[No. 3.]
WEYMOUTH HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
WESSAGUSSET AND WEYMOUTH,
AN HISTORICAL ADDRESS BY
CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS, JR.,
DELIVERED AT WEYMOUTH, JULY 4, 1874, ON THE OCCASION OF THE
CELEBRATION OF THE TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH
ANNIVERSARY OF THE PERMANENT
SETTLEMENT OF THE TOWN.
WEYMOUTH IN ITS FIRST TWENTY YEARS,
A PAPER READ BEFORE THE SOCIETY BY
GILBERT NASH,
NOVEMBER 1, 1882.
WEYMOUTH THIRTY YEARS LATER,
A PAPER READ BY
CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS,
BEFORE THE
WEYMOUTH HISTORICAL SOCIETY,
SEPTEMBER 23, 1904.
PUBLISHED BY
THE WEYMOUTH HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
1905.
SINE
LABORE
NIHIL
T.R. MARVIN & SON
PRINTERS
BOSTON
MASS.
ESTABL.
1823.
CONTENTS.
WESSAGUSSET AND WEYMOUTH 5
WEYMOUTH’S FIRST TWENTY YEARS 87
WEYMOUTH THIRTY YEARS LATER 114
INDEX 157
APPENDIX 164
HISTORICAL ADDRESS
BY
CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS, JR.,
JULY 4, 1874.
Full in sight of the spot where we are now gathered,--almost at the
foot of King-Oak Hill,--stands that portion of the ancient town of
Weymouth, known from time immemorial as the village of Old Spain.
When or why it was first so called is wholly unknown,--scarcely a
tradition even remains to suggest to us an origin of the name. None
the less Old Spain well deserved a portion at least of that familiar
title, for, next to the town of Plymouth, it is the oldest settlement
in Massachusetts. And when we speak of the oldest settlements in
Massachusetts, we speak of communities which may fairly lay claim to
a very respectable degree of antiquity; not of the greatest, it is
true, for all antiquity is relative, and that of America scarcely
deserves the name by the side of what England has to show; but what
is the antiquity of England compared with that of Rome?--and Rome,
again, seems young and crude when we speak of Greece; while even those
who fought upon the ringing plains of windy Troy are but as prattling
children in presence of the hoary age of the Pharaohs. The settlement
of Old Spain and of Weymouth is, therefore, ancient only as things
American are ancient; but still two hundred and fifty years of time
carry us back to events and men which seem sufficiently remote. When
the first European made his home in Old Spain,--when the earliest rude
hut was framed on yonder north shore of Phillips Creek,--the modern
world in which we live was just assuming shape. Few now realize how
little of that which makes up the vast accumulated store of human
possessions which we have inherited from our fathers--which to us
is as the air we breathe,--had then existence. The Reformation was
then young,--Luther and Calvin and Erasmus were men of yesterday;
the life-and-death struggle with Catholicism still tortured eastern
Europe. The thirty years’ war in Germany was just commenced, and the
youthful Gustavus Adolphus had yet to win his spurs. The blood of St.
Bartholomew was but half a century old, and the murder of Henry IV.
was as near to the men of 1622 as is that of Abraham Lincoln to us.
The great Cardinal-Duke was then organizing modern France; Charles I.
had not yet ascended the English throne; Hampden was a young country
gentleman, and Oliver Cromwell an unpretending English squire. While
men still believed that the sun moved round the earth, Galileo and
Kepler were gradually ascertaining those laws which guide the planets
in their paths; Bacon was meditating his philosophy; Don Quixote was a
newly published work, with a local reputation; and Milton, not yet a
Cambridge pensioner, was making his first essays at verse. Shakespeare
had died but six years before, and, indeed, the first edition of his
plays did not appear until the very year in which Weymouth was settled.
Thus, in 1622, our world of literature, of science, almost of history,
was yet to be created. Hardly a single volume of our current English
literature was then in existence, and people might well con their
Bibles, for, in the English tongue, there was little else to read.
Meanwhile the North American continent was an unbroken wilderness,
with here and there, few and far between, from the St. Lawrence to
the Gulf, scattered specks of struggling civilization, hundreds of
leagues apart, dotting the skirts of the green, primeval forest.
It was at not the least famous of these scattered specks,--at the
neighboring town of Plymouth,--that the history of Weymouth opened on
a day towards the latter part of the month of May, in the year 1622.
The little colony had then been established in its new home some
seventeen months. They had just struggled through their second winter,
and now, sadly reduced in number, with supplies wholly exhausted, and
sorely distressed in spirit, the Pilgrims were anxiously looking for
the arrival of some ship from England. The Mayflower had left them,
starting on her homeward voyage a year before, and once only during
their weary sojourn, in the month of the previous November, had these
homesick wanderers on the sandy Plymouth shores been cheered by any
tidings from the living world. On this particular day, however, the
whole settlement was alive with excitement. There had been great
trouble with the neighboring Indians, and the magistrates were on the
point of delivering one of them up to the emissaries of his sachem
to be put to death, when suddenly a boat was seen to cross the mouth
of the bay and disappear behind the next headland.[1] There had been
rumors of trouble between the English and the French, and the first
idea of the settlers was that some connection existed between the
sachem’s emissaries and those on board the boat. The delivery of the
prisoner was consequently deferred. At the same time, a shot was fired
as a signal, in response to which the boat changed her course, and
came into the bay. When at last it touched the shore it was found to
contain ten persons, who announced themselves as being in the service
of one Mr. Thomas Weston, a London merchant, well known to the elders
of Plymouth. They were cordially welcomed with a salute of three
volleys of musketry, and thus finished a somewhat dangerous voyage.[2]
It appeared they had been dispatched from England some months before,
on board a vessel named the Sparrow, which belonged to Mr. Weston, and
was bound to the fishing grounds off the coast of Maine: they were, in
fact, the forerunners of a larger party which Weston was organizing in
London, with the design of establishing a trading settlement somewhere
on the shores of Massachusetts Bay. They brought with them letters to
the Plymouth magistrates, but they were wholly unprovided with either
food or outfit. The Sparrow was one of the fishing fleet which yearly
visited those waters, and apparently Weston’s plan had been for these
people to leave her near the Damariscove Islands, and thence to find
their way by sea to Plymouth, examining the coast as they went along
with a view to settlement. There was something curiously reckless in
the methods of those old explorers. Weston himself afterwards sought to
reach Plymouth in the same way, and encountered many strange adventures
by sea and land before he got there. In the present case his messengers
do not appear either to have been seafaring men, or especially selected
for the work they had to do. It was not until they were actually
leaving the Sparrow for their voyage of one hundred and fifty miles
in the North Atlantic that they seemed to realize their own utter
helplessness, and the extreme vagueness of their errand. Fortunately
for them, however, the mate of that vessel was a daring fellow, and
volunteered to venture his life as their pilot. They accordingly set
sail in their shallop, skirting along the coast. They touched at the
Isle of Shoals and at Cape Ann, and thence they ran for Boston harbor,
where they passed some four or five days exploring. They selected
the southerly side of the bay as the best place for the proposed
settlement, as in these parts there seemed to be the fewest natives,
and made a bargain with the sachem Aberdecest for what land they
needed;[3] but, getting uneasy at the smallness of their number, they
determined to go to Plymouth, in hopes of getting news of the larger
enterprise. Disappointed in this, they landed to await events. The
shallop, accompanied by a Plymouth boat in search of supplies, returned
to the fishing fleet, and its seven passengers were, for the time
being, incorporated with the colony, and fared no worse than others.
Meanwhile Mr. Weston had organized his larger expedition, and it was
already on the sea, having sailed from London about the 1st of April.
Thus Thomas Weston played a very prominent part in the early settlement
of Weymouth, as he had already done in that of Plymouth. He was
always called a merchant, but in fact he was a pure sixteenth century
adventurer of the Smith and Raleigh stamp,--a man whose brain teemed
with schemes for the deriving of sudden gain from the settlement of
the new continent. We first get sight of him in Leyden in connection
with the Pilgrim fathers,--the treasurer, the representative, the
active, moving spirit of the company of Merchant Adventurers of
London, who then were looking for the material with which to effect a
settlement within the Virginia patent. Mr. Treasurer Weston had some
acquaintance with the Leyden exiles, and, knowing how dissatisfied
they were with their experience in Holland, he had pitched on them as
the best material for the work in hand. They were then negotiating with
the Dutch government for a grant of lands in what is now New York.
Weston persuaded them to abandon this scheme, promising them, on the
part of his associates, aid, both in money and in shipping. When the
Speedwell arrived at Southampton from Delfthaven, bearing the fortunes
of the little colony between its decks, it was Weston who came down
from London to arrange the last details of the adventure. But the
meeting was not a propitious one. The parties fell out as to certain
alterations proposed to the original agreement between them, and Weston
returned to London, telling the emigrants as a parting word that they
must expect no further aid from him. Out of this disagreement grew
the scheme of another and independent settlement. Weston apparently
concluded that he had made a mistake in his choice of agents. A
mere adventurer, he looked only to pecuniary results. The return
of the Mayflower in the spring of 1621 without a cargo was a great
disappointment to him, and he did not delay writing to the struggling
settlers that a good return cargo by the next ship was absolutely
essential to the life of the enterprise. They did make an effort,
therefore, to load the Fortune with such articles as the country
afforded, but before the venture reached England Weston had abandoned
the Plymouth colony in disgust, sold out his interest in the Merchant
Adventurers’ company and was already meditating his new and rival
enterprise. He cared more for beaver-skins in hand than for empires
hereafter, and the Plymouth people appeared to him to discourse and
argue and consult when they should have been trading.[4] His confidence
in the success of a trading post on Massachusetts Bay was not shaken,
but he shared in the general belief of the day that families were an
incumbrance in a well organized plantation, and that a settlement made
up of able-bodied men only could do more in New England in seven years
than in Old England in twenty.[5] On this principle he organized his
expedition, which, towards the close of April, 1622, set sail in two
vessels, the Charity of one hundred tons and the Swan of thirty. It
went under the charge of Weston’s brother-in-law, one Richard Greene,
and was made up of the roughest material, miscellaneously picked up
in the streets and on the docks of London; among them, however, there
was one surgeon, a Mr. Salisbury, and a lawyer from Furnival’s Inn,
afterwards very notorious in early colonial annals, one Thomas Morton,
better known as Morton of Merry Mount.[6] Such as they were, however,
they safely landed at Plymouth towards the end of June,--some sixty
stout fellows, without apparently the remotest idea why they had come
or what they had come to do. Naturally the old settlers did not look
upon them as a very desirable accession to the colony, especially
as they early evinced a disinclination to all honest labor and an
extremely well developed appetite for green corn.[7] Having landed
them, the larger ship sailed for Virginia, and during her absence
preparations were completed for removing the party to the site selected
for its operations at Wessagusset, as Weymouth was then called. In the
course of a few weeks the ship returned, the healthy members of the
expedition were taken on board and sailed for Boston Bay. The Plymouth
people saw them disappear with much satisfaction, and expressed no
desire to have them return.
It was August before the party reached its permanent quarters. There
is no record of the exact spot on which they placed their settlement,
but a very general tradition assigns it to the north side of Phillips
Creek[8]. Not improbably there was a better draught of water in that
inlet than now; but it is well established that the locality was to
the south of the Fore River, and the very sheltered character of the
creek would naturally have suggested it to the explorers for the
object they had in view. But wherever the exact locality may have
been, the adventurers found themselves towards the end of September
sufficiently established in it to let the larger ship, the Charity,
return to England. The smaller one, the Swan, had been designed for
the use of the plantation,--it was indeed the chief item of their
stock in trade,--and it now remained moored in Weymouth River. The
Charity had left the party fairly supplied for the winter,[9] but they
were a wasteful, improvident set, and they were hardly left to their
own devices before they were made to realize that they had already
squandered most of their resources, though the winter was not yet
begun. They accordingly bethought themselves of the people of Plymouth,
and wrote to Governor Bradford proposing a trading voyage on joint
account in search of corn,--they offering to supply the vessel while
the Plymouth people were to furnish the quick capital needed, in the
shape of articles of barter. The offer was accepted, and in October the
expedition set out, with Standish in command and the Indian Squanto
acting as guide. The intention was to weather the cape and trade along
the south coast, but they were driven back by adverse winds, and then
Standish fell sick of a fever and had to give up the command. Governor
Bradford took his place and again the Swan started out; but it was
November now, and the back side of Cape Cod shewed a rougher sea than
they cared to face, so they prudently put about and ran into Sandwich
Bay. Here Squanto, the Indian guide, fell sick and died, bequeathing
his few effects to his English friends and praying that he might find
rest with the Englishman’s God.[10] Here and elsewhere, however, the
partners secured some twenty-six or twenty-eight hogsheads of corn and
beans, and with that were fain to return. An equal division was made,
and the Swan again came to her moorings in Weymouth Fore River.
The relief she brought with her was, however, only temporary; disorder
and waste in that settlement were chronic. Greene had died in Plymouth
while they were preparing for the trading voyage, and a man named
Sanders had succeeded him in control. Either he was incompetent or his
people were very hard to manage; but, in either case, the squandering
of the supplies continued, and the prudent Plymouth settlers complained
that, through improvident dealings with the Indians, their neighbors
ruined the market, giving for a quart of corn what before would have
bought a beaver-skin.[11] At length, however, about the beginning of
the New Year, the Wessagusset plantation found itself face to face
with dire want. The hungry settlers bartered with the Indians, giving
everything they had for food; they even stripped the clothes from
their backs and the blankets from their beds. They made canoes for the
savages, and, for a mere pittance of corn, became their hewers of wood
and drawers of water.[12] During that long and dreary winter they must
heartily have wished themselves back in the slums of London. Weymouth
Fore River, in that season, must then have been very much what we so
well know it to be now. Doubtless the cold tide ebbed and flowed before
the rude block-house, now lifting on its bosom huge heaps of frozen
snow and ice, and then again bearing them in great unsightly blocks
swiftly out to sea. The frost was in the ground; the snow was on it.
So, through the long, hard, savage winter, those seventy poor hungry
wretches shivered around their desolate habitations, or straggled about
among the neighboring wigwams in search of food. Their ammunition was
nearly exhausted so that they could not kill the game. They ransacked
the woods in search of nuts; and they followed out the tide, digging
in the flats for clams and muscles. But, insufficiently supplied with
clothes, they could not endure the winter’s cold in this slow search
for food, and one poor fellow while grubbing for shell-fish sank into
the mud, and, being too reduced to drag himself out, was there found
dead,--an end to his adventures. In all ten perished.[13]
In their necessities they had made the fatal mistake of degrading
themselves before the savages. In their utmost needs the Plymouth
people had always borne themselves defiantly to the Indian; making him
feel himself in presence of a superior. It was not so at Wessagusset.
The settlers there alternately cringed before the Indian and abused
him; and he, seeing them so poor and weak and helpless, first grew to
despise and then to oppress them. Naturally, starving men of their
description had recourse to theft, and there was no one to steal from
but the Indians; so the Indians found their hidden stores of corn
disturbed and knew just where to look for the thieves. This led to
a bitter feeling among the savages, and some who were detected were
punished in their sight. But with men like these, punishment was a less
terror than starvation, and the depredations and complaints continued.
The Indians would no longer either lend or sell them food; and, indeed,
it did not appear that they had any to spare.[14] Finally, in their
utter desperation, the settlers thought of having recourse to violence,
and made ready their stockade to resist the attack, sure to ensue, by
closing every entrance into it save one. They were hardly prepared,
however, to go to such extremes as this, relying solely on their own
strength. Accordingly, towards the end of February, Sanders sent a
letter by an Indian messenger to Governor Bradford, informing him of
their necessities, and advising him that Sanders himself was preparing
to go to the fishing stations at the eastward to buy provisions from
the ships; but meanwhile he did not see how the settlement was to live
until his return, and he therefore wrote to see if the Plymouth people
would sustain him in taking what was necessary from the Indians by
force. The answer was not encouraging. The Plymouth magistrates had no
intention of embroiling that settlement with its savage neighbors, and
therefore very plainly informed Sanders that he and his need expect
no countenance from them in any such proceeding as that proposed; and
they further intimated an opinion that they would all be killed if they
attempted it. Finally, they advised them to worry through the winter,
living on nuts and shell-fish as they themselves were doing, especially
as they enjoyed the additional advantage of an oyster-bed, which they
of Plymouth had not.[15] On receiving this letter, it only remained to
give up all idea of a recourse to violence, and Sanders then took the
Swan and himself went to Plymouth on a begging excursion. The people
there, however, felt unable to supply his vessel even for a voyage to
the fishing stations; so he returned to Wessagusett, there left the
Swan, and started on a shallop for the coast of Maine.
Meanwhile the depredations still went on, and the Indians grew more
and more aggressive. They took by force from the settlers what they
pleased, and if they remonstrated, threatened them with their knives.
Apparently they treated the poor wretches like dogs; regarding them
much as they had four unfortunate Frenchmen whom they had taken
prisoners some years before, after destroying their vessel, killing
them at last through ill usage.[16] Finally, one unfortunate but
peculiarly skillful thief was detected and bitter complaint made
against him. The terror-stricken settlers offered to give him up to
the savages, to be dealt with as they saw fit. The savages, however,
declined to receive him, upon which his companions hung him themselves
in their sight. This execution has since been very famous. That the
settlers of Wessagusset hung the real culprit does not admit of
question, for it is so stated both by those who were present and by
the Plymouth authorities of the time, who were perfectly familiar with
all the facts.[17] But the humorous Mr. Thomas Morton of Merry Mount,
in the New English Canaan, published in London in 1632, reclad the
Wessagusset hanging of ten years previous in this new and fantastic
garb:
* * * * *
“One amongst the rest an able bodied man, that ranged the woodes, to
see what it would afford, lighted by accident on an Indian barne, and
from thence did take a capp full of corne; the Salvage owner of it,
finding by the foote some English had bin there came to the Plantation,
and mad complaint after this manner.
“The cheife Commander of the Company one this occation called a
Parliament of all his people but those that were sicke, and ill at
ease. And wisely now they must consult, upon this huge complaint, that
a privy knife, or stringe of beades would well enough have qualified,
and Edward Johnson was a spetiall judge of this businesse; the fact was
there in repetition, construction made, that it was fellony, and by the
Lawes of England punished with death, and this in execution must be
put, for an example, and likewise to appease the Salvage, when straight
wayes one arose, mooved as it were with some compassion, and said hee
could not well gaine say the former sentence, yet hee had conceaved
within the compasse of his braine a Embrion, that was of spetiall
consequence to be delivered, and cherished hee said, that it would
most aptly serve to pacifie the Salvages complaint, and save the life
of one that might (if neede should be) stand them in some good steede,
being younge and stronge, fit for resistance against an enemy, which
might come unexpected for any thinge they knew. The Oration made was
liked of every one, and hee intreated to proceede to shew the meanes
how this may be performed: sayes hee, you all agree that one must die,
and one shall die, this younge mans cloathes we will take of, and put
upon one, that is old and impotent, a sickly person that cannot escape
death, such is the disease one him confirmed, that die hee must, put
the younge mans cloathes on this man, and let the sick person be hanged
in the others steede. Amen sayes one, and so sayes many more.
“And this had like to have prooved their finall sentence, and being
there confirmed by Act of Parliament, to after ages for a President:
But that one with a ravenus voyce, begunne to croake and bellow
for revenge, and put by that conclusive motion, alledging such
deceipts might be a meanes here after to exasperate the mindes of
the complaininge Salvages and that by his death, the Salvages should
see their zeale to Iustice, and therefore hee should die: this was
concluded; yet neverthelesse a scruple was made; now to countermaunde
this act, did represent itselfe unto their mindes, which was how they
should doe to get the mans good wil: this was indeede a spetiall
obstacle: for without (that they all agreed) it would be dangerous, for
any man to attempt the execution of it, lest mischiefe should befall
them every man; he was a person, that in his wrath, did seeme to be
a second Sampson, able to beate out their branes with the jawbone of
an Asse: therefore they called the man and by perswation got him fast
bound in jest, and then hanged him up hard by in good earnest, who
with a weapon, and at liberty, would have put all those wise judges
of this Parliament to a pitifull _non plus_ (as it hath been credibly
reported), and made the cheife Iudge of them all buckell to him.”[18]
The work from which this extract is taken was published in 1632; in
1663, thirty-one years later, appeared the second part of the famous
English satire, Hudibras. Butler, its author, had come across the New
English Canaan, and the very original idea of vicarious atonement
suggested in it entertained him hugely. He appropriated and improved
it, adapting the facts to his own fancy, until at last the story
appeared in its new guise, in what was the most popular English book of
the day:
Our Brethren of New-England use
Choice malefactors to excuse,
And hang the Guiltless in their stead,
Of whom the Churches have less need;
As lately ’t happen’d: In a town
There liv’d a Cobler, and but one,
That out of Doctrine could cut Use,
And mend men’s lives as well as shoes.
This precious Brother having slain,
In times of peace, an Indian,
Not out of malice, but mere zeal,
(Because he was an Infidel),
The mighty Tottipottymoy
Sent to our Elders an envoy,
Complaining sorely of the breach
Of league held forth by Brother Patch,
Against the articles in force
Between both churches, his and ours,
For which he craved the Saints to render
Into his hands, or hang, th’ offender;
But they maturely having weigh’d
They had no more but him o’ th’ trade,
(A man that served them in a double
Capacity, to teach and cobble),
Resolv’d to spare him; yet to do
The Indian Hogan Moghan too
Impartial justice, in his stead did
Hang an old Weaver that was bed-rid.[19]
The really amusing part of this episode, however, yet remains to be
told. When it was rescued from oblivion, through the wit of Butler, in
1663, the reaction against Puritanism was at its height, and everything
which tended to render the sect, so recently all-powerful, either
odious or ridiculous, was eagerly sought for and implicitly believed.
New England, and especially the province of Massachusetts Bay, was
out of favor. So striking an exemplification of Puritan justice was
not to be disregarded. The whole absurd fiction of Morton and Butler
was, therefore, not only accepted as historical truth, but the bastard
tradition was solemnly deposited at the door of the good people of
Boston and Plymouth:--and so the Weymouth hanging passed into history
hand in hand with the famous Blue-Laws of Connecticut. There is,
however, something irresistibly ludicrous in picturing to oneself the
horror and dismay with which the severe elders of the Plymouth church
would have contemplated the saddling of their fame before posterity, on
the ribald authority of the New English Canaan and of Hudibras, with
the apocryphal misdeeds of Weston’s vagabonds. But so it happened,
and nearly a century and a half later the absurd fiction was gravely
recorded in his history by Governor Hutchinson, as a part of the early
annals of New England.[20]
But it is necessary to return to Weston’s colony. We left it face to
face with famine, deserted by its leader, and in terror of the savages;
in the wish to propitiate whom the starving, shivering outcasts had
just hung one of their own number in front of their palisade. Even
this, however, did not appease the Indians, who were now thoroughly
restless and had begun to conspire together all along the coast for the
simultaneous destruction of both the infant settlements. It was just
one year since the Virginia massacre, and that tragedy seemed about
to be re-enacted in New England. Intimations of the impending danger
reached the Plymouth and the Weymouth people at about the same time;
coming to the former through a friendly hint from Massasoit, and to the
latter from the talk of an Indian woman.
The Indians were now watching the Wessagusset settlement very closely.
In spite of their terror, the settlers, however, lived on in a reckless
way, mixing freely with the savages and taking no precautions against
surprise.[21] But one at least of their number was thoroughly alarmed,
and had resolved to make his escape to Plymouth. This was Phinehas
Pratt, one of the seven who had come on in the shallop during the
previous May in advance of the body of the enterprise. The journey
he now proposed to himself was both difficult and dangerous. It was
March, and he was insufficiently clad and weak for want of food; he
did not know the way, nor did he even have a compass. The Indians,
probably in furtherance of their half-matured conspiracy, had gradually
moved their wigwams closer and closer to the settlement. Pratt’s first
object was to steal away unobserved by them. Very early one morning,
therefore, preparing a small pack, he took a hoe in his hand and left
the settlement as if he were in search of nuts, or about to dig for
shell-fish. He went directly towards that end of the swamp nearest the
wigwams. Getting close to them he pretended to be busy digging, until
he had satisfied himself that he was unobserved; then he suddenly
plunged into the thicket and began to make his way as rapidly as he
could in a southerly direction. The sky was overcast; the ground also
was in many places covered with snow, which greatly alarmed him, as it
seemed likely to afford an almost certain trail in case of pursuit.
Fortunately for him he at once lost his way, or he must soon have been
overtaken. He hurried along, however, as fast as he could, until late
in the afternoon, when the sun appeared sufficiently to give him some
indication of his course. He at length came to the North River, which
he found both deep and cold; he succeeded in fording it, however, and,
as night began to fall, found himself too weary to go further, weak
from cold and hunger and yet afraid to light a fire. Finally he came
to a deep hollow in which were many fallen trees; here he stopped,
lit a fire and rested, listening to the howling of the wolves in the
woods around him. At night the sky cleared and he distinguished the
north star, thus getting his bearings. He resumed his journey in the
morning but found himself unable to proceed with it, and so returned to
his camping place of the previous night. The succeeding day, however,
was clear, and he started again; this time more successfully, for
by three o’clock in the afternoon he got to Duxbury and recognized
the landmarks; soon afterwards reaching the settlement, thoroughly
exhausted, but in safety. He thus finished a perilous journey, for the
pursuers were not far behind him. The next day they appeared on the
outskirts of the settlement and assured themselves of his arrival.
They had lost his trail, and, following the more direct path, had
missed him; but nevertheless he had, as he himself expressed it, “been
pursued for his life in time of frost and snow as a deer chased by the
wolves.”[22]
He now delivered his tidings and was cared for, but found the Plymouth
settlement fully awake to the danger. The council had already the
subject under advisement, and, the day before Pratt’s arrival, had
decided upon war. Their proceedings were vigorous. Captain Miles
Standish was authorized to take with him such a force as was in
his judgment sufficient to enable him to hold his own against all
the Indians in the neighborhood of Boston Bay, and go at once to
Wessagusset. He did not apparently place a very high estimate either on
the numbers or the valor of his opponents, for he selected only eight
men,[23] and with them was on the point of starting when Pratt arrived.
The next day, March 25, 1623, the wind proved fair, and so the little
army got into its boat and set sail.
Reaching Weymouth Fore River on the 26th, after a prosperous voyage,
Standish steered directly for the Swan, which was lying at her moorings
near the settlement. Greatly to his surprise he found her wholly
deserted,--there was not a soul on board. A musket was fired as a
signal, which attracted the attention of a few miserable creatures busy
searching for nuts. From them Standish learned that the principal men
of the settlement were in the stockade; so he landed, and, after some
conversation with them, promptly began his preparations. The stragglers
were all called in, and every one was forbidden to go beyond gun-shot
from the stockade. Rations of corn were issued to all out of the
slender stock which the prudent Plymouth people had reserved for seed,
and something like discipline was established. The weather was wet
and stormy, delaying final operations, but the Indians, nevertheless,
seeing Standish on the ground, began to suspect that their designs
were discovered. Pecksuot, their chief, accordingly came in and had
an interview, Hobbamock, a friendly Indian who had accompanied the
expedition, acting as interpreter.
This was one of the very famous Indian talks of early New England
annals; not only was it chronicled in all the records of the time, but
it has since found a place in poetry, so that to-day the speech of the
savage Pecksuot to the doughty Miles Standish is most familiar to us
through the verses of Longfellow[24]:--
Then he unsheathed his knife, and, whetting the blade on his left
hand,
Held it aloft, and displayed a woman’s face on the handle,
Saying, with bitter expression and look of sinister meaning:
“I have another at home, with the face of a man on the handle;
By and by they shall marry; and there will be plenty of children!”
This figurative language both Standish and his Indian interpreter
accepted as meaning war. At the moment, however, no act of overt
hostility took place on either side. Standish was not ready. His plan
was to strike, but when he struck he meant to strike hard. He proposed,
in fact, to get all the Indians he could into his power and then to
kill them.[25] The day after the knife interview he found himself with
several of his men in a room with four of the savages, among whom were
Pecksuot and Wituwamat. Suddenly Standish gave the signal and flung
himself on Pecksuot, snatching his knife from its sheath on his neck
and stabbing him with it. The door was closed and a life-and-death
struggle ensued. The savages were taken by surprise, but they fought
hard, making little noise but catching at their weapons and struggling
until they were cut almost to pieces. Finally Pecksuot, Wituwamat and
a third Indian were killed; while a fourth, a youth of eighteen, was
overpowered and secured; him, Standish subsequently hung. The massacre,
for such in historic justice it must be called, seeing that they killed
every man they could lay their hands on, then began. There were eight
warriors in the stockade at the time,--Standish and his party had
killed three and secured one; they subsequently killed another, while
the Weston people despatched two more. One only escaped to give the
alarm, which was rapidly spread through the Indian villages.
Standish immediately followed up his advantage. Leaving some Indian
women, who happened to be in the stockade, in charge of a portion of
his own men and of the settlers, he took one or two of the latter and
the remainder of his own force, and started in pursuit. He had gone
no great distance when a file of Indians was seen advancing. Both
parties hurried forward to secure the advantage of a rising ground
near at hand. Standish got to it first, and the savages at once
scattered, sheltering themselves behind trees and discharging a flight
of arrows at their opponents. The engagement was, however, very brief,
for Hobbamock, throwing off his coat, rushed at his countrymen, who
incontinently fled to the swamp; one only of the party being injured,
a shot breaking his arm. Further pursuit was unavailing, so Standish
returned to the stockade, from which he caused the Indian women to be
dismissed unharmed.
The Weston people now discovered that they had had enough of life in
the wilderness, and wholly declined to tarry any longer at Wessagusset.
Standish asserted his readiness to hold the place against all the
Indians of the vicinage with half the force of the Weston party, but
they were not Standishes, nor did they feel any call to heroism. So,
the choice being given to them, they divided,--one portion, on board
the Swan, following Sanders to the coast of Maine, while the rest
accompanied Standish home and cast in their lot among the Plymouth
people. Standish supplied those on board the Swan with a sufficiency of
corn whereon to sustain life, and saw them safely leave the harbor and
bear away to the north and east; then he himself, carrying with him the
head of Wituwamat, to ornament the Plymouth block-house as a terror to
all evil-disposed savages, sailed prosperously home.
Thus in failure, disgrace and bloodshed ended the first attempt of
a settlement at Weymouth. Ill-conceived, ill-executed, ill-fated,
it was probably saved from utter extirpation only by the energetic
interference of the Plymouth people. And these last not unjustifiably
indulged in some grim chuckling over the speedy downfall of those who
had thought to teach them how to subdue a wilderness.[26] Three men
only remained behind at Wessagusset. One of these had domesticated
himself among the savages; the other two, in defiance of orders,
had straggled off to an Indian settlement where they had been left
by a companion on the day of the engagement. All three were put to
death by the savages, probably with that refinement of cruelty which
distinguished Indian executions; for, afterwards, in speaking of their
fate, one of the savages said, “When we killed your men they cried and
made ill-favored faces.”[27]
When good old John Robinson, at Leyden, heard of the Wessagusset
killing he was sorely moved. He wrote out to his flock a letter
of gentle caution in respect to the rough ways of Captain Miles
Standish, who, though the aged pastor loved him, he yet intimated was
one perchance “wanting that tenderness of the life of man which is
meet.” He also referred to the Wessagusset settlers as “heathenish
Christians,” and exclaimed in reference to Pecksuot and Wituwamat, “Oh!
how happy a thing had it been if you had converted some before you had
killed any.”[28] Nevertheless, rough as he was, the Plymouth people
then stood in greater need of stern Miles Standish than of gentle John
Robinson. The times were not meet for works of conversion, nor were
Pecksuot and his friends favorable subjects therefor. In the light of
the Virginia experience of 1622, and of the New England terror during
the war of King Philip, posterity must concede that the severe course
of Miles Standish here in Weymouth, in March, 1623, was the most truly
merciful course. The settlers had demoralized the Indians. They had
at once inspired them with anger, with dislike and with contempt. Any
sign of faltering on the part of the Plymouth people would have been
fatal. Had they abandoned Wessagusset to its fate, the settlers there
would have been exterminated, and the savages, maddened by a taste
of blood, would have turned upon Plymouth. The woods would have rung
with war-whoops and the feeble colony could scarcely have survived the
ordeal of blood treading hard on that of famine. Standish crushed out
the danger in the incipient stage. By ruthlessly murdering seven men
he re-established the moral ascendency of the whites, and so saved the
lives of hundreds. He stopped the war before it began, and deferred it
to another generation. In so doing, the Puritan captain revealed the
instinctive sagacity of a true soldier,--he struck so that he did not
have to strike twice:--he cowed the savages at Weymouth, and for years
peace was secured for Plymouth.[29]
All this took place in March, and, shortly after, the unfortunate Mr.
Weston arrived on the coast of Maine, seeking news of his colony.
He there heard of its ruin and, with one or two men, started in a
small boat for Wessagusset. His ill-fortune pursued him. Overtaken
by a storm he was cast away near where Newburyport now stands, and
barely saved his life only to fall into the hands of the savages, who
stripped him to his shirt. He succeeded, however, in finding his way
back to the fishing stations in Maine and thence to Plymouth. The
people there received him kindly, and loaned him some beaver-skins on
which to trade: and again he returned to the eastward. There he found
his smaller vessel, the Swan, and some of his people. Afterwards he
seems to have been both very adventurous and very unfortunate. He made
frequent voyages to Virginia, and now and again flits vaguely across
the page of Plymouth history,--in debt, in trouble, in arrest. Finally
he returned to England, where, long afterwards, during the wars of
Cromwell, he died of the plague at Bristol.
But Wessagusset was not destined long to remain a solitude. Deserted in
March, it was again occupied just six months later; for, in the middle
of September, 1623, Captain Robert Gorges, a son of that Sir Ferdinand
whose name is so prominent in the early annals of New England, sailed
up the Fore River, and landed at Weston’s deserted plantation. His
enterprise was of a quite different character from that which had
preceded it. He held a grant from the Council of New England, covering
a tract of land vaguely described as lying on the north-east side
of Massachusetts Bay, as what is now known as Boston Bay was then
called, and covering ten miles of sea-front, while stretching thirty
miles into the interior. He was also commissioned as Governor-General,
and authorized to correct any abuses which had crept into the affairs
of the company in America; for the more effectual doing of which he
was further provided with a grand admiral and a council, of which the
Governor of Plymouth for the time being was _ex officio_ a member.
His jurisdiction was of the largest description, civil, criminal
and ecclesiastical, for he also brought with him in his company one
Mr. William Morell, a clergyman of the Church of England, holding
a commission from the ecclesiastical courts of the mother country,
which authorized him to exercise a species of superintendency over the
churches of the colony. This whole expedition seems, in fact, to have
been organized on a most ludicrously grandiose scale, probably to meet
the views of its commander, who had recently seen some service in the
Venetian wars and was now nourishing ambitious visions of an empire in
the wilderness. The establishment of Episcopacy in New England had long
been a favorite idea with Sir Ferdinand Gorges,[30] and now, when he
sent his son thither, he provided him not only with a council and an
admiral, but also with a primate. This company was, however, composed
of a different material from that of Weston’s. It was made up of
families, as well as of individuals, and contained in it some elements
of strength.[31] The party disembarked just as the autumn tints began
to glow through the forest, and busied themselves with the erection
of their storehouses. Captain Gorges meanwhile notified the Plymouth
people of his arrival, and Governor Bradford prepared to answer the
summons in person. Before he could do so, however, Gorges started on a
voyage to the fishing stations in Maine; but, encountering some rough
weather on his way, he put about and ran into Plymouth in search of
a pilot. He remained there some fourteen days, and then, instead of
resuming his voyage, he returned to Wessagusset by land. Upon reaching
his seat of government he, for the first, and, so far as appears, for
the last time, made any use of his great civil and military powers by
causing Weston, who had turned up in Plymouth Bay, on board the Swan,
to be arrested and sent with this vessel around to Weymouth. His own
ship, meanwhile, remained at Plymouth, where, on the 5th of November,
her company occasioned a great disaster to the unfortunate colonists.
The weather was cold, and a number of seamen were celebrating Guy
Fawkes’ day before a large fire in one of the houses, when the thatch
ignited, and, for a brief time, it was a question whether the general
storehouse, and with it the Plymouth colony, were not to be destroyed.
Fortunately only three or four houses were burned, but it is curious
to reflect how much more heavily the loss of those few log huts bore
on the Plymouth of those days than did the great conflagration of two
centuries and a half later on the Boston of ours. At any rate it seemed
to sicken Captain Robert Gorges and his party, for, shortly after it,
he retired to England, thoroughly disgusted with the work of founding
empires in the New World.[32] With him returned the larger part of his
company, but not the whole of it; nor, indeed, does Weymouth seem ever
again to have been abandoned as a settlement. While some of the party
went to Virginia, others remained at Wessagusset, and Mr. Morell took
up his temporary abode at Plymouth. This gentleman appears, indeed,
to have been not only a man of education and refinement, but also to
have been possessed of discretion and good sense. For a wonder he,
an ecclesiastic, remained at Plymouth nearly a year with a letter
in his pocket conferring on him great powers, and yet he neither
sought to exercise any authority, nor did he intrigue or stir up any
trouble. On the contrary, he quietly minded his own business, and
beguiled his leisure hours in the composition of a very good Latin poem
descriptive of the country.[33] He made of it, too, a very bad metrical
translation. The piece is curious, but now scarcely repays perusal.[34]
With the country he was charmed, but not so with the natives who
inhabited it. Indeed, he seems to have been impressed with America
much as Bishop Reginald Heber was, long afterwards, with India, for he
described his diocese in language similar to that used by the latter
dignitary:
“Though every prospect pleases,
And only man is vile.”
A few very brief extracts will give a sufficient idea both of the
spirit of his poem and of the otherwise than smoothness of his
versification. It is Weymouth itself, perhaps, that he thus describes:--
“The fruitfull and well watered earth doth glad
All hearts, when Flora’s with her spangles clad,
And yeelds an hundred fold for one,
To feede the bee and to invite the drone.
* * * * *
“There nature’s bounties, though not planted are,
Great store and sorts of berries great and faire:
The filberd, cherry and the fruitful vine,
Which cheares the heart and makes it more divine.
Earth’s spangled beauties pleasing smell and sight;
Objects for gallant choice and chiefe delight.
* * * * *
“All ore that maine the vernant trees abound,
Where cedar, cypres, spruce and beech are found.
Ash, oake and wal-nut, pines and junipere;
The hasel, palme and hundred more are there.
Ther’s grasse and hearbs contenting man and beast,
On which both deare, and beares, and wolves do feast.”
When he comes to deal with the noble savage, however, his enthusiasm
rapidly wanes:--
“They’re wondrous cruell, strangely base and vile,
Quickly displeas’d, and hardly reconcil’d;
* * * * *
“Whose hayre is cut with greeces, yet a locke
Is left; the left side bound up in a knott:
* * * * *
“Of body straight, tall, strong, mantled in skin
Of deare or bever, with the hayre-side in;
* * * * *
“A kind of _pinsen_ keeps their feet from cold,
Which after travels they put off, up-fold,
Themselves they warme, their ungirt limbes they rest
In straw, and houses, like to sties.”