A POT OF BROTH.
Yes, a Pot of Broth, and one more classic than any black broth ever
supped by Spartan; more pregnant of Fate than the hell-broth compounded
by Macbeth's witches; broth in which was brewed the destiny of a great
nation, broth but for whose brewing I certainly, and you, if you be of
Pilgrim strain, had never been, for in its seething liquid was dissolved
a wide-spread and most powerful conspiracy that in its fruition would
have left Plymouth Rock a funeral monument in a field of blood.
Hardly an hour after the pinnace had landed its passengers at the Rock,
and the Pamet, sullenly declining farther hospitality, had proceeded on
his way to meet Obtakiest and report his ill success, when Winslow with
John Hampden and Hobomok entered the village from the north, sore spent
with travel and scanty food, but laden with matter of the profoundest
interest. A Council of the chiefs, including nearly all of the Mayflower
men, was immediately called together in the Common house, now used
altogether for these assemblages and for divine worship, and first
Standish and then Winslow were called upon for their reports.
The captain's was given with military brevity.
"I have brought a hundred bushels of corn and all the men I carried
away. The savages are no doubt disaffected, and a notorious
blood-thirsty rascal called Wituwamat, a Neponset, brought Canacum a
knife wherewith to kill some one, and I fancy 't is myself; but though
he impudently delivered both knife and message in my presence, he so
wrapped up his meaning in new and strange phrases, that I could make but
little of it. Perhaps Master Winslow can read my riddle as well as tell
his own story."
"Methinks I can, Captain," replied Winslow pleasantly; and then in
smooth and polished phrase bearing such resemblance to Standish's rough
and brief utterances as a rapier doth to a battle-axe, the future Grand
Commissioner narrated how he had found Massasoit as it seemed already
dying, for he could neither see, nor swallow either medicine or food.
The sachem's wigwam was so crowded with visitors that the white men
could scarcely edge their way in, and around the bed circled the powahs
at their incantations, "making," said Winslow, "such a hellish noise as
distempered us that were well, and was therefore unlike to ease him that
was sick."
This ended, and about half the guests persuaded to withdraw, the dying
chief was with difficulty made to understand who were his visitors, and
feebly groping with his hand he faintly murmured,--
"_Winsnow, keen Winsnow?_" (Is it you Winsnow?) To which Winslow gently
replied, grasping the cold hand,--
"It is Winslow who is come to see you, sachem."
"I shall never see thee again, Winsnow," muttered the dying man, and
those standing by explained that the sight had left his eyes some hours
before.
But Winslow, after patiently repeating over and over the message of
sympathy and friendship delivered him by the governor, produced a little
pot of what he calls a confection of many comfortable conserves, and
with the point of his knife inserted a portion between the sick man's
teeth.
"It will kill him! He cannot swallow," declared the favorite wife, who
stood chafing her lord's hands; but presently as the conserve, prepared
by Doctor Fuller and of rare virtue, melted, it trickled down the
patient's throat, who presently whispered, "More!" and Winslow well
pleased administered several doses. Then, finding the mouth whose
muscles had now relaxed, foul with fever, this courtly and haughty
gentleman, this necessity of the Lord Protector of England, this Grand
Commissioner of the future, with his own hands performed a nurse's
loathly work, and ceased not until the sachem, refreshed, relieved,
rescued from death, was able to ask for drink, when Hampden prepared
some of the confection with water, and Winslow administered it. All
night this work went on, and when morning broke, the sick man could see
and hear and swallow as well as ever he could, and his appetite
returning he demanded broth such as he had tasted at Plymouth.
Now that especial broth was a delicious compound of Priscilla's
compounding, and Winslow knew no more of its recipe than you or I do,
nor were any materials such as should go to the making of white man's
broth at hand. Worst of all, Winslow had never taken note or share in
culinary labors, for Susanna was a notable housewife and had both men
and maids at her command; but a willing mind is a powerful teacher, and
not only Winslow the man, was full of Christian charity, but Winslow the
statesman desired intensely that Massasoit should remain sachem of the
Pokanokets, instead of making way for Corbitant, who had once declared
his enmity to the white men, and had only been put down by the strong
hand.
So Winslow leaving his patient for a moment went into the fresh air,
both to revive himself and to write a hasty note, begging Doctor Fuller
to send not only some medicine suited to the case, but a pair of
chickens, and a recipe for making them into broth, with such other
material as might be needed.
Fifty miles of forest lay between Sowams and Plymouth, but a swift
runner was dispatched at once with the missive, and the promise of a
rich reward if he hastened his return; then Winslow turned to his
fellow-statesman who stood looking on with an amused smile.
"Master Hampden, know you how to make broth?" demanded he.
"I have no teaching but mother wit," replied Hampden. "And you are
richer in that than I."
"Nay then--here Pibayo, is that thy name?"
"Ahhe," replied the squaw modestly.
"Thou hast corn in store?"
"Ahhe," again replied the woman, and Winslow making the most of his
little stock of Indian words directed her to bruise some of the maize in
her stone mortar, and meantime calling for one of the egg-shaped earthen
stew-pans used by the natives, he half filled it with water, and settled
it into the hot ashes of the open air fire. The maize ready, he winnowed
it in his hands, blowing away the husks and chaff, and poured the rest
into the boiling water.
"So far well," remarked he gayly to Hampden; "but what next? I remember
in the garden of our home at Droitwich there was a gay plot of golden
bloom that my mother called broth marigolds, but we shall hardly come by
such in this wilderness."
"Methinks there are turnips in broth," ventured Hampden.
"And there are turnips in Plymouth, but that is not here," retorted
Winslow. "Come, let us see what herbs Dame Nature will afford."
A little search and some questioning showed the herbalists a goodly bush
of sassafras, and Winslow, who with the rest of his generation ascribed
almost magical virtues to this plant, enthusiastically tugged up several
of its roots, and cleansing them in the brook, sliced them thinly into
his broth. Finally he added a handful of strawberry leaves, the only
green thing to be found, and leaving the mess to stew for a while, he
strained it through his handkerchief, and presented it to his patient
who eagerly drank a pint of it.
Perhaps there really is magic in sassafras, perhaps the child of nature
throve upon this strictly Pre-Raphaelitish composition, perhaps Indian
gruel with strawberry leaves in it and strained through a pocket
handkerchief is the disguise under which the Elixir Vitæ masquerades
among us; certain it is that beneath its benign influence the sachem of
the Pokanokets revived so rapidly that when, twenty-four hours from his
departure, the runner arrived with the chickens and the physic, his
master frankly threw the physic to the dogs, and handed over the fowls
to Pibayo, bidding her guard them carefully, feed them well, and order
them to lay eggs and provide chickens for future illnesses.
So this was the fateful broth of which we spoke but now, and its results
were immediate, for although Massasoit himself said nothing more
than,--
"Now I perceive that the English are my friends and love me, and while I
live I will never forget this kindness that they have showed me," he in
a private conclave with some of his most trusted pnieses solemnly
charged Hobomok with a message for Winslow, only to be delivered however
as upon their return they came within sight of Plymouth. This message,
to hear which the Council had been convened, was to the effect that the
Neponsets had fully determined to fall upon the Weymouth settlers and
cut them off root and branch so soon as two of them, who were
ship-carpenters, had completed some boats they were now building to the
order of the Indians.
The forty braves of the Neponset tribe were fully equal to this task,
and if the Plymouth Colony would remain neutral they had no desire to
injure them; but knowing full well that they would not, and having
moreover a superstitious dread of Standish's prowess and abilities, they
had arranged with all the tribes lying near Plymouth to join with them,
and on an appointed day to massacre the entire colony.
"Ay, ay," interrupted Standish at this point of Winslow's narrative.
"Now do I comprehend some of the figures and parables of Wituwamat's
impudent speech, what time he delivered the knife to Canacum. The bloody
hound--well, brother, get on with thy narrative."
So Winslow told how Massasoit had been urged again and again to join the
conspiracy, but never would, although his pride had been indeed sore
wounded by a lying story of how the governor and captain and Winslow,
his especial friend, having been told of his desperate illness, cared
naught for it, not even enough to send Hobomok his own pniese to inquire
for him; and now, being undeceived, he would himself have killed the
liar, whose name was Pecksuot, but on second thought left him to the
white men whom he earnestly charged to take the matter into their own
hands, and with no warning, no parley, to go and kill Pecksuot,
Wituwamat, Obtakiest, and several other ringleaders of the conspiracy,
for, as he assured them most earnestly and solemnly, unless these men
were promptly and effectually dealt with, both the Weymouth colony and
themselves would be overwhelmed and massacred without mercy. Finally,
the sachem added that he as Sagamore of the Pokanokets, and as it were
regent of the Massachusetts, had authority to order the punishment of
these rebels to his expressed commands for peace, and he hereby did so.
"And very sensible and good the sachem's counsel seemeth in my ears,"
remarked Standish complacently.
"Nay, Captain," replied the Elder sternly. "Men's lives are not so
lightly to be dealt withal. We came among these salvages to convert them
to the knowledge of God, not to slaughter them."
"Meseemeth, Elder," returned Standish impatiently, "it is a question of
our lives or theirs. I should be loth to see your gray hairs dabbled in
blood, and Mistress Brewster carried into captivity to drudge as the
slave of a squaw."
The elder turned even paler than his wont and covered his eyes with his
hand, but murmured,--
"God His will be done."
"Ay, so say I," replied the captain more gently. "But as I read Holy
Writ the chosen folk were often punished for sparing their foes, but
never for laying roundly on. 'Go and smite me Amalek and spare not,' is
one of many orders, and if the commander-in-chief obeyed not he was
cashiered without so much as a court-martial."
Several eager voices rose in reply, but Bradford lightly tapping the
table around which the Council was gathered said decisively,--
"These matters are too large, brethren, to be thus discussed. Let each
one declare his mind soberly and briefly, and without controversy.
To-morrow is the day appointed for our town meeting and annual election
of officers, and I will then lay the case before the whole, and also
will rehearse our own conclusions. Then, the voice of the majority shall
decide the matter."
And so began the reign of "the people" in America, for this was the
first great question to be decided since the coming of the Fortune had
so enlarged the colony that the Council was no longer composed of the
whole, as it was when the treaty with Massasoit was concluded.