart to Mistress Abigail.”

“I have, sir.”

He laughed and said, “You have a big heart.”

Master Brewster said to me, “Above all, remember to sanctify the Sabbath. Mark me! Your colony will stand or fall on whether you keep or profane the Sabbath.”

I said, “I will remember, sir.”

Henry gave me his dagger in its green velvet scabbard, which I wore hanging from my belt. Edward Winslow gave me a copy of the
Astrological
Almanac, The Nature and Disposition of the Moon,
that he had printed in Leyden.

The twenty-third of September was the ninth day of the moon. The Almanac said, “Whatever thing thou wilt do on the ninth day of the moon, shall come to good effect. Get married, go on a journey.” Then, one after the other, my friends gave me to put into my knapsack a flint and steel, a burning glass, a needle and thread, an awl, a compass, and a horn cup. Above all, I treasured Abigail's white kerchief, which I wore about my neck. In the days to come, I fancied that it still gave off the sweet aroma of her skin.

The
Swan
, with sixty members of Weston's company and thirty-three sailors aboard, made land at Wessagusset on the afternoon of Friday, the sixth of September in the year of Christ 1622. Rigdale said to me, “Be of good courage, dear friend. The Lord hath lured us into this dark forest to speak to our hearts.”

That night, we lighted fires along the beach. Weston charged ten armed sentinels to watch over the rest of us while we supped on oatmeal porridge and boiled pease and guzzled Aqua Vitae.

One of the drunken sentinels discharged his musket into the sand at his feet. He cried out, “God forgive me, I have murdered a clam. 'Twas an accident. I did it not for any malice.”

I wrote Abigail the following:

Sweetheart, I will send you this as soon as I am able. I commend myself unto you for life. And so, kissing your kerchief, I rest yours in true love,

Charles

Wessagusset, the seventh of September

P.S. Weston says the Indians told him that “Wessagusset” means “the place wherein the North River runs.”

About midnight, we heard a prolonged, doleful howl from the woods. It was answered by another howl further off. Then the first resounded again, followed by the other. Our sentinels called, “Arm! Arm!” and shot off two muskets. The howling ceased. We concluded it was a company of wolves and returned to the
Swan
for the duration of the night.

The next day, Weston and six men explored the forest near the shore. A quarter of a mile to the south, they discovered a large glade wherein there ran a small brook. Weston decided to establish our settlement in the glade on the brook's right bank. He charged Pratt to oversee building our habitations there, surrounded by a stockade. Pratt walked up and down in the glade, measuring out the ground and making notes in a little leathern bound book.

The next morning, under his direction, the whole company set to work. We first cut down all the trees growing for twenty rods about the glade. The space was cleared to prevent a surprise assault by savages lurking behind the pines. Then we cut and trimmed three hundred and ninety timbers from the young white pines we found growing in a burned-over part of the forest. Each was one foot in diameter and from ten to thirteen foot in length.

It took us a week to finish the work. It took another three days to drag and carry the timber into the glade. We then digged a three-foot-deep trench in the shape of a rectangle that was seventy-four-foot long and forty-five-foot wide in which we buried the butt ends of the sharpened stakes. That took another day. We then erected the sharpened stakes, which were eight foot in height. They comprised our stockade for which we fashioned four gates hung on hinge posts hard by the four corners of the rectangle. We built a big shed, with open sides, in the middle of the stockade in which we stored our victuals and drink from the
Swan
's hold and all of our trade goods.

Pratt said, “I have decided not to build us a small blockhouse, but a more spacious fortified village within the stockade.”

And therein, within the space of another week, we built eight fifteen-by-eighteen timber and clapboard houses with sloping clapboard roofs. Twelve men lodged in each house. The rear walls of the houses were the sharpened stakes of the stockade. The side walls, eight foot in height, were not sharpened because the roof line rested on roof ribs supported atop the wall logs. At their highest point, the sloping roofs were ten foot high. We covered them with earth to prevent them from catching fire. The last thing we did was lay down five logs, each five foot in length and three foot wide, against the walls between the houses. These were to be the platforms from which sentinels could fire upon the savages beyond the walls.

Pratt said, “This is the first fortification I have ever built. The idea came to me of a sudden, whilst I walked about in the sunny glade. I asked myself in my thoughts: how do I provide ample lodging for ninety men, and how could they defend themselves against an Indian assault? Then, praise God, I saw in my mind's eye the fortification standing before you, even unto the roof ribs atop the wall logs.”

I said, “You are truly a master carpenter.”

Pratt said, “I like to think that Jesus Christ was the same.”

The weather turned foul; we had a sore storm of wind and rain lasting a day and a night.

I was chosen to be one of the ten sentinels on guard in the night. I wore my canvas suit. I could not keep my match lit, and therefore my musket could not be discharged in the rain. I carried a hatchet, lest we were attacked by the savages.

The skies cleared on the Sabbath. Rigdale, Pratt, and I spent the day reading Scripture and praying. The other men swilled Aqua Vitae and played at dice and cards. Primero and Gleek were their favorite card games. They played for money. For the first time since arriving in New England, I heard the clink of thruppence, groats, farthings, and shillings.

In the late afternoon, William Butts and Hugh Beere fell out over a game of Primero. Weston tried to restrain them.

Butts yelled at Weston: “All the devils in hell go with you! Would to God that you were underground!”

Weston backed away. The men laughed.

Rigdale said to Weston, “I beseech you, assert your authority.”

Weston bade me take a measure of the supplies that remained to us.

Item.
85 bushels of white pease, of which 12 were wormy, left from 120 bushels.

Item.
280 bushels of meal, of which 20 were wormy, left from 480 bushels.

Item.
100 bushels of oatmeal left from 120 bushels, of which 13 were wormy.

Item.
No pepper, ginger, sugar, nutmegs, cloves, dates, raisins, damask prunes, rice, saffron, salt left at all.

Item.
1 barrel of pippin vinegar left from 1 barrel of pippin vinegar.

Item.
38 gallons of Aqua Vitae left from 80 gallons of Aqua Vitae.

Item.
48 barrels of beer left from 60 barrels of beer.

Item.
4 and a half tun of cider left from 8 tun of cider.

Weston called a parliament of the whole company. We met about our public business within the east gate. Most of the men were drunk.

Weston addressed us in a loud voice: “We must discipline ourselves and apportion our victuals and drink to an equal degree. Otherwise, we shall descend into chaos, and come winter, we shall starve to death.”

The men cursed him. Their mouths were stinking sinks for all the filth of their tongues to fall into. As the drunken company dispersed, one of the sailors cried out, “Let's be merry whilst we are still healthy. Sickness will steal upon us ere we be aware.”

Each of us continued to eat and drink as much as he wanted. God forgive us, even Rigdale and I got drunk on a Sabbath. Possessed by the Devil, I lived only for the moment, rejoicing in each time of day. At dawn, the sky changed from black to deep blue to pale grey to white.

The weather was frosty. The leaves were turning on the trees that grew amongst the pines. Those leaves that were freshly fallen upon the ground put me in mind of dragons' scales. I wrote a little verse:

The Turning of the Leaves in New England

In the cold, the leaves turn purple, yellow, and gold.

The trees then shed them, like dragons' scales.

Praise the Lord, ye dragons of the earth,

That shed thy scales before the snow.

Their brightness above will like my flesh below

Change to the brown and grey of soil and clay.

On the day following, I shot a duck. It made an excellent broth, which I gave to Weston, who was stricken with a fever. He ate it as would well have satisfied a man in good health. About an hour after, he was taken sick and vomited. Over-straining himself, he bled at the nose and so continued for the space of an hour. I washed his nose and beard with a linen cloth. He passed four liquid stools. He was stricken with a fever for five more days. His tongue swelled up, and he could not eat. I washed his mouth and scraped his tongue, getting an abundance of corruption out of it. The swelling in his tongue went down, but the rest remained dire.

On the morning of the fifth day, which was a Monday, he said, “Tell me the truth. What do you think of my case?”

I said, “I think your case is desperate. Make your peace with God.”

“I am not ready to die. I am but two-and-thirty years of age. My brother is forty. If God wants a Weston, let it be he. Do you hear me, O my God? Take my brother in my stead.”

The blood gushed from his nose.

He said, “Where is my brother? Hast thou seen him? Where is he? Hast thou seen him? Where hath he gone?”

He sat up, looked about, and said, “Am I dead?”

“Nay,” said I. “Not yet.”

“Methinks that I am dead.”

“Nay, not yet.”

“Are you sure? I swear that I am dead.”

Then he let out a long death rattle and died.

We buried him near the southern gate. The sailors called a parliament and elected Captain Green the new governor of our plantation.

Rigdale said to me, “We have exchanged one drunkard for another.”

• • •

On the day following, eight Massachusetts Indian men from their village to the west came to trade beaver skins for axes, knives, blankets, and hats. Their
sachem
was the self-same Wittuwamat who had greeted Weston. The right side of his face was painted red; the left side was painted black. His long black hair shone with smelly bear grease.

Green said, “Weston is dead. I am now the
sachem
of the Englishmen.”

Wittuwamat said, “Let us live together in peace.”

His interpreter was Memsowit, who was a comely youth, being in his general carriage very affable and courteous. He told me that he had learned English trading with English fishermen for a year on Cape Cod. He had a great facility for the English tongue. He said that many more of his people had survived the pestilence than Winslow reckoned. “We remain a strong people and great warriors.”

A pious English fisherman on Cape Cod had taught Memsowit something of Scripture. He accepted all of the Commandments save the seventh, thinking that there were many inconveniences in it.

He said, “No man should be tied to one woman.”

We reasoned about this a good time, but he would not be persuaded. He said, “I have two wives. My second wife is the joy of my life.”

Memsowit told me that the Indians loved to wager. They staked their women, clothes, houses, and corn—some even their freedom, the losers reduced to slavery. At Wittuwamat's command, two savages taught some Englishmen their way of gaming. Their game was called “hubbub.”

Two savages played against each other. Each had eleven sticks. They squatted facing one another. One held a shallow wooden bowl, eight or ten inches in circumference, on his lap. Five bones colored purple on one side were placed in the bowl. One of the players struck the bowl lightly with his palm, shouting, “Hub, bub, bub, bub, bub!” in a loud voice. The Indians looking on rejoined with hellish cries. The bones bounced and clicked in the bowl. If five of the self-same color bones came up, the player won two sticks from his opponent. If four of the self-same colors came up, the player lost one stick, and his opponent took his turn. If three of the self-same color bones came up, the player lost two sticks. If two of the self-same colors came up, the player likewise lost two sticks. If one came up, the player won two sticks. The game went on until one of the players lost all of his sticks.

Rigdale said, “Only Satan could have invented such an intricate game. These savages are incapable of doing so themselves. Satan is the father of all gaming.”

Butts said, “How so?”

I answered thus, “Gaming makes the players believe that the world is governed by chance.”

Butts said, “I think it is.”

I said, “God governs the world and all the things therein.”

“And the Devil?”

“He is subject to God's will in everything. Between the two, chance doth not exist, even unto the bounce of bones in a wooden bowl.”

Rigdale said, “What then do you make of Ecclesiastes 9:11? ‘Time and chance comes to us all.'”

I said, “I can make nothing of it. Those words are a constant torment to me.”

Rigdale said, “To me, too.”

Butts laughed.

Butts became proficient at hubbub in the space of the afternoon, whereupon he played against Wittuwamat. Butts wagered his Monmouth cap against the wildcat's skin which Wittuwamat carried over his right arm. Butts won. He wrapped the wildcat's skin about his neck.

Green said, “Give him the cap. Even though you won fairly, give the savage your cap. We do not want to anger him.”

Butts said, “I will not!”

Green snatched Butts's cap from his head and gave it to the
sachem
, who put it on. Butts snatched it back. Wittuwamat's nine savages made a great din. He silenced them with a shout: “
Aka
!” (“Stop!”) Then he spake to Butts. Memsowit translated his words: “I will remember you.”

Late in the afternoon, Green appointed me to trade with Wittuwamat. I gave him seven axes, six knives, and five blankets for fourteen beaver skins, each of which had been worth five shillings when I was last in London. He offered me four skins for my dagger in its green leathern scabbard. I refused.

Hanging from Wittuwamat's girdle was a long leathern bag out of which he filled his pipe with powdered green tobacco. Memsowit told me the savages take tobacco for two causes: first against the rheum, which causes the toothache, and secondly to revive and refresh themselves.

Wittuwamat lighted his pipe and offered me a drink. To be friendly, I drank my first and last mouthful of tobacco smoke, whereupon I coughed and coughed. The savage laughed. I perceived that his fingernails were bitten to the quick, like Reverend Hunt's at Cambridge. My uncle Roger's words returned to me: “The vilest person of the earth is the living image of Almighty God.”