Mayflower (16 page)

In addition to ducks and deer, there was, according to Bradford, a “good store of wild turkeys” in the fall of 1621. Turkeys were by no means a novelty to the Pilgrims. When the conquistadors arrived in Mexico in the sixteenth century, they discovered that the Indians of Central America possessed domesticated turkeys as well as gold. The birds were imported to Spain as early as the 1520s, and by the 1540s they had reached England. By 1575, the domesticated Central American turkey had become a fixture at English Christmases. The wild turkeys of New England were bigger and much faster than the birds the Pilgrims had known in Europe and were often pursued in winter when they could be tracked in the snow.

The Pilgrims may have also added fish to their meal of birds and deer. In fall, striped bass, bluefish, and cod were abundant. Perhaps most important to the Pilgrims was that with a recently harvested barley crop, it was now possible to brew beer. Alas, the Pilgrims were without pumpkin pies or cranberry sauce. There were also no forks, which did not appear at Plymouth until the last decades of the seventeenth century. The Pilgrims ate with their fingers and their knives.

Neither Bradford nor Winslow mention it, but the First Thanksgiving coincided with what was, for the Pilgrims, a new and startling phenomenon: the turning of the green leaves of summer to the incandescent yellows, reds, and purples of a New England autumn. With the shortening of the days comes a diminshment in the amount of green chlorophyll in the tree leaves, which allows the other pigments contained within the leaves to emerge. In Britain, the cloudy fall days and warm nights cause the autumn colors to be muted and lackluster. In New England, on the other hand, the profusion of sunny fall days and cool but not freezing nights unleashes the colors latent within the tree leaves, with oaks turning red, brown, and russet; hickories golden brown; birches yellow; red maples scarlet; sugar maples orange; and black maples glowing yellow. It was a display that must have contributed to the enthusiasm with which the Pilgrims later wrote of the festivities that fall.

The First Thanksgiving marked the conclusion of a remarkable year. Eleven months earlier the Pilgrims had arrived at the tip of Cape Cod, fearful and uninformed. They had spent the next month alienating and angering every Native American they happened to come across. By all rights, none of the Pilgrims should have emerged from the first winter alive. Like the French sailors before them, they all might have been either killed or taken captive by the Indians.

That it had worked out differently was a testament not only to the Pilgrims’ grit, resolve, and faith, but to their ability to take advantage of an extraordinary opportunity. During the winter of 1621, the survival of the English settlement had been in the balance. Massasoit’s decision to offer them assistance had saved the Pilgrims’ lives in the short term, but there had already been several instances in which the sachem’s generosity could all have gone for naught. Placing their faith in God, the Pilgrims might have insisted on a policy of arrogant isolationism. But by becoming an active part of the diplomatic process in southern New England—by sending Winslow and Hopkins to Sowams; by compensating the Nausets for the corn; and most important, by making clear their loyalty to Massasoit at the “hurly-burly” in Nemasket—they had taken charge of their own destiny in the region.

In 1620, New England was far from being a paradise of abundance and peace. Indeed the New World was, in many ways, much like the Old—a place where the fertility of the soil was a constant concern, a place where disease and war were omnipresent threats. There were profound differences between the Pilgrims and Pokanokets to be sure—especially when it came to technology, culture, and spiritual beliefs—but in these early years, when the mutual challenge of survival dominated all other concerns, the two peoples had more in common than is generally appreciated today. For the Pilgrims, some of whom had slept in a wigwam and all of whom had enjoyed eating and drinking with the Indians during that First Thanksgiving, these were not a despicable pack of barbarians (even if some of their habits, such as their refusal to wear clothes, struck them as “savage” ); these were human beings, much like themselves—“very trust[worth]y, quick of apprehension, ripe witted, just,” according to Edward Winslow.

For his part, Massasoit had managed one of the more wondrous comebacks of all time. Scorned and humiliated by the Narragansetts, he had found a way to give his people, who were now just a fraction of the Narragansetts in terms of population, a kind of parity with the rival tribe. Massasoit had come to the Pilgrims’ rescue when, as his son would remember fifty-four years later, the English were “as a little child.” He could only hope that the Pilgrims would continue to honor their debt to the Pokanokets long after the English settlement had grown into maturity.

Amid all the bounty and goodwill of the First Thanksgiving, there was yet another person to consider. The Pilgrims had begun their voyage to the New World by refusing to trust John Smith; no Stranger, they decided, was going to tell them what to do. But instead of being led by an English soldier of fortune, they were now being controlled—whether they realized it or not—by a Native American named Squanto. For, unknown to both Bradford and Massasoit, the interpreter from Patuxet had already launched a plan to become the most powerful Indian leader in New England.

I
N MID-NOVEMBER,
Bradford received word from the Indians on Cape Cod that a ship had appeared at Provincetown Harbor. It had been just eight months since the departure of the
Mayflower,
and the Pilgrims were not yet expecting a supply ship from the Merchant Adventurers. It was immediately feared that the ship was from France, a country that had already exhibited a jealous hostility toward earlier English attempts to colonize the New World. The vessel might be part of a French expeditionary force come from Canada to snuff out the rival settlement in its infancy.

For more than a week, the ship lingered inexplicably at the tip of Cape Cod. Then, at the end of November, a lookout atop Fort Hill sighted a sail making for Plymouth Harbor. Many of the men were out working in the surrounding countryside. They must be called back immediately. A cannon was fired, and the tiny settlement was filled with excitement as men rushed in from all directions and Standish assembled them into a fighting force. Soon, in the words of Edward Winslow, “every man, yea, boy that could handle a gun were ready, with full resolution, that if [the ship] were an enemy, we would stand in our just defense.”

To their amazement and delight, it proved to be an English ship: the
Fortune,
about a third the size of the
Mayflower,
sent by the Merchant Adventurers with thirty-seven passengers aboard. In an instant, the size of the colony had almost doubled.

The Pilgrims learned that while they had been gripped by fear of the French, those aboard the
Fortune
had been paralyzed by fears of their own. Just as the Pilgrims had, almost exactly a year earlier, stared in shock and amazement at the barren coast of Provincetown Harbor, so had these sea-weary passengers been terrified by their first glimpse of the New World. The returning
Mayflower
had delivered word to London that the survivors of the first winter had managed to establish the beginnings of a viable settlement. But what the passengers aboard the
Fortune
saw gave them reason to think otherwise. It was difficult to believe that anyone could be still alive in this sterile and featureless land. Only after the ship’s master had promised to take them to Virginia if the Plymouth settlement had met disaster did they leave Provincetown Harbor.

It was a tremendous relief for passengers and Pilgrims alike to discover that, for now at least, all seemed well. Everyone aboard the
Fortune
was in good health, and almost immediately after coming ashore, Martha Ford gave birth to a son, John. There were a large number of Strangers among the passengers, many of them single men who undoubtedly looked with distress at the noticeable lack of young women among the Pilgrims. With the arrival of the
Fortune,
there would be a total of sixty-six men in the colony and just sixteen women. For every eligible female, there were six eligible men. For young girls such as fifteen-year-old Elizabeth Tilley, nineteen-year-old Priscilla Mullins, and fourteen-year-old Mary Chilton (all of them orphans), the mounting pressure to marry must have been intense, especially since the new arrivals tended to be, in Bradford’s words, “lusty young men, and many of them wild enough.” Adding to the potential volatility of the mix was the fact there was no place to put them all. Bradford had no choice but to divide them up among the preexisting seven houses and four public buildings, some of which must have become virtual male dormitories.

But the biggest problem created by the arrival of the
Fortune
had to do with food. Weston had failed to provide the passengers aboard the
Fortune
with any provisions for the settlement. Instead of strengthening their situation, the addition of thirty-seven more mouths to feed at the onset of winter had put them in a difficult, if not disastrous, position. Bradford calculated that even if they cut their daily rations in half, their current store of corn would last only another six months. After a year of relentless toil and hardship, they faced yet another winter without enough food. “[B]ut they bore it patiently,” Bradford wrote, “under hope of [future] supply.”

There were some familiar faces aboard the
Fortune.
The Brewsters welcomed their eldest son, Jonathan, a thirty-seven-year-old ribbon weaver, whom they hadn’t seen in almost a year and a half. Others from Leiden included Philip de la Noye, whose French surname was eventually anglicized to Delano and whose descendants included future U.S. president Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The newly remarried Edward Winslow greeted his twenty-four-year-old brother John. There was also Thomas Prence, the twenty-one-year-old son of a Gloucestershire carriage maker, who soon became one of the leading members of the settlement.

The most notable new arrival was Robert Cushman, whose chest pains aboard the ill-fated
Speedwell
had convinced him to remain in England during the summer of 1620. Cushman had negotiated the agreement with Thomas Weston and the Merchant Adventurers that Bradford and the others had refused to honor in Southampton. It was now time, Cushman told them, to sign the controversial agreement. “We…have been very chargeable to many of our loving friends…,” Cushman tactfully exhorted them in a sermon entitled “The Sin of Self-Love” delivered in the common house. “[B]efore we think of gathering riches,” Cushman admonished, “we must even in conscience think of requiting their charge” by paying the Merchant Adventurers back in goods. Cushman also presented the Pilgrims with a new patent secured from the Council for New England.

Unfortunately, from Cushman’s perspective, Weston had insisted on writing a letter. Addressed to the now deceased Governor Carver, the letter took the Pilgrims to task for not having loaded the
Mayflower
with goods. “I know your weakness was the cause of it,” Weston wrote, “and I believe more weakness of judgment than weakness of hands. A quarter of the time you spent in discoursing, arguing and consulting would have done much more.” Bradford was justifiably outraged by Weston’s accusation, apparently based on some letters that had made their way back to England on the
Mayflower.
Bradford acknowledged that the Merchant Adventurers had, so far, nothing to show for their investment. But their potential losses were only financial; Governor Carver had worked himself to death that spring, and “the loss of his and many other industrious men’s lives cannot be valued at any price.”

Despite his criticisms, Weston claimed to be one of the few financial backers the Pilgrims could still count on. “I promise you,” he wrote, “I will never quit the business, though all the other Adventurers should.” Only after Cushman assured them that Weston was a man to be trusted did Bradford and the others reluctantly sign the agreement.

Over the next two weeks, they loaded the
Fortune
with beaver skins, sassafras, and clapboards made of split oak (much smaller than modern clapboards, they were used for making barrel staves instead of siding houses). Valued at around £500, the cargo came close to cutting their debt in half. Certainly this would go a long way toward restoring the Merchant Adventurers’ confidence in the financial viability of the settlement.

On December 13, 1621, after a stay of just two weeks, the
Fortune
was on her way back to London. Cushman returned with her, leaving his fourteen-year-old son Thomas in Bradford’s care. In addition to Bradford’s letter to Weston, Cushman was given a manuscript account of the Pilgrims’ first thirteen months in America that was published the following year and is known today as
Mourt’s
[an apparent corruption of the editor George Morton’s last name]
Relation.
Written by Bradford and Edward Winslow, the small book ends with Winslow’s rhapsodic account of the First Thanksgiving and the abundance of the New World. Just days after the
Fortune
’s departure, the Pilgrims had reason to regret Winslow’s overly optimistic view of life in Plymouth.

The Pilgrims soon began to realize that their alliance with the Pokanokets had created serious problems with the far more powerful Narragansetts. The previous summer, Bradford had exchanged what he felt were positive and hopeful messages with the Narragansett sachem, Canonicus. Since then, however, Canonicus had grown increasingly jealous of the Pokanoket-Plymouth alliance. The Narragansetts, it was rumored, were preparing to attack the English settlement.

Toward the end of November a Narragansett messenger arrived at the settlement, looking for Squanto. He had a mysterious object from Canonicus in his hands. When he learned that the interpreter was away, he “seemed rather to be glad than sorry,” and hurriedly handed over what the Pilgrims soon realized was a bundle of arrows wrapped in the skin of a rattlesnake.

It was a most inauspicious offering to be sure, and when Squanto returned to Plymouth, he assured them that the arrows were “no better than a challenge.” Bradford responded by pouring gunpowder and bullets into the snake skin and sending it back to Canonicus. This appeared to have the desired effect. “[I]t was no small terror to the savage king,” Winslow reported, “insomuch as he would not once touch the powder and shot, or suffer it to stay in his house or country.” The powder-stuffed snake skin was passed like a hot potato from village to village until it finally made its way back to Plymouth.

Despite their show of defiance, the Pilgrims were deeply troubled by the Narragansett threat. Their little village was, they realized, wide open to attack. Their cumbersome muskets took an agonizingly long time to reload. Their great guns might pose a threat to a ship attempting to enter Plymouth Harbor but were of little use in repelling a large number of Native warriors, especially if they attacked at night. Bradford, doubtless at Standish’s urging, decided they must “impale” the town—build an eight-foot-high wall of wood around the entire settlement. If they were to include the cannon platform atop Fort Hill and their dozen or so houses on Cole’s Hill below it, the wall had to be at least 2,700 feet—more than a half mile—in length. Hundreds, if not thousands, of trees must be felled, their trunks stripped of branches and chopped or sawed to the proper length, then set deep into the ground. The tree trunks, or pales, of the fort must be set so tightly together that a man could not possibly fit through the gaps between them. In addition, Standish insisted that they must construct three protruding gates, known as flankers, that would also serve as defensive shooting platforms.

By any measure, it was a gargantuan task, but for a workforce of fewer than fifty men living on starvation rations it was almost inconceivable. The vast majority of the new arrivals were Strangers, and even though they tended to be young and strong, they were less likely to answer to a leadership dominated by Separatists when called upon to help with such an awesome labor.

The differences between the newcomers and Leideners quickly came to a head on December 25. For the Pilgrims, Christmas was a day just like any other; for most of the Strangers from the
Fortune,
on the other hand, it was a religious holiday, and they informed Bradford that it was “against their consciences” to work on Christmas. Bradford begrudgingly gave them the day off and led the rest of the men out for the usual day’s work. But when they returned at noon, they found the once placid streets of Plymouth in a state of joyous bedlam. The Strangers were playing games, including stool ball, a cricketlike game popular in the west of England. This was typical of how most Englishmen spent Christmas, but this was not the way the members of a pious Puritan community were to conduct themselves. Bradford proceeded to confiscate the gamesters’ balls and bats. It was not fair, he insisted, that some played while others worked. If they wanted to spend Christmas praying quietly at home, that was fine by him; “but there should be no gaming or reveling in the streets.”

Writing about this confrontation years later, Bradford claimed it was “rather of mirth than of weight.” And yet, for a young governor who must confront not only the challenges presented by a hostile Native nation but a growing divide among his own people, it was a crucial incident. It was now clear that no matter how it was done in England, Plymouth played by its own, God-ordained rules, and everyone—Separatist or Anglican—was expected to conform.

It seems never to have occurred to the Pilgrims that this was just the kind of intolerant attitude that had forced them to leave England. For them, it was not a question of liberty and freedom—those concepts, so near and dear to their descendants in the following century, were completely alien to their worldview—but rather a question of right and wrong. As far as they were concerned, King James and his bishops were wrong, and they were right, and as long as they had the ability to live as the Bible dictated, they would do so.

The Pilgrims had come to the New World to live and worship as they pleased. But with a growing contingent of Strangers in their midst, what had seemed like such a pure and straightforward goal when they were planning this endeavor back in Leiden had become more complicated.

For many of the new arrivals, it was all quite astonishing. Bradford had declared it illegal to follow the customs of their mother country. In the years ahead, the growing rift between Saints and Strangers led to the metamorphosis of the colony. For now they had more important things to worry about than whether or not it was right to play stool ball on Christmas Day. The Narragansetts were threatening, and they had a wall to build.

It took them a little more than a month to impale the town. The chopping and sawing was backbreaking, time-consuming work made all the more difficult by their equipment. Their English axes were quite different from the tools that evolved in America over the following century. Narrow and poorly balanced, an English felling ax wobbled with each stroke and required much more strength than the axes the Pilgrims’ descendants came to know.

Without oxen to help them drag the tree trunks in from the forest, they were forced to lug the ten-to twelve-foot lengths of timber by hand. They dug a two-to three-foot-deep trench, first using picks to break through the frozen topsoil and then, in all likelihood, a large hoelike tool (similar to what was recently uncovered by archaeologists at Jamestown) to dig a trench that was deep and wide enough to accommodate the butt ends of the pales. Adding to their difficulties was the lack of food. Some of the laborers grew so faint with hunger that they were seen to stagger on their way back to the settlement after a day’s work.