IN NOVEMBER 1621, THE Pilgrims were surprised to see a ship sail into Plymouth Harbor. Sent by Thomas Weston and the colony’s investors, the Fortune carried thirty-five settlers, mostly “lusty [strong] young men, and many of them wild enough.” When the newcomers first saw the “naked and barren” landscape of Cape Cod, they begged the captain to take them home. He promised them that if the Mayflower planters were dead or vanished, he would transport them to Virginia. According to William Bradford, the fact that the surviving Pilgrims had supplies of food convinced the Fortune passengers to remain. In order to feed the newcomers, Bradford put everyone on half rations for the rest of the winter.1
The Fortune brought no trading goods or provisions, other than a few cheap suits of clothing. More valuable was a patent from the recently chartered Council for New England made out to John Peirce, one of the Adventurers. The Peirce Patent put the colony on legal footing for the next seven years, though it did not demarcate any specific boundaries for New Plymouth. The Mayflower Compact asserted that the settlers would elect their own officers and give consent to their own laws. By contrast, the Peirce Patent granted the right to make laws and elect officers not only to the Plymouth settlers, but also to the London-based Adventurers. At this time, however, the Adventurers concerned themselves only with the colony’s commodities, not its local self-government.
Also arriving on the Fortune was Robert Cushman, the Leiden congregant who had fallen out with other Pilgrim leaders and then had stayed behind in England. Cushman had come not as a settler but as an agent for Thomas Weston. He handed Governor Bradford a letter from Weston that excoriated the Pilgrims for having sent the Mayflower back to England without a valuable cargo. “That you sent no lading in the ship is wonderful [astonishing],” Weston scolded them. “I know your weakness was the cause of it, and I believe more weakness of judgment than weakness of hands.” Other visitors to New England claimed that the region’s trade could yield a thousand skins per year. Why had the Pilgrims accomplished nothing?2
Weston now made several demands. He wanted an accounting of “how our moneys were laid out.” He also wanted the Pilgrims to finally agree to the terms as they had been modified by the investors. And they had better not send the Fortune back empty. “The life of the business depends on the lading of this ship,” he warned.3
Bradford seethed when he read the letter. Perhaps the Adventurers had lost some money, but half of the Mayflower passengers were buried in New England soil. “Of the one there may be hope of recovery,” he answered, “but the other no recompense can make good.” Cushman told Bradford to trust Weston, and John Robinson and others in Leiden sent letters that urged the governor to accept the Adventurers’ terms. With matters settled, Weston would send the Pilgrims a “speedy supply.” Pilgrim leaders finally capitulated and agreed to the deal.4
The Pilgrims loaded the Fortune with pelts of beaver and otter as well as clapboards for barrel making. A party led by Edward Winslow and Squanto had gone to Massachusetts Bay and traded for skins. Some came right off the backs of Massachusetts women, who then “tied boughs about them[selves]” to safeguard their modesty. Getting sight of what the English later called Boston Harbor, Winslow’s party wished that “they had been there seated.” They would not move their settlement, but they grasped that expeditions to the north might bring them the furs that would settle the colony’s debts and secure its prosperity. In a tract extolling the colony’s potential, Winslow advertised New Plymouth as a rare place “where religion and profit jump together.”5
Winslow’s boast was premature. The Pilgrims wanted their colony to prosper and in the process to attract more godly settlers, but they were not free to seek after riches for themselves. They were bound by their agreement with their investors. Those who belonged to the church were bound to each other through its covenant and through their membership in the body of Christ. The settlers had no land of their own and grew food that went into a common store. Except for those men who ventured forth on trading expeditions, most settlers remained confined to a tiny outpost surrounded by what seemed a harsh and terrifying wilderness.
In December, Robert Cushman preached a sermon, which he published once he returned to England. As his text, he took a verse from First Corinthians: “Let no man seek his own, but every man another’s wealth” (10:24). Two decades later, the English Presbyterian William Rathband used this sermon “by a comber of wool” as evidence that New England Congregationalists disregarded the necessity of an educated, ordained ministry. The Pilgrims cherished John Robinson’s learned sermons, but they believed that some “private persons” had the gift of preaching and prophesying.6
Cushman urged the Pilgrims to guard against the “disease of self-love” that had turned the Virginia colonists into “mere worldlings.” The cure for this disease was Christian love and friendship: “And as you are a body together, so hang not together by skins and gymocks [joints], but labor to be jointed together and knit by flesh and sinews; away with envy at the good of others, and rejoice in his good, and sorry for his evil, let his joy be thy joy, and his sorrow thy sorrow: let his sickness be thy sickness: his hunger thy hunger: his poverty thy poverty: and if you profess friendship, be friends in adversities: for then a friend is known, and tried, and not before.” Cushman’s message was blunt. God might soon “visit you with death,” he warned, “as he hath done many of your associates.” How would they be found when death came? Would they be “in murmurings, discontents, and jars [discord]”? Or would they be “in brotherly love, and peace”? If the latter, they would be “translated [taken] from this wandering wilderness, unto that joyful and heavenly Canaan.” If they loved only themselves, Cushman implied, they would make themselves the objects of God’s wrath.
For the Pilgrims, the question was not whether they should bear each other’s burdens. Had they not done so the previous winter? Nor was it a question of how hard they would work. Rather, it was for whom they would work. According to the arrangement with the Adventurers, the Pilgrims did not even own the homes they built. The value of those homes, along with any profits generated by trade, would be divided among company shareholders when the seven years were up. Yes, the Mayflower passengers and other settlers who bought into the company would get a portion of those profits, but the Adventurers held the greatest number of shares in the company and would profit the most. The agreement that Cushman had persuaded the Pilgrims to sign required them to seek the wealth of those more wealthy than themselves.
Cushman argued that these arrangements were not only reasonable but also biblical. He reminded the settlers that the first Christians had lived as one and that “Israel was seven years in Canaan, before the land was divided unto tribes, much longer, before it was divided into families.” Cushman also urged the Pilgrims to remember their economic and Christian obligation to their investors. “We also have been very chargeable to many of our loving friends,” he preached, “that before we think of gathering riches, we must even in conscience think of requiting their charge.” The Pilgrims should cheerfully labor to pay off their debts. That Cushman felt the need to argue these points suggests discontent among the settlers. Cushman criticized those who “dig hard whilst their own garden is in planting, but is it so as the profit must go wholly or partly to others, their hands wax feeble, their hearts wax faint.” Clearly, many settlers wanted to work for themselves.7
A few days later, Cushman boarded the Fortune. He left behind his thirteen-year-old son Thomas in the care of William Bradford. As the historian Michael McGiffert comments, the former grocer and wool comber “was one who loved himself too well to stay and practice what he preached.” His ship turned out to be inaptly named. A French vessel seized the Fortune and took it to the Île d’Yeu, off the coast of western France, where the island’s governor impounded the Fortune’s cargo, read its mail, and imprisoned its crew on an unpleasant diet of “lights [lungs], livers, and entrails.” After two weeks, he let them go. For the second time, a mostly empty ship disappointed the indebted and demoralized Thomas Weston.8
Many of the Fortune passengers were single men, whom Bradford and Isaac Allerton distributed among Plymouth’s households. Only two women—both married and with their families—were among the new arrivals. One of them, Martha Ford, gave birth to a girl the very night she and her husband landed. In a few instances, the Fortune reunited families separated by the Mayflower crossing. The Brewsters welcomed their eldest son Jonathan, and Edward Winslow greeted his brother John.
A majority of the Fortune passengers were not separatists from Leiden.9 On December 25, according to Bradford, most of the “new company excused themselves and said it went against their consciences to work on that day.” Like other puritans, separatists did not think the Bible authorized the holiday and associated it with unseemly revelry, but Bradford told the newcomers that they could take the day off “till they were better informed.” When he and the other colonists returned from the day’s tasks at noon, they discovered the observers of Christmas pitching bars (to see who could throw a piece of wood or metal the farthest) and playing stool-ball. The governor impounded the bars and ball and told them “that was against his conscience, that they should play and others work.” If they wanted to keep Christmas, they could do so privately. In this instance, Bradford termed it a conflict “rather of mirth than of weight.” Still, with satisfaction he noted that since then there had been no repeat outbreaks of Christmas merriment.10
A less mirthful challenge arrived that winter. A messenger from the Narragansett sachem Canonicus brought Squanto a bundle of arrows tied with a rattlesnake skin. Both Squanto and a Narragansett man then at Plymouth interpreted the arrows as a sign of hostility, so Bradford sent the snakeskin back stuffed with powder and shot. “The message was clear enough,” observes historian Jeffrey Glover, “whatever your intentions toward us, our weapons are better than yours.” Edward Winslow reported that the bundle eventually made its way back to Plymouth, which to him signified that the Pilgrims’ response “was no small terror to this savage king.”11
The terror in the settlement was not small either. Alarmed by Canonicus’s apparent expression of enmity, the Pilgrims palisaded their town, including the hill on which they had placed their cannons. They built gates that they kept locked at night. After the Pilgrims received word the next summer that the Powhatans had killed hundreds of English settlers in Virginia, they built a fort on top of the hill. Their actions were incongruous with the way their promotional tracts described New England. Bradford wrote that no one hindered the Pilgrims from taking possession of Patuxet. Likewise, Robert Cushman observed that the land around them was “empty … spacious and void.” But for all of their talk of empty land free for the taking, the Pilgrims occupied a mere speck of the New England coastline. They looked fearfully into the woods that lay beyond their fields.12
As their second winter came to an end, the Pilgrims prepared to send Standish, Winslow, and nine other men back to the Massachusetts on another trading expedition.13 Hobomok, who had been living at Plymouth with his family for around a year, warned them against the trip. He informed them that the Massachusetts and Narragansetts had agreed to join forces to eradicate Plymouth and had recruited none other than Squanto to their cause. Bradford, Allerton, Standish, and the other leading men of the colony conferred. They were not sure whom to trust, but given their nearly empty stores of food, they felt they had no choice but to risk the trip and to send both interpreters with Standish.
Just as the shallop left Plymouth Bay, a man with a bloody face stumbled into the town, leading its settlers to believe he was being chased. He belonged to Squanto’s family. The man told them that the Narragansetts, the Pocasset sachem Corbitant (whom Standish had planned to behead the previous summer), and their ally Massasoit intended to attack the town while the shallop was away. Bradford ordered that the cannons be fired. Those on the boat heard the discharge and sailed back to Plymouth. Hobomok sent his wife to confer with Massasoit, who sent word that he remained their ally and that Squanto’s deception was gravely offensive.
Pilgrim leaders concluded that Squanto “sought his own ends and played his own game,” as Bradford later put it. He used his friendship with the Pilgrims to increase his own status, telling other Wampanoags that he could shape English policy toward their communities. He even claimed that the English could send the “plague” wherever they wanted, and presumably wherever he directed. The recent subterfuge was to have been his masterstroke. He had intended to provoke the settlers to attack Massasoit, in the process elevating himself in the eyes of other sachems and the English. Governor Bradford reprimanded Squanto but did not send him away or otherwise punish him. Standish and the others set out again, still accompanied by the two translators. It must have made for an awkward trip.
When the traders returned to Plymouth, a livid Massasoit was waiting for them. He left after expressing his displeasure, then sent a messenger demanding Squanto’s execution. The Pilgrims demurred. Bradford asked if they might keep their favored interpreter despite his offense. Without Squanto, the governor explained, the Pilgrims would not be able to understand Massasoit or anyone else. More men came from Sowams, reminding the Pilgrims that according to the terms of their alliance they could not shelter Squanto. The Pokanokets and the Pilgrims had pledged to defend each other from enemies. The messengers brought a knife. They offered Bradford beaver skins in return for Squanto’s head and hands. Bradford now tried to claim the high ground. He stated that it “was not the manner of the English to sell men’s lives at a price.” Principles aside, Squanto remained useful to the Pilgrims. Because Massasoit wanted him dead, Squanto had no choice but to cleave to the English. At the same time, because the Pilgrims did not trust any Indians, it was useful to have Squanto as a second source of information alongside Hobomok. Massasoit’s messengers would not budge, though, and Bradford prepared to yield to their demands in order to preserve the peace.
Squanto was saved, however, when an English shallop sighted in the bay provided a distraction. It carried a small number of new colonists, dispatched from a fishing vessel sent to New England by Thomas Weston. By this point, the Pilgrims’ erstwhile supporter had broken with the other Adventurers. Over the course of the summer, ships arrived with fifty or sixty men Weston had recruited to form his own colony. The ships unloaded the men at Plymouth while the venture’s leaders searched for a site for their plantation.
Colonial boundaries of New England, ca. 1675. (Map by Andrew C. Smith.)
The Pilgrims were dismayed. They wanted Weston to feed them, and instead Weston had sent them dozens of men to feed. According to Winslow, the visitors were rude and duplicitous. They stole immature corn. They made clear their distaste for the separatists. When they finally departed for a place called Wessagusset on Massachusetts Bay, they left behind their sick for the Pilgrims to nurse back to health. Perhaps worst of all, their presence at Wessagusset threatened to disrupt the trading relationships the Pilgrims had established with the Massachusetts.
Despite the ill will on both sides, the Pilgrims and Weston’s men chose to work together. They both needed food to survive the next winter. In November, men from Plymouth and Wessagusset set off together on the Swan, one of Weston’s ships. As Standish was ill, Governor Bradford himself led the mission, with Squanto as pilot. (After Weston’s colonists arrived, Massasoit’s men had dropped their insistence that the Pilgrims execute their interpreter.) The Swan rounded the Cape’s tip, then headed south. Squanto navigated through the shoals that had forced the Mayflower’s shipmaster to turn back. Reaching a harbor in present-day Chatham, the English traders obtained corn and beans.
The traders intended to continue around the Cape, but Squanto developed a fever and died. Bradford recorded that as Squanto approached death, he asked the governor “to pray for him, that he might go to the Englishmen’s God in heaven.” He bequeathed his few belongings to his friends among the Pilgrims. Bradford’s recollection probably reveals more about Squanto’s social isolation than his spiritual state. Squanto had received Christian instruction from Spanish friars; it is possible that he had been baptized as a Catholic. Still, it is hard to believe that he wanted to spend eternity with the English and their God rather than with his own Patuxet kin. Edward Winslow did not include Squanto’s request in his contemporary account of the trading mission, even though it would have bolstered his suggestion that the Pilgrims would share the Christian gospel with New England’s Indians. Against all odds, Squanto had survived kidnapping, a slave market, ocean crossings, and Massasoit’s call for his execution. Now he died in the company of English settlers who did not trust him.
Even in death, though, the Pilgrims regarded Squanto as indispensable. Without him, they abandoned their plan to round the Cape. They instead turned back, traded with the Massachusetts, and then visited several Wampanoag communities. Bradford and his fellow traders obtained enough food for the Pilgrims to stave off catastrophe. With Squanto dead, Hobomok now became the colonists’ most valuable mediator.
In Wessagusset, meanwhile, things quickly became desperate. According to Bradford and Winslow, the hungry settlers debased themselves by becoming servants to the Indians, doing the most menial of work for morsels of food and trading away their coats and bedcovers. Some of the Wessagusset colonists then stole corn. Obtakiest, a Massachusett sachem whose people lived nearby, demanded that Wessagusset leaders execute those responsible. The colonists responded that they had already whipped a man for the theft, but they refused to kill him. “All sachems do justice by their own men,” Obtakiest replied. “If not we say they are all agreed and then we fight, and now I say you all steal my corn.” According to several sources, the English eventually hanged the man, but their plight only worsened. Men were starving and dying, and Obtakiest did not rescue them the way that Massasoit had saved the Pilgrims.14
In March 1623, as the situation at Wessagusset deteriorated, the Pilgrims received word that Massasoit was sick and near death. By this point, Plymouth’s leaders knew that when a sachem neared death, those loyal to him came to visit, even from long distances. Upholding this etiquette, Bradford dispatched Edward Winslow to Sowams. Winslow traveled in the company of Hobomok and John Hamden, a visitor from England.15
When Winslow’s party reached its destination, he received a glimpse of Wampanoag religious culture and rituals of healing. Massasoit’s house was jammed with people, and several women were busy rubbing the ailing sachem’s limbs to warm him. “They [were] in the midst of their charms for him,” Winslow wrote. Winslow later explained that when an individual fell sick, a powah would invoke a deity named Hobomok, which Winslow correlated with the devil. Neither Winslow nor any of the other Pilgrims drew a connection between the deity’s name and that of their translator. “The powah,” Winslow continued, “is eager and free in speech, fierce in countenance, and joineth many antic [bizarre] and laborious gestures with the same over the party diseased.” Powahs were shamans who harnessed spiritual power, or manitou, to bring about desired outcomes such as healing. Other men and women joined in prayers, dances, and the application of balms and other remedies.16
When Massasoit was informed of Winslow’s arrival, he called the Englishman to his side. Winslow took his knife, put some “confection of many comfortable conserves” on it, and then pushed a bit through Massasoit’s teeth. The sachem swallowed the sweet preserve, evidently the first thing he had gotten down in two days. Winslow next examined Massasoit’s “furred” mouth and swollen tongue, which had prevented him from eating and drinking. He washed his mouth, scraped his tongue, and cleaned away pus. He gave Massasoit more of the confection. Massasoit drank, then made a stool. The next morning, Winslow prepared a broth from strawberry leaves, sassafras root, and cornmeal. Massasoit drank some more, and three more stools followed. At Massasoit’s request, Winslow then attended to other men and women, washing out their mouths and giving them broth. He found the task unpleasant. The mouths reeked. That evening, Massasoit overindulged on fatty duck, then spent four hours vomiting and bleeding from his nose. However, he stabilized and went to sleep. When the sachem awoke, Winslow washed Massasoit’s face, beard, and nose.17
Winslow rejoiced that he had succeeded where the powah had failed. He mocked Wampanoag healing rituals because their “hellish noise … distempered us that were well, and therefore unlike to ease him that was sick.” After one of Massasoit’s bowel movements, by contrast, Winslow thanked God for effecting a cure through his own “raw and ignorant means.” It was not quite Elijah besting the priests of Ba’al, but for Winslow, God’s message was plain. As the Wampanoags came to grasp the impotence of their powahs, they would reject their deities and embrace the Christian God.
Massasoit’s people fed Winslow and Hamden well, then the sachem announced that he wished to do them a more special kindness. He revealed that the Massachusetts intended to attack the English. They had recruited as allies several Wampanoag sachems and pnieses—high-status individuals who had proven themselves through spiritual ordeals and in battle—and they planned to strike both Wessagusset and Plymouth. In all likelihood, Plymouth could defend itself against an attack. Could the men at Wessagusset? And was Massasoit telling the truth? The Pilgrims had angered him when they had refused to punish Squanto. Was a now grateful Massasoit upholding his end of the alliance, or was he feeding the Pilgrims false information to serve his own purposes?
Winslow headed back to Plymouth. On his way home, he spent the night with the sachem Corbitant at Mattapoisett. Despite Corbitant’s prior rebellion against Massasoit, Winslow liked his host, who was “full of merry jests and squibs, and never better pleased than when the like are returned again upon him.” Winslow had restored the gravely ill Massasoit to health. If Corbitant fell sick and sent word to Patuxet, he asked, would Winslow attend him? Yes, Winslow promised.
Corbitant wondered why Winslow was bold enough to travel with only one English companion. “My heart was so upright towards them,” replied Winslow, “that for mine own part I was fearless to come amongst them.” Corbitant recognized that Winslow’s answer was not fully true. “If your love be such,” the sachem probed, “and it bring forth such fruits, how cometh it to pass, that when we come to Patuxet, you stand upon your guard, with the mouths of your pieces presented towards us?” Winslow parried the question by claiming that pointing guns at visitors was an English sign of respect. Corbitant countered “that he liked not such salutations.” Both he and Winslow knew that the English used their guns to impress and intimidate their Wampanoag allies.
As the men ate together, the questions kept coming. Corbitant asked why the English prayed before and after their meals. Winslow answered that they believed that any good thing came from God, so they thanked God for their food, then afterward thanked him again for their “refreshing.” Winslow also introduced the Ten Commandments. Corbitant objected to the seventh’s stricture “that a man should be tied to one woman.”
After his first year in New England, Winslow had written that the Indians had “no religion.” “Therein I erred,” he now corrected himself. He described many Wampanoag beliefs and practices as congruent with Christianity. While they believed in “many divine powers,” Winslow explained, they identified a deity named Kiehtan as “the principal and maker of all the rest … [he] created the heavens, earth, sea, and all creatures contained therein.” Kiehtan, Winslow continued, had created one man and one woman, from whom all humans descended. Winslow suggested that the Wampanoag conception of life after death resembled Christian beliefs. Good men would dwell with Kiehtan in the west, while bad men would be refused entrance. According to Winslow, Wampanoag communities gathered together to “sing, dance, feast, give thanks, and hang up garlands and other things” in Kiehtan’s honor. Winslow apparently did not talk with Corbitant about Jesus Christ, nor did Plymouth’s emissary offer his understanding of how God saved human beings. Instead, he sought points of connection between the two cultures.
At the same time, Winslow thoroughly disapproved of some Native practices and beliefs. He reported that Wampanoags and neighboring peoples would not only sacrifice their possessions to appease the devil Hobomok, but that they also “in some cases kill children.” No evidence corroborates the assertion. He also asserted that the Narragansetts “offer almost all the riches they have to their gods,” their priests tossing their belongings into a great fire. The Narragansetts were not so profligate. Altogether, though, Winslow was more curious than condemnatory. Winslow relished his nightlong discussion with Corbitant and wrote that he had “never had better entertainment amongst any of them.” It was how he and his fellow Pilgrims wished their relations with the Indians might proceed. The next morning, Winslow and his companions returned to Plymouth.18
On March 23 (just before the Julian calendar advanced to 1623), the colony held what had become its annual General Court. Men with voting rights reelected Bradford as governor and Isaac Allerton as his assistant. The main topic of discussion was how the Pilgrims should respond to the rumors of a Massachusett plot. Winslow commented that the colony’s leaders could not “undertake war without the consent of the body of the company.”19
Winslow’s intelligence from Massasoit had coincided with other warnings. Myles Standish had just returned from Manomet, to the south of Plymouth, where he had encountered the Massachusetts pniese Wituwamat. According to Standish, Wituwamat made a speech in which he threatened to “ruinate” Weston’s colony and “overthrow” Plymouth. How should the Pilgrims respond? The settlers both feared being attacked and the moral hazard of striking first. Plymouth’s voting men deputized Bradford, Allerton, and Standish to make the decision, and they settled on a preemptive attack.20
Standish knew that it would be futile for armed and armored Englishmen to simply march into Massachusett territory. Their enemies would vanish into the woods or ambush them. So the Pilgrims opted for treachery and trickery. Standish and his men would pretend to be on a trading mission and look for a chance to assassinate Wituwamat, whom they regarded as the chief instigator of the hostility against them.
Before Standish’s party left Plymouth, a refugee from Wessagusset—Phinehas Pratt—staggered into the settlement. Pratt’s report was grim. The men at Wessagusset were starving to the point that they had sold their clothes to the Massachusetts for corn. One man had even left the settlement and “turned savage.” The Indians constantly harassed and threatened the colonists, many of whom had left the town and gathered in small dispersed companies. Furthermore, Pratt confirmed that the Massachusetts intended to strike at both Wessagusset and Plymouth, “to kill all English people in one day when the snow was gone.” Pratt had fled Wessagusset, running through snow and streams like a deer chased by wolves.21
Standish and his company, accompanied by Hobomok, left on their mission. Reaching Massachusetts Bay, they first encountered a small group of Englishmen on the shore gathering groundnuts. “They feared not the Indians,” Winslow wrote, “but lived and suffered them to lodge with them.” A horrified Standish went to Wessagusset, found the colony’s leaders, and told them what he and his men intended.22
The tension soon rose. Wituwamat and his fellow Massachusetts pniese Pecksuot showed up and informed Hobomok that despite Standish’s pretensions to trade, they knew that the Pilgrim captain wanted to kill them. Wituwamat brandished a knife and bragged about having previously killed both French and English.23 Pecksuot insulted Standish, calling him “a little man.” Standish must have been terribly short, as many seventeenth-century writers commented on his small stature. William Hubbard, the Ipswich, Massachusetts, minister and historian, connected Standish’s impulsiveness to his diminutiveness. “A little chimney is soon fired,” Hubbard explained. For the time being, though, Standish patiently bore the insults.24
The next day, Standish was in a house with both Wituwamat and Pecksuot. The Pilgrim captain gave a signal, and his men shut the door. Standish grabbed Pecksuot’s knife and stabbed him again and again. Hobomok, who watched the murders, observed that the diminutive Standish was “big enough to lay him [Pecksuot] on the ground.” The other Plymouth men slew Wituwamat and another Indian man who was present, and they hanged Wituwamat’s eighteen-year-old brother. The Pilgrims cut off Wituwamat’s head and took it with them. They then dispatched a fourth Indian at a nearby location, and another Plymouth detachment killed two more.
Standish was looking for more Indians to kill when the Pilgrims encountered the sachem Obtakiest and a group of men. A fierce battle ensued. Hobomok, Standish, and the other Pilgrims occupied a small hill, while the Massachusetts unleashed a barrage of arrows toward them. Hobomok bravely led a charge that prompted the Massachusetts to retreat into a swamp. Standish “dared the sachem to come out and fight like a man,” declaring that the sachem had been “base and woman-like … in tonguing [talking].” Obtakiest and his men wisely slipped away. In retaliation for the murders, the Massachusetts killed three captive Wessagusset colonists.25
Standish and his company sailed their shallop back to Plymouth, where the settlers placed Wituwamat’s head on top of their fort. William Bradford explained that the head served “for a terror unto others.” The decapitation and display were conventional English punishments for traitors, vile criminals, and military enemies. Within a culture of violent punishment, what the Pilgrims did was brutal but in many respects unexceptional.26
At the same time, Pilgrim leaders knew that when reports of the violence reached England, they would face criticism, at least from Weston’s men. Prospective settlers might think twice about joining them. Therefore, when Winslow sailed to England in September 1623 to meet with the colony’s investors, he published an account of the above events. Most promoters of North American settlement wrote books that painted an unrealistically rosy picture of their colonies. Winslow, by contrast, narrated intrigues, rumors, confusion, and bloodshed, closing with unconvincing paeans to New England’s natural resources and potential for trade. In Winslow’s book, the only Good News from New England was in his title.
Winslow defended Standish’s campaign against the Massachusetts. He documented the multiple reports of the alleged conspiracy against the English. Winslow did not hide the fact that the Pilgrims had chosen to decoy their enemies into a trap and then murder them, but he insisted that their actions were prudent. In a second edition of his book, Winslow added a brief mention of Virginia’s “bloody slaughter,” the March 1622 deaths of hundreds of English settlers at the hands of the Powhatans. Winslow stressed that the Pilgrims had received word of the massacre prior to their move against the Massachusetts. Comparatively tiny Plymouth could have been wiped out, he implied. The Pilgrims were right not to wait to be attacked.27
Winslow’s account raises many questions. Why did some of the Wessagusset settlers live without any fear of the Indians? If Wituwamat and Pecksuot suspected Standish’s intentions and themselves planned to attack the English, why did the Massachusett pnieses act like doves rather than serpents and allow themselves to be taken by surprise? Along those lines, was there really a conspiracy against Wessagusset and Plymouth? Massasoit could have been using the Pilgrims to strike a blow against the Massachusetts and against those Wampanoag sachems who had rebelled against his authority.
For their part, the Pilgrims might have welcomed the chance to display their military strength. The operation also led to the dispersal of the Wessagusset colony, a welcome development for Plymouth. Winslow complained that after Weston’s men had established their plantation, “the trade both for furs and corn was overthrown in that place” because the new settlers overpaid for food. In the wake of the murders, the Wessagusset colonists had no choice but to hightail it for Maine or England. It would have been unsafe for them to stay. Thus, in killing Wituwamat and Pecksuot, the Pilgrims indirectly eliminated a rival English colony.28
Winslow was correct to anticipate objections. From Leiden, John Robinson wrote to Bradford about what he deemed un-Christian bloodlust. “How happy a thing had it been,” the minister chided the settlers, “if you had converted some, before you had killed any.” Even if a reprisal was necessary, could they not have killed only one or two men? Being a “terror to poor barbarous people” was glorious “in men’s eyes” but not “pleasing in God’s.” Robinson questioned the judgment of Standish in particular and wondered if he lacked “that tenderness of the life of man (made after God’s image).”29
A decade or so later, Thomas Morton wrote a much more acerbic denunciation of what the Pilgrims had done. Morton came to New England in the mid-1620s, became Plymouth’s rival in trade, and then became the separatists’ political antagonist back in England. He termed the assassination and other killings a “massacre,” making careful note of the way Standish had tricked his victims by setting a feast before them prior to slaying them. Morton also questioned why the Pilgrims had not done anything to secure the release of the three English settlers the Massachusetts had killed in retaliation. Morton added that after the massacre, the Massachusetts took to calling the English “Wotawquenange, which in their language signifieth stabbers or cutthroats.” Winslow complained that the Wessagusset settlers had made “Christ and Christianity stink in the nostrils of the poor infidels.” Morton believed that it was the Pilgrims who had made Christianity odious. On the other hand, Morton stated that Obtakiest did plan to attack the Pilgrims, whom he accused of having desecrated the grave of the sachem’s mother. Thus, if there was a Massachusetts conspiracy against them, the Pilgrims had only themselves to blame for their plight.30
Some historians have savaged the Pilgrims for their preemptive violence and for placing their economic interests above the lives of both the Massachusetts and the Wessagusset settlers. In portraying Plymouth as one of many fronts in the English “invasion of America,” Francis Jennings alleges that Winslow “falsified events sufficiently to implicate the Indians as conspirators against Plymouth and to conceal the premeditation of the massacre.”31 Such criticism ignores contrary evidence. Winslow did not conceal Plymouth’s premeditated treachery. He wrote about it quite openly, and Bradford transcribed Robinson’s stinging rebuke into his history. Nor does it seem that the Pilgrims simply made up their fears. Had Winslow and Bradford been in the business of outright fabrication, they surely would have placed Phinehas Pratt’s arrival and evidence before Plymouth’s decision to assassinate and decapitate Wituwamat. At the same time, Plymouth’s campaign against the Massachusetts met with such little resistance that it suggests there was no Native conspiracy against the English.
The Pilgrims themselves had a very limited grasp of the communities that surrounded them. They poorly understood the relationship between their ally Massasoit and other Wampanoag sachems. Even those Pilgrims who became familiar with Algonquian dialects and culture relied on translators and mediators. The Pilgrims saw the world beyond their settlement as if through a dark glass. Historians attempting to interpret the Wessagusset massacre on the basis of a few documents—all written by English settlers—see that world even more dimly.
The Wessagusset massacre ushered New Plymouth into a new era. The Pilgrims had served notice of their strength. In the coming months, when the settlers heard that other allegedly hostile sachems had forsaken their homes and then died from disease, they understood it as the just judgments of an angry God. “How few, weak, and raw were we at our first beginning,” Winslow reminded his readers, “and there settling, and in the midst of barbarous enemies?” Yet God had delivered them. For the Pilgrims, the conclusion was obvious. “I cannot but think,” he reasoned, “that God hath a purpose to give that land as an inheritance to our nation.” It was a divine transfer of land from heathen Indians to faithful English.32
That summer, Plymouth’s leaders jettisoned what Bradford termed the “common course.” Until this point, the settlers had put crops into a storehouse for the use of the entire community, but men had not wanted to work to support other men’s families. Now the colony’s leaders assigned each household a plot of land and asked them to grow corn for themselves, with a portion reserved for the colony’s traders, fishermen, magistrates, and poor. Everyone worked harder. Plymouth’s women even “took their little ones with them to set corn,” not unlike their Wampanoag counterparts.33
In his 1621 sermon, Robert Cushman had reminded the Pilgrims that the first Christians had lived as one. Nothing “more resembles hellish horror,” Cushman had preached, “than for every man to shift for himself … to affect particulars, mine and thine.” A quarter-century later, Bradford reflected on the shift in policy. Bradford now associated the “common course” with the “vanity of that conceit of Plato’s and other ancients … that the taking of property and bringing in community into a commonwealth would make them happy and flourishing, as if they were wiser than God.” In Bradford’s history, the pooling of resources became the idea of non-Christian philosophers (Protestants often termed them “heathen” as well), not part and parcel of the primitive Christianity that the separatists aspired to emulate. Bradford allowed that the new policy was in some way a concession to human sinfulness. “I answer,” he wrote, “seeing all men have this corruption in them, God in His wisdom saw another course fitter for them.” What Cushman labeled “self-love” was no longer a problem, but a badly needed spur to industry.34
Hard work, however, was no match for a stubborn drought that afflicted the colony that summer. It hardly rained from late May until mid-July. Corn and beans withered. Bradford appointed a day of fasting and prayer, and the Pilgrims assembled in the morning to confess their sins before God and promise to walk more faithfully. Sermons and prayers stretched into the afternoon, when clouds gathered and rain began to fall. Their crops revived, though storms damaged those of nearby Wampanoag communities. According to Winslow, it was like the case of Massasoit’s restoration to health. The events had shown “the difference between their conjuration, and our invocation on the name of God for rain.” When the Pilgrims brought in a large harvest that fall, Bradford appointed a formal day of thanksgiving, the first such observance recorded in Plymouth Colony. The threat of starvation finally faded.35
Also in July 1623, two shiploads of settlers and supplies arrived. Emmanuel Altham, one of the Adventurers, visited the colony in which he had invested. In glowing letters back to England, he described New Plymouth as a well-situated plantation with about twenty houses on either side of a “great street.” He also recorded a rather modest six goats, about fifty hogs, and many chickens. At the top of the hillside was “a strong fort … with six pieces of reasonable good artillery,” at which the Pilgrims maintained a “continual watch.” Altham predicted that they would spot any Indian who approached the palisaded town.36
Many of the new arrivals had come on what Bradford referred to as “their particular,” meaning that they had paid for their own passage and were not bound by the Pilgrims’ agreement with their investors. Nor did they have a vote in the colony’s government. New Plymouth now had two classes of settlers, which bred uncertainty and discontent. Bradford and the Particulars quickly reached an accommodation. The Particulars would receive land, swear to obey the colony’s laws, pay an annual tax into the common store of corn, and promise not to trade with the Indians. The latter point was critical. In order to fulfill their obligations to the Adventurers, the Pilgrims needed all the furs they could get at the most reasonable price. They did not want competitors.37
Among the more welcome newcomers was the widow Alice Southworth, who married William Bradford in August. The wedding celebration was a reprise of the 1621 harvest festivities. Massasoit came with one of his wives, accompanied by four sachems and more than a hundred other men. Plymouth’s men greeted them with musketry and military maneuvers, displaying the settlement’s power and adding to the festive atmosphere. The Wampanoag guests danced for their hosts. Massasoit presented Bradford with venison and turkey; everyone had a full portion of meat and good cheer. Over the last two years, the Pokanokets and the Pilgrims had made each other stronger. In the years ahead, it would prove more difficult for the fortunes of both peoples to rise in tandem.