“AH, BROTHER OLDHAME, IS IT THOU!”
It was a day in June, one of those lovely, nay, perfect days when
heaven appears at once nearer and farther off than ever before: nearer,
for we seem already to taste its delights; farther off, because earth
has suddenly become so satisfying that we ask for nothing better.
A little southwest breeze loitered over Burying Hill, stirring the
long grasses, wooing sweet kisses and incense from the balm o’ Gilead
trees, and finally floated down The Hill, past the closed and deserted
homes of Standish and Alden to the governor’s house, grown wide and
stately in these days, boasting two parlors besides the great common
room, and furthermore a recent extension toward The Hill consisting of
one wide low room with an outside door and a loft overhead. This was
the governor’s study or office, where he kept his books and papers and
transacted the colony’s business. More than this, in the large closet
and in the loft overhead were stored the colony’s goods, both the
peltrie for export, and the shoes, textile fabrics, and other matters
which were brought back from England in exchange; and as every man or
woman who had obtained a beaver, or mink, or otter skin brought it to
the governor and asked him to send to England for a pair of shoes, a
new doublet or kirtle, pewter platter, or horn comb, the adjusting
these accounts, and remembering every one’s wishes and instructions,
consumed so large a part of the gubernatorial time that one cannot
wonder that now and again Bradford “by importunity gat off” from
reëlection, especially as his services were altogether gratuitous,
and must have interfered with the necessity of living, pressing not
only upon every man individually, but on husbands and fathers very
imperatively. The casement window of the study was swung open to the
soft June air, and the little breeze, peeping in, shrank back dismayed,
yet, mustering the courage of a petted child, gathered a handful of
perfume from Alice Bradford’s bed of early pinks close at hand, flung
it in at the open window, and then, laughing softly, flew round the
corner and in at another casement, where Alice herself sat embroidering
in green crewels the cover of a stool, and talking softly to her
daughter Mercy, Desire Howland, and Betty Alden, who sat demure as
kittens on three crickets, stitching fine seams or embroidering muslin
or silk under Dame Bradford’s skillful tuition; for among the fair
memories this gracious woman left behind her, none seem fairer than her
attention and kindly offices toward the young maids of the town.
A very different group was that at which the naughty breeze had peeped
and flung perfume behind the swinging casement of the study: a group
of men, mature and austere, as the fathers of unruly families are apt
to become by the time the children wish to leave home and set up for
themselves.
At the head of the old oak table with its twisted legs and lion’s
claw-feet sat William Bradford, his cheek resting on his left hand,
while with the right he drew idle lines or figures upon a sheet of
coarse paper. An inkstand hollowed from a square block of ebony stood
before him, bristling with a thicket of quill pens standing in the
sockets bored around the edge, and the Record Book of the colony, that
same yellow and tattered book we reverently handle to-day, lay open
beside it. Some papers and slips of parchment were scattered over the
board, and one lay under Winslow’s hand as he turned to speak to Myles
Standish, whose flushed face and wrathful eyes showed that his hasty
temper was stirred more than was its wont, now that Time had set his
half-century mark upon the thinning hair and lined features.
Next to Standish sat Timothy Hatherley, his intimate friend and future
executor, and opposite them were Thomas Prence, and John Jenney the
miller, a man of substance and position, and father of two very pretty
daughters. These five were the governor’s assistants for the year,
and to them, on this morning, was added the venerable presence of
Elder Brewster, who, sitting at the foot of the table, and fixing his
wintry blue eyes upon each speaker in succession, seemed to act as
counterpoise and moderator to the more vehement moods of the younger
men. A venerable figure truly, for the threescore and ten years of
the promise were more than run out, and yet a form and face full of
life and strength, and with a cleanly freshness of complexion and eye
betokening a simple and abstemious life, enjoyed in fresh air and with
moderate labor. Upon this reassuring face the eyes of the governor
rested almost yearningly, as he listened to the captain’s fiery words:--
“Yes, sirs, the Bay Colony and their friends have brought themselves
into the mire by their own blundering, and now cry to Plymouth, ‘Good
Lord, deliver us!’ Whose fault is it that the Pequots are risen upon
them?”
“They have murdered John Oldhame, I tell you, Captain!” exclaimed
Winslow impatiently. “Will you listen while I read Governor Winthrop’s
letter?”
“Yes, Captain Standish, I pray you to listen, and allow us to do so,”
added Prence in so peremptory a tone that the old soldier turned hotly
upon him:--
“Thomas Prence, they say you are a dabster at handling the Bible in
prayer-meetings and prophesyings; do you remember how King Rehoboam
took counsel as to his dealings with the oppressed people of his realm,
and the old men said, ‘Deal softly and kindly with thy servants and
they will remain thy servants for aye;’ but with the folly of youth,
Rehoboam turned to men with their beards still in the silk, and said,
‘How shall I answer this people?’ and they gave their counsel: ‘Whereas
thy father hath beaten them with whips, thou shalt scourge them with
scorpions, and if thy father’s yoke was heavy upon their necks, thou
shalt add to it until they sink under it.’ The boy king listened to his
boy counselors, and the result was that ten tribes of--Pequots, we will
call them, became his bloody foes instead of his cheerful servitors. We
of Plymouth have held the whip behind our backs”--
“Yet brought it forward at Wessagusset,” interrupted Prence
good-humoredly, and in the moment of not displeased silence on
Standish’s part, Bradford hurriedly interposed,--
“Nay, Captain, let us hear the letter before we discuss this matter
further.”
“So be it, Governor; but naught that Master Winthrop can pen or Master
Winslow read, clever craftsmen though they be, will fetch my consent
to this wholesale slaughter of the Indians, Pequots, Narragansetts, or
Pokanokets.”
“Will you read, Master Winslow?” asked the governor in a patient voice,
and, rather hastily, as if forestalling farther discussion, Winslow
proceeded to read aloud the missive of the governor of Massachusetts
Bay, who after certain grave greetings proceeded to tell the story,
which we will enlarge a little from other sources, of how one John
Gallop, founder of the guild of Boston pilots, and occupant of the
island bearing his name in Boston Harbor, while trading to the
plantation of Saybrooke in the Connecticut Colony, had been attracted
by the strange manœuvres of a pinnace lying to off Block Island, and
running in that direction recognized her as belonging to John Oldhame,
late of Watertown, in the Massachusetts Colony, who had, about a week
before, left Boston upon a trading tour, his crew consisting only of
two English lads, his kinsmen, and two Narragansett Indians.
“John Oldhame must be very drunk to let his craft yaw about in that
fashion,” commented Gallop, watching the bark; and his sons, John and
James, boys of twelve and fourteen, and Zebedee Palmer, his hired man,
who composed the entire ship’s company, dutifully assented, Zebedee
suggesting that in the cold March wind then blowing he should not
himself object to a drop of something comfortable.
“When is the day you would, Zeb?” inquired his master. “But lo you
now! There goes a canoe from the pinnace to the shore heavy laden, and
manned only by redskins. Be sure there’s some Indian deviltry going on,
and though the wind be contrary we will beat down and hail her.”
But arrived within hailing distance, Gallop perceived the deck of
the pinnace to be crowded with savages, who, so far from returning
his hail, at once dropped their occupation of loading another canoe,
and proceeded to make sail in so clumsy a fashion that the pilot’s
fears of the pinnace having been seized by Indians were reduced to
certainty, and putting his own bark before the wind blowing off the
land he pursued the captured craft, now driving wildly toward the
Narragansett shore. Bringing up the two guns and two pistols comprising
his entire armament, Gallop charged them with the duckshot he had
brought along for purposes of sport, and so soon as they came within
range began firing with no farther formalities into the dense throng of
Indians, who on their part stood armed with guns, pikes, and swords,
and as Gallop’s bark drew near fired a scattering volley, happily of
no effect; and then, as the incessant rain of duckshot--for the two
boys loaded as fast as their father fired--became intolerable, they
all fled below hatches, leaving the vessel to drift as she would.
Seeing this, the pilot hit upon a new method of attack, and standing
off a little he set his craft dead before the wind, now blowing half
a gale, and coming down with full force upon the pinnace “stemmed her
upon the quarter,” as Winthrop has it, “and almost overset her. This
so frighted the Indians that five or six ran on deck, and leaping
overboard were drowned.” Encouraged by this beginning, the pilot
repeated his manœuvre, only this time so fitting his anchor to the heel
of his bowsprit as to make a very good imitation of an iron-clad ram;
then again striking the pinnace he crushed in her forward bulwarks, and
sticking fast, began pouring in charges of his heaviest shot at such
short range that they penetrated decks and sheathing, and reached the
pirates skulking below. Finding that they refused to be driven out, and
his two guns growing too warm to work, Gallop disengaged his anchor
and again stood off; but this was enough, and five more Indians rushed
up and threw themselves into the sea, preferring a death they well
understood, to the tender mercies of a man who fought in such unknown
fashions.
There being now but four of the savages left, Gallop boarded the
pinnace, whereupon one of the survivors yielded, and was bound and
stowed in the cabin for safe-keeping; another yielded, but leaving
Zebedee to bind him the pilot dragged away a seine huddled in the stern
sheets under which he had from his own deck perceived some horror to be
hidden. It was the body of a white man, still warm, the head cleft, the
hands and feet nearly cut off, and the face so covered with blood as to
be unrecognizable, until Gallop, dipping one of the garments stripped
off but lying near, into the salt water flooding the decks, washed it
and put aside the long hair; then gazing down into the staring eyes, he
said as if in answer to their piteous appeal, “Ah, Brother Oldhame, is
it thou! Truly I am resolved to avenge thy blood!” And, while Zebedee
managed as best he could to fasten a tow-rope to the pinnace and make
sail upon the bark, and John and James, pistol in hand, watched the
hatches in case the Indians below should make a sortie, the pilot bound
the mangled body of his friend in its clothes and in the private ensign
lying at the foot of the mast, and launched it overboard.
“This man is wriggling his hands free, father,” reported John
Gallop, presenting his pistol at the last captive, a sachem of the
Narragansetts and a very determined fellow.
“Say you so, Jack!” replied his father, turning back from the bulwark
over which he had just reverently dropped the shrouded form of his
murdered friend. “We’ll take no chances! Lift you his feet and I his
head and we’ll put him in John Oldhame’s keeping. Jim, stand you
to your watch till our hands are free.” And the sachem, stolid and
silent now that the worst had come, went to rejoin his comrades. Two
of the pirates remained below, but as they were armed and entrenched
in the hold Gallop left them there as prisoners, although the night
coming on and the sea and wind growing very violent, he was after a
time compelled to cast off the pinnace, which drove ashore on the
Narragansett coast.
Arriving in Boston, Gallop at once placed the matter in the hands of
the government, who through Roger Williams and Miantonimo demanded the
surrender of the murderers who had come safely ashore in the pinnace.
In the end, Oldhame’s two cousins, who had been kept prisoners at
Block Island, were safely returned, and some of the stolen goods; but
tedious negotiations revealed the fact that nearly all the Narragansett
sachems had been privy to the conspiracy, and that some of them were
in alliance with the Pequots to cut off the English and resume the
country only sixteen years before absolutely their own. Not unnaturally
alarmed at this report, Governor Vane and his council resolved upon
what they at first called reprisals, but which soon became a stern
scheme of extermination involving the entire Pequot nation, and such of
the Narragansetts as refused to become tributaries and subjects of the
English.
The murder of Captain Stone, the death by torture of Butterfield, and
John Tilley and his man, came into the account and gave the air of
righteous retribution to the Puritan severities; but the wrongs of the
Indians, their natural temperament, their standard of morality, their
ignorance of the gracious influences of Christianity,--none of these
seem to have been considered or weighed in the councils of Vane and his
associates, although more liberal Plymouth had set them the example
of making friends rather than enemies of a people who had surely
great cause of complaint in the loss of their homes and rights, and
who simply sought to defend themselves according to their traditional
methods.
It was in pursuance of this resolve that Winthrop, acting this year as
deputy to Governor Vane, had written to Plymouth, setting forth all
the causes of the war already begun, and requesting of Plymouth that
aid and coöperation which one colony of white men and Christians would
naturally afford to another.
The letter was read and laid upon the council board, and Bradford in
his own grave, thoughtful, and well-considered manner took up the
word:--
“Doubtless, brethren, we must find that there hath been much
provocation offered to these Pequens and Narraganseds. We know somewhat
of John Oldhame”--
“And naught that’s good,” muttered Standish in his red beard.
--“and we may be sure there was cause of complaint on the part of the
Block Islanders before they so assaulted him. Jonathan Brewster hath
held our post on the Connecticut River--Windsor, as the settlers from
the Bay have named the place--for some four years now, and there has
been no trouble worth the mention”--
“Save when the Narragansetts chased our friend Massasoit into the
trading-house at Sowams, and I sent a runner for powder, but the
enemy ran faster the other way than he,” put in Standish. “And mind
you, though John Winthrop let us have the powder out of his private
store, that sour-visaged Dudley hauled him over the coals for it. Ever
niggardly and domineering is the Bay, and my counsel is, let them
fight out their own battles for themselves. When Plymouth has cause
to complain of the savages, Pequens or who you please, I’ll lead a
handful of Plymouth men out to give them a lesson, and till then I say
let-a-be. You have my counsel, Governor.”
“And mine jumps with it, sir,” added John Jenney heartily, but Winslow
shook his head thoughtfully.
“It were but poor policy for us to fall out with our brethren of the
Bay, seeing that they are so much stronger than we, and it may well
chance that we shall need their countenance in some quarrel”--
“Like that of Kennebec when we called upon them to help us drive out
the Frenchmen who had seized our post, and they did most civilly
decline,” suggested Standish, and Prence added,--
“Ay, that was but a scurvy trick they played us then.”
And so the council went on, debating the question warmly, and yet with
a brotherly love and harmony covering all differences, until in the end
it was resolved that Winslow the diplomatist should be sent as envoy
to Boston to declare in the first place the willingness of Plymouth
to help her younger but more powerful sister against the common foe,
yet at the same time bringing forward various causes of complaint as
yet unredressed, and demanding more consideration in the future.
These complaints were, first, the refusal of the Bay government to
help Plymouth against the French who had seized her trading-post at
Kennebec; second, their allowing their people to fraternize and trade
with the usurpers; third, the insult and injury done to the Pilgrims
at Windsor in Connecticut, where a great body of people from Watertown
and Cambridge had swooped down upon the land bought by Plymouth from
the Indians, and occupied by them as a trading-post, retaining forcible
possession of it, and encouraged by the Bay to do so.
To these three unredressed complaints Winslow was to add a reminder
of the fact, seldom forgotten by the Bay Colony, that they were much
more numerous and much more wealthy than Plymouth, and apparently quite
able to conduct their own quarrel through their own resources. For, as
the envoy was especially directed to say, the Colony of Plymouth had
hitherto lived at peace with the aborigines, and had no complaint to
make of either the Pequots or any other tribe.
And now, this matter arranged for the moment, although much further
trouble was to come of it, the Court turned its attention to a subject
so much more personal, and near to their hearts as old friends and
associates, that its presence in their minds had added austerity to
Brewster’s mien, and thoughtfulness to that of Bradford, while it acted
as a spur to the captain’s fiery temper.
Upon the table lay a formal petition, drawn by Edward Winslow, and
signed by Myles Standish, John Alden, Elder Brewster and his two sons
Jonathan and Love, Eaton, Soule, Samson, Bassett, Collier, Cudworth,
De la Noye, and half a dozen more substantial men, who in decorous
and respectful language represented that they and their families
already composed a community equaling that of Plymouth, and begged
to be incorporated as a town under the name of Duxbury, and to have
the approval of the mother-church in their choice of the Rev. Ralph
Partridge as their minister.
The petition had first been presented some four years before this time,
but so deep and heartfelt was Bradford’s opposition to this distinct
separation of the original colony, and so varied his expedients to
prevent it, that the motion had never fairly been carried until now,
when an opportunity offered to secure the eloquent and devout Cambridge
scholar as pastor, and it was essential that the town should have an
assured being and resources.
Very few words were used upon this occasion, for all had been said that
could be said, not once but many times before; and now as Bradford,
after a brief and formal discussion, signed the act of incorporation,
he laid down the pen, and looking around the council board solemnly
said,--
“May this rending of his garment not provoke the Lord to wrath, as well
I fear it may!”
Not even Elder Brewster found a word to reply, and the deed was done.
An hour later, as the Duxbury men prepared to return to their new home,
Standish linked his arm in that of his old friend and led him up the
hill, saying,--
“Nay, Will, for old time’s sake put a better face on ’t, man. Come over
with us to Captain’s Hill, as they call it, and tarry the night. We’ll
crush a kindly cup to the new town, and you shall be its godfather.
Never look so glum, I pr’ythee, Will! You take all the heart out of
me, old friend.”
“See there, Myles, see that!”
“What, mine own old house? ’Tis going to ruin already, is it not, and
yet ’tis no more than seventeen years since these hands with John
Alden’s aid laid it beam to beam.”
“And why does it go to ruin, Myles?”
“Why? Why, because no man careth for it, I suppose.”
“Ay, you’ve answered me, friend. No man careth for that home, nor for
John Alden’s hard by, nor for Edward Winslow’s, and the Elder’s great
house is now but a half-hearted home, for he is more at Duxbury than
here. I speak not of the rest, for they are of less account to me; and
that is a fault which I confess, but nature is strong, and the carnal
heart of man clings to its own.”
“And why should not a man’s heart cling to his old friends and
comrades, Will, and why should not you value the Elder, and Winslow,
and Alden, and a few more of us more than you do all these nimble Jacks
that have sprung up to push us old ones from our places? Be a saint an’
you please, old comrade, but don’t strive to cease to be a man.”
“And here is the Fort you loved so well, Myles. Shall you have a new
Fort at Duxbury?”
The captain stopped, and squaring round laid a finger upon the
governor’s breast, and fixed his keen brown eyes upon the other’s
fairer face.
“Friend,” said he in a tenderer voice than was his wont, “where a man
is all but as good and as godly as a woman, he is apt to have some
trace of woman’s faults and follies, and that last speech of yours
savors of woman’s jealousy and spite. Play the man, Will, play the man,
and smite me with thy fist an’ thou lik’st not what I do and say, but
never lower thyself to stinging with thy tongue.”
The Governor of Plymouth turned his back and steadfastly looked over
toward Manomet, green and glowing in the sunset of a June afternoon,
her graceful young trees in their tender foliage as airy and as gay,
and her forest monarchs as stately, as they had been before the white
men saw these shores, or as they are to-day when Bradford and Standish
are dust and ashes, and as they will be when the hand that writes and
the eyes that read are even as those of the fathers. We love Nature so
passionately and so persistently because it is an unrequited affection;
at the most she only holds up the cheek for us to kiss.
This little interlude is but a piece of delicacy that Bradford may
have time to recover himself, and now he turns, and folding Standish’s
patrician hand in a larger grasp slowly says,--
“‘Let the righteous smite me friendly, but let not his precious balms
break my head.’ Come, Myles, let us mount the Fort.”
“Yes, I must see if Lieutenant Holmes is carrying out my directions,
for I promise you, Master Bradford, I’m meaning to hold a tight hand
over you here in military matters. Mind you, I am always generalissimo
of the colony’s forces, whether of Plymouth, or Scituate, or Duxbury.”
“I thank thee, Myles,” said the governor quietly, and so they passed
into the dusky Fort, over whose portal the skull of Wituwamat still
stood, bleached by summer sun and winter snow, and sheltering year by
year the wrens who had an hereditary nest in its hollow.
“And you’ll come home with me, Will?” said the captain wistfully, as, a
little later, they descended the hill.
“No, Myles, no; I’m not an Abraham. I can give my Isaac with submission
and faith, but I cannot offer him up, nor feast upon the sacrifice.”