“We have pumpkins at morning, and pumpkins at noon.If it were not for pumpkins, we should be undone.”
“We have pumpkins at morning, and pumpkins at noon.If it were not for pumpkins, we should be undone.”
“We have pumpkins at morning, and pumpkins at noon.If it were not for pumpkins, we should be undone.”
“We have pumpkins at morning, and pumpkins at noon.
If it were not for pumpkins, we should be undone.”
The first harvest was not sufficient for the winter’s need, and in November a company under William Bradford set out in the Swan—a boat lent by their neighbors of Weymouth, who had had no small share in depleting their supplies—for a coasting trip around the Cape to trade knives and beads for corn. With them was their interpreter Squanto; and this was to prove poor Squanto’s last voyage, for at Monomoyick (Chatham) he was taken ill and died. At Monomoyick eight hogsheads of corn and beans were stowed away on the Swan; at Mattacheesett (Barnstable or Yarmouth) and Nauset an additional supply was had. But at Nauset, where a few men had run in shore in the shallop, their boat was wrecked, and caching the stores, the party procured a guide and set out overland for Plymouth, while their companions in the Swan proceeded by sea. In January Standish took the lead in another expedition by boat, recovered and repaired the wrecked shallop at Nauset, brusquely demanded restitution of the Indians for “some trifles” he charged them with stealing, and then and afterwards at Mattacheesett where he made a like charge, received the articles and ample apology from their chiefs.
All visitors to these shores seem to be agreed on the thievish propensities of the natives: Gosnold’s chronicler remarks that they are “more timerous” than those to the north, but thievish; Champlain thought them of “good disposition, better than thoseof the north, but they are all in fact of no great worth. They are great thieves and if they cannot lay hold of anything with their hands, they try to do so with their feet.” He adds, charitably: “I am of opinion that if they had anything to exchange with us, they would not give themselves to thieving.” The fact seems to have been that these children of nature could not resist the lure of any unguarded bits of treasure; but Miles Standish was not the man to enter into psychological elucidations of behavior, and at Mattacheesett, as at Nauset, he suspected the natives of treachery as well as thieving, and kept strict watch while they filled his shallop with grain.
In the following month, March, he had still more reason, he thought, to question the friendly intention of the chief Canacum at Manomet, or Bourne, who, however, one bitter cold night had suitably entertained Bradford’s party and sold them the corn which Standish had come to fetch. Standish’s suspicions increased to certainty when two Massachusetts Indians joined the company and one of them began a tirade to Canacum which afterwards was known to be a complaint of outrages committed by the English at Weymouth and a plea to cut off Standish and his handful of men. Winslow writes that there was also “a lusty Indian of Pawmet, or Cape Cod, there present, who had ever demeaned himself well towards us, being in his general carriage very affable, courteous, and loving, especially towards the captain.” But “this savage was now entered into confederacy with the rest, yet to avoid suspicion, made many signs ofhis continued affection, and would needs bestow a kettle of some six or eight gallons on him, and would not accept anything in lieu thereof, saying he was rich, and could afford to bestow such favors on his friends whom he loved.” Now a kettle was one of an Indian’s most precious possessions, and very likely the Pamet, when he heard the treachery afoot, offered it merely as an extravagant pledge of friendship; but when he demeaned himself to help the women whom Standish had bribed to load his cargo, the captain merely saw there another proof of perfidy. The Englishmen spent an anxious night in their bivouac on the beach; but when morning broke embarked safely, and with their corn made the return trip to Plymouth.
Whether or not incited thereto by intolerable wrongs, Indians of the mainland had begun to make trouble, and information now came to the Pilgrims, through their ally, Massasoit, of a plot against the whites in which not only Indians near Weymouth, but some of the Cape Indians, were said to be implicated. Weston’s colony of adventurers there had from the first been a thorn in the side of Plymouth; but when one of the Weymouth men, eluding the Indians, made his way across country to report the dangerous conditions there Standish waited not upon the order of his going. With eight whites and an Indian guide, he set sail for Weymouth, where he seems to have met with little resistance, and having slain a due number of the savages, returned to Plymouth with the head of their chief, Wittaumet, “a notable insulting villain,” as a trophy. Very likely thereby aserious rising of the natives was averted. To Wittaumet’s men a white was a white; it was all one to them whether he were blameless Pilgrim or Merrymount royster; and as for the Patuxets and Pamets and Nausets, we know they had old scores to settle. It is true, moreover, that any long contact of Indians and whites was fairly sure to end in a quarrel and bloodletting. And if the purpose of Standish’s expedition was to create terror, it was a success. Natives of the seacoast, whom the plague had spared, innocent and guilty, fled to the swamps and waste places, where disease attacked them more effectually than the English could have done, and many of them died; among them Canacum of Manomet, Aspinet of the Nausets, and even the “princely” Iyanough, who seems to have been blameless in intention and act. More than two hundred and fifty years later, the bones of a chief were discovered near a swamp in East Barnstable, and, believed to be those of Iyanough, were encased suitably and placed in Pilgrim Hall near relics of Miles Standish who had as surely done him to death as if slain by his hand. The name of Iyanough is preserved in that of the modern town of Hyannis.
How much fault in all this deplorable business may be charged to Miles Standish, one may not say. He was not a “Pilgrim,” nor of their faith, but from the first, on account of his experience and skill, had been chosen for their military leader. Hubbard writes of him: “A little chimney is soon fired; so was the Plymouth captain, a man of small stature, yet of a very hot and angry temper.” And when wise John Robinson,at Leyden, heard of Standish’s bloody reprisals, he wrote the brethren at Plymouth that he “trusted the Lord had sent him among them for good, but feared he was wanting in that tenderness of the life of man, made after God’s image, which was meet; and thought it would have been better if they had converted some before they killed any.”