took part in, of the spirit of the actors, and of the intelligence and character of the speaker.

We know too well how the first winter had been passed by the settlers. Respecting the employments of the second, we have less information. In the absence of domestic animals, a great part of the farmer's winter occupation was wanting to them. Fishing, hunting, and the collection of fuel and timber, may be supposed to have made their chief business, varied by occasional traffic with Indian visitors. One care was urgent for the passing time, and must have weighed on their spirits as they looked into the future. Not only had the Fortune

Scarcity of food.

66

brought no supplies to America, but the colonists had had to straiten themselves to supply her for the return voyage. Upon her departure, the Governor and his Assistants disposed the late comers into several families, found their provisions would now scarce hold out six months at half allowance, and therefore put them to it, which they bore patiently."

war from the Narragansetts.

A new cause for solicitude arose. After the departure of the Fortune, in the depth of winter, came a rumor, Threats of through the neighboring Indians, of hostilities meditated against the plantation by the powerful tribe of Narragansetts. It was confirmed when a messenger from Canonicus, their chief sachem, brought a bundle of arrows tied with a snake-skin, which Squanto interpreted as a declaration of war. Against the English force of about fifty men, the Narragansetts, as they had heard, could muster five thousand warriors. The Governor sent back the snake-skin full of powder and February. ball, which the savages, affrighted, refused to keep. It was passed for a while from hand to hand among them, and at length came back to Plymouth. The English "built a fort with good timber, both strong and comely, which was of good defence, made with a flat roof and battlements, on which their ordnance were

1622.

mounted. It served them also for a meeting-house, and was fitted accordingly for that use. It was a great work for them, in this weakness and time of wants. But the danger of the time required it, and also the hearing of that great massacre in Virginia made all hands willing to despatch the same." The dwellings were barricaded; the whole settlement, with the fort, and space for a garden for each family, was enclosed with a paling; a military organization was completed; and watch and ward were constantly kept. These precautions, and the attitude of defiance which had been assumed, appear to have disconcerted the plan of invasion, and the winter passed quietly away. Early in the spring, a native, of Squanto's family, renewed the alarm of a projected inroad of the Narragansetts, in alliance with Massasoit; and the Governor, by signal-guns, recalled a party which had just sailed with Standish for Boston Bay. But the report proved to be unfounded, and was afterwards attributed to unfriendliness on the part of Squanto towards the Pokanoket chief.2

1 Bradford, 126.

2 Winslow, Good Newes from New England, or a True Relation of Things very Remarkable at the Plantation of Plymouth in New England, 1-9. This

April.

tract by Edward Winslow was published in London in 1624. It is the most copious authority for the events of the two years next succeeding those embraced in Mourt's Journal.

17*

1622. Scarcity

CHAPTER VI.

Ir was but a transient gleam of prosperity that had cheered the exiles at the close of their first summer in America. Through nearly the whole of the next two years, they were struggling with hardship in of food. one of its direst forms. "A famine began to pinch," which was not wholly relieved till the second harvest after the departure of the Fortune.

In the former of the two summers that intervened, “had they not been where were divers sorts of shell-fish, they must have perished." They had planted nearly sixty acres with corn, and in their gardens they had some vegetables; but "the crop proved scanty, partly through weakness, for want of food, to tend it, partly through other business, and partly by much being stolen," before it ripened, by an unruly rout of Englishmen lately arrived in vessels of Mr. Weston. Some small supplies of corn were procured, in short expeditions by sea and land, from the coast further to the north, and more from the neighboring natives. From vessels "fishing at the eastward” Wins

low obtained "as much bread as amounted to a

May. quarter of a pound a person a day, till harvest." As winter came on, they were "helped with fowl and ground-nuts." The Governor got twenty-seven or twentyeight hogsheads of corn and beans, in a visit to

November. Boston Bay and Cape Cod, from which latter

region he returned fifty miles on foot, "receiving all respect that could be from the Indians in his journey." Another supply he brought later from the head January. of what is now called Buzzard's Bay.1

1623.

1 Bradford, 124-129.- Winslow, Good Newes, 11–21.

Standish, on errands of the same kind, had less satisfactory intercourse with the natives, who appeared to him to have treacherous designs, and with whom he was obliged two or three times to resort to threats to obtain restitution of stolen property. On one occasion, at Manomet (Sandwich), he fell in with a Massachusetts Indian, whose errand he understood to be to raise a general conspiracy against the English, and whose design of causing his assassination on the spot he had to use both address and courage to defeat.

at Wessa

1621.

July 6.

Indian corn, boiled or roasted in the green ear, is in its season a palatable article of diet, much used in New England at the present day. The persons who Weston's pilfered the unripe grain from the fields of the plantation settlers in the second summer were of a party gusset. sent out by Mr. Weston of London, whose activity in the early period of the partnership has been repeatedly mentioned. Soon after writing to Plymouth that he would "never quit the business, though all the other Adventurers should,"1 Weston had withdrawn from them, and engaged in speculations on his own account. He now wrote to the settlers, "I have sold my ad- 1622. venture and debts unto them, so as I am quit of April 10. you, and you of me"; and two vessels of his, the Charity and the Swan, brought fifty or sixty men "to settle a plantation for him in the Massachusetts Bay, for which he had procured a patent," as his private property.2 The Plymouth people took them to their homes, gave them "the best means the place afforded,"

1 Bradford, 107.

2 "The people which they carry are no men for us, wherefore I pray you entertain them not." (Cushman to Bradford, in Bradford, 122.)—“ As for Mr. Weston's company, I think them so base in condition, for the most part, as in all appearance not fit for an honest man's company." (Pierce to Bradford,

June or July.

Ibid., 123.) — "I will not deny but there are many of our people rude fellows,

yet I presume they will be governed by such as I set over them. And I hope not only to be able to reclaim them from that profaneness that may scandalize the voyage, but by degrees to draw them to God," &c. (Weston to Bradford, Ibid., 121.)

and nursed several of them who were sick.

While some

went in search of a place of abode, the rest made themselves extremely troublesome guests; so that it was with great satisfaction that at length their hosts saw most of them depart to begin a plantation at Wessagusset (now Weymouth), leaving the infirm of their number to be gratuitously cared for at Plymouth.

Its disorders

November.

By disorder and waste, Weston's people presently fell short of provisions, and, as winter approached, they became anxious for a further supply. They proposed to and distress. their Plymouth friends to join them in purchases from the Indians; and it was in their smaller vessel that Governor Bradford made the expedition, which has been mentioned, to Boston Bay and Cape Cod. But their irregular habits were not corrected, and they could no longer expect any voluntary relief from the neighboring natives, whom they had incensed by depredations on their cornfields and by other annoyances. At length, their extremity became such, that Sanders, their chief sent to inform Governor Bradford of his intention to get some corn from the Indians by force to subsist his men, while he, with a party, should sail to the eastward for a supply from the European fishing-vessels. The Plymouth people remonstrated in the strongest terms against his plan of robbery. They advised him to make shift to live, as they did, on ground-nuts, clams, and muscles, and sent him some corn from their own scanty store for his voyage.1

1623. February.

man,

In his absence, affairs took an alarming aspect for both settlements. Intelligence had come to Plymouth that Massasoit was desperately ill, and that a Dutch vessel was lying stranded on the Narragansett shore near his dwelling. Both these matters engaged the attention of the colonists. They owed a visit of sympathy to their friend, and they desired a conference with the Dutch seamen.

1 Winslow, Good Newes, 11–25, 34 – 37. — Bradford, 132.