ton, at his request, for his Assistant.1 Forty-six of the colonists of the Mayflower were now dead, -twenty-eight out of the forty-eight adult men. Before the arrival of the second party of emigrants in the autumn, the dead reached the number of fifty-one, and only an equal number survived the first miseries of the enterprise. The transmitted history of Carver covers less than four years. A diligent curiosity has failed to discover his birthplace or his early condition. In an unambitious service of religious duty, which in its partially developed results has already changed the face of human affairs, tradition relates that he sacrificed an ample estate. He wore himself out with public labors, and ministrations of private compassion. He was honored to be the earliest chief of the company which unconsciously was laying the foundation-stone of the American republic,3 if indeed he did not subscribe the first name affixed, in the annals of mankind, to a fundamental constitution of government.1 In early spring, the settlers opened the ground near their dwellings with the spade, and prepared their rude gardens. They sowed six acres with barley and pease. Their good fortune in the winter at the subterranean storehouses had given and condition them ten bushels of Indian corn for seed. This during the sufficed them for the cultivation of twenty acres, Squanto instructing them how to plant and hill it, and March 19, 20. Employments of the settlers summer. 1 This arrangement had reference to of other colonies near it, is uncertain. Bradford's "being not yet recovered of his illness, in which he had been near the point of death." (Bradford, 100.) ..... Whether Britain would have manure it with fish. As the season advanced, they found native grapes and berries in abundance; and they did not omit to record that wild-flowers of various hue and 66 very sweet" fragrance added a charm to the scene. A visitor to Plymouth during this summer, as he landed on the southern side of a high bluff, would have seen, standing between it and a rapid little stream, a rude house of logs or planks, twenty feet square, containing the common property of the plantation. Proceeding up a gentle acclivity between two rows of log cabins, nineteen in number, some of them perhaps vacant since the death of their first tenants, he would have come to a hill surmounted with a platform for cannon. He might have counted twenty men at work with hoes in the enclosures about the huts, or fishing in the shallow harbor, or visiting the woods or the beach for game; while six or eight women. were busy in household affairs, and some twenty children, from infancy upwards, completed the domestic picture.1 With the variety afforded by wild-fowl, fish, and native fruits, what remained of the stores that had been brought over yielded a sufficient supply of food, and the summer season brought no other want. Vigilance was necessary against hostile neighbors, and a system was to be pursued for securing order and industry; but the overseer of twenty laborers had no hard task, when one half of them, at least, shared fully in his own public spirit, and as many as might be of a different disposition depended for their daily comforts on the good-will and sense of justice of those who maintained him in his place. Four expeditions during the summer varied the life of the exiles, and extended their knowledge of the country to a few miles' distance on the north, east, and west. Winslow and Hopkins, accompanied by Squanto as 1 Of the children, two were born on board the Mayflower; one, Oceanus Hopkins, at sea; the other, Peregrine White, while she was anchored in Cape Cod Harbor. White lived three years into the next century. interpreter, were despatched to visit Massasoit, at his home on Narragansett Bay, in order to ascertain where his people might be found in case of need, to obtain in- June or July. sasoit. formation of his force and of the condition of the Visit to Mascountry, to cement the friendship already contracted, and to make arrangements for future intercourse. They bore "a horseman's coat of red cotton and laced with a slight lace" for a present, and a copper chain to be the credential of any messenger whom Massasoit might send to the settlement, where, he was to be informed, it would not be convenient, by reason of scarcity of the means of hospitality, to receive his people so freely as heretofore. By a walk of fifteen miles, they came in the afternoon to a village called Namasket, in what is now Middleborough, where the natives entertained them with "a kind of bread," and with spawn of shads boiled with old acorns. At night, they lodged in the open air, at a place eight miles further on, where were a number of Indians, who had assembled to fish, but had erected no shelter. Here they saw marks of former extensive cultivation. "Thousands of men had lived there, which died in a great plague, not long since." Six savages accompanied them the next day, bearing their arms and clothes, and carrying them over the fords on their shoulders. Their errand was happily accomplished, though at the cost of a distressing experience of the poverty and filth of Indian hospitality. The housekeeping of the greatest chief of the tribes between Narragansett Bay and the Piscataqua was at the smallest possible remove above brute life. Massasoit avowed himself well content to renew the alliance, and promised to promote the traffic in skins, to furnish a supply of corn for seed, and to ascertain the owners of the underground granaries rifled by the English in the winter, so that restitution might be made. He told them of the Narragansetts, a strong tribe dwelling further to the west, which had not suffered from the recent pestilence, and advised them to arrest the trade between that people and "the Frenchmen." He had no food to offer the envoys, and their lodging in his sty was of the most comfortless description. The following day, he invited them to a share, with forty Indians, in three small fishes. On the fifth day of their absence from the settlement they returned, faint and giddy for want of sleep and food.2 Visit to A boy of the company having gone astray in the woods, ten men, accompanied by Squanto and another native, went in search of him in a boat, to the southern coast of the bay, whither they had intelligence of his having wandered. The first night, they put in at the harbor of Cummaquid, now Barnstable, where they were courteously received by the sachem, named Iyannough, and were assailed with angry language by a woman whose son had been kidnapped by Captain Hunt. The next day, attended by Iyannough, they proceeded to Nauset, now Eastham, the place of the attack upon the exploring party in the preceding autumn. Here the boy was surrendered, and an arrangement was made to pay at Plymouth for the corn which had been taken away. "Not less than a hundred" savages came about them at this interview. On the third day they returned home, the more hastily for a story told them at Nauset, that their ally, Massasoit, had been carried off by the Narragansetts. Their renewed observations, in summer-time, on the place where they had at first proposed to build, afforded them the satisfaction of concluding that its soil was "not so good for corn as where they were." 1 Mourt, Journal, 45. But I suppose this was a mistake of Winslow's, and that Massasoit spoke of the Dutch. 2 "We set forward the 10th of June." (Mourt's Relation, 41.) But it is probable, from Bradford's statement (102) and other considerations, that the expedition was in the first week of July. The question of this date has no relations that make it worth discussing. 3 The date of this expedition also is uncertain, though the account of it begins: "The 11th of June we set forth." (Mourt, 49.) This and the previous date of Mourt could not both be correct, as then the expeditions to Nauset and to Massasoit's country would have been contemporaneous, whereas Squanto is said to have been in both. Aug. 14. to Namasket. Their return was welcome, for they were half the force of the colony; and in their absence information had come of dangerous intrigues on the part of Corbitant, a chief subordinate to Massasoit and supposed to be attached to the Narragansetts. The report was, that he was aiming to detach Massasoit from the alliance lately made, and that he had threatened violence against Squanto, Hobbamak, and Tokamahamon, counsellors of the sachem friendly to the English. Hobbamak soon after escaped with difficulty to the settlement, bringing intelligence of the apprehension of Squanto. Standish, with some twelve men, well armed, was sent back with Hobbamak to protect their friend, and counteract the plot. At midnight, Expedition after a rainy day, and a weary march, lengthened by their having strayed from the path, they beset the wigwam of Corbitant at Namasket. Not finding him there, they disarmed his people, who were thrown into consternation by the report of their fire-arms. The next day, leaving for him a message of caution against the repetition of hostile attempts upon their friends, they returned to Plymouth, accompanied by Squanto, whom they had rescued, a wounded man and woman whom they brought to be treated by their physician, and others who volunteered to carry their arms and knapsacks. They had killed none. The good effect upon their savage neighbors of this prompt action was presently apparent. Nine sachems, representing jurisdictions extending from Charles River to Buzzard's Bay, came into the Sept. 13. town, and subscribed a writing by which they “acknowledged themselves to be loyal subjects of chems. King James"; which was but a way of engaging to keep the peace with his subjects at Plymouth.1 Aug. 15. Submission The last expedition of the season was to the bay on which Boston now stands, called in the contem- visit to poraneous record Massachusetts Bay. Standish Boston Bay. 1 Morton, Memorial, 67; comp. Bradford, 104. |