The Mayflower and the Pilgrims' New World* (21 page)

standish was not the sort to overlook a social slight. He objected angrily to his rude treatment by Canacum and scolded the two Massachusett Indians for not paying him the proper respect. In an attempt to pacify the captain, Canacum insisted that standish invite his three English companions, who were then loading the shallop with corn, to join them beside the fire. But standish stormed out of the wigwam and spent the night with his men in a temporary shelter they had built beside the shallop.

standish's anger appears to have blinded him to the fact that something far more important than a social slight had occurred at Manomet. Only in hindsight did standish see the interchange between Wituwamat and Canacum as the first sign that the Indians in the region were plotting against the Pilgrims. For, as it turned out, standish and Wituwamat were destined to meet again.

◆◆◆ While standish was at Manomet, an Indian messenger arrived at Plymouth with the news that Massasoit was gravely ill. Bradford decided he must send someone—not only to attend to Massasoit, but to make contact with the crew of a Dutch vessel that the messenger claimed had been driven ashore, almost to the door of the sachem's wigwam. since Winslow had already visited Massasoit and could speak Dutch, he was chosen for the expedition to Pokanoket.

Winslow was accompanied by Hobbamock and John Hamden, a gentleman from London who was spending the winter with the Pilgrims. About midway in their forty-mile journey, they received word from some Indians that Massasoit was dead. “This news struck us blank,” Winslow wrote. The Indians also said that the Dutch had already left Pokanoket.

Hobbamock was the most profoundly affected by the news of the sachem's passing, and he insisted that they return immediately to Plymouth. But Winslow was not so sure. If Massasoit was really dead, then Corbitant, who lived just to the east of Pokanoket, would in all likelihood become the most powerful sachem in the region. Even though he was, in Winslow's words, “a most hollowhearted friend toward us,” it might be in their best interests to stop at Corbitant's village and pay their respects. Given that less than a year ago both Winslow and Hobbamock had been part of an expedition sent to kill Corbitant, this was an extremely dangerous plan. But after some consideration, all of them thought it worth the risk.

As they made their way to Corbitant's village, Hobbamock could not contain his sorrow over the loss of Massasoit. “My loving sachem, my loving sachem!” he cried. “Many have I known, but never any like thee.” He said that with Massasoit's death he feared Plymouth “had not a faithful friend left among the Indians.” He then proceeded to deliver a remarkable eulogy:

Corbitant, they soon discovered, was not at home. He was still at Pokanoket, his wife said; she wasn't sure whether or not Massasoit was still alive. Winslow hired a runner to go to Pokanoket to get the latest news. Just a half hour before sunset, the messenger returned with word that the sachem “was not yet dead, though there was no hope we should find him living.” Winslow decided to set out immediately for Pokanoket.

 

◆◆◆ It was still dark when they arrived at Massasoit's village. His wigwam was so jammed with people that they had difficulty making their way to the sachem's side. several powwows hovered over him, “making such a hellish noise, as it distempered us that were well,” Winslow wrote. Massasoit's arms, legs, and thighs were being massaged by half a dozen women, who rubbed his skin “to keep heat in him.” Winslow asked that Massasoit be told that “his friends, the English, were come to see him.”

The sachem was unable to see, but he could still hear. He weakly asked which one of the English was present. The Indians said Winslow's name as “Winsnow,” and Massasoit responded, “Keen Winsnow?” or “Are you Winslow?” The Pilgrim answered “ahhee,” or “yes.” Massasoit's response: “Matta neen wonckanet namen, Winsnow!” or “O Winslow, I shall never see thee again.”

Winslow explained that Governor Bradford had wished he could be there, but important business had required him to remain at Plymouth. Instead, Winslow had come with some medicine and food “most likely to do [the sachem] good in this his extremity.” Massasoit had eaten nothing in a very long time, and Winslow attempted to feed him some fruit preserves from the tip of a knife. Once the sweetened fruit had dissolved in Massasoit's mouth, he swallowed—for the first time in two days.

Winslow began to examine the interior of the sachem's mouth. It was “exceedingly furred,” and his tongue was so swollen that it was little wonder he had been unable to eat anything. After scraping the “corruption” from his mouth and tongue, Winslow fed him more of the preserves.

Massasoit may have been suffering from typhus, probably brought to the village by the recently departed Dutch traders. Typhus thrived in the crowded conditions typical of an Indian village or, for that matter, an English one. According to a modern description of typhus, symptoms include “fever and chills, vomiting, constipation or diarrhea, muscle ache and delirium or stupor. The tongue is first coated with a white fur, which then turns brown. The body develops small red eruptions which may bleed.” In severe cases, the death rate can reach 70 percent.

Within a half hour of receiving his first taste of Winslow's fruit preserves, Massasoit had improved to the extent that his sight had begun to return. Winslow had brought several bottles of medicine, but they had broken along the way. He asked Massasoit if he could send a messenger to get some more from the surgeon back in Plymouth, as well as a couple of chickens, so that he might cook up a broth. This was readily agreed to, and by 2 A.M. a runner was on his way with a letter from Winslow.

The next day, Massasoit was well enough to ask Winslow to shoot a duck and make an English pottage similar to what he had eaten at Plymouth. Fearing that his stomach was not yet ready for meat, Winslow insisted that he first try a pottage of greens and herbs. After much hunting about, Winslow and John Hamden were able to find only a few strawberry leaves and a sassafras root. They boiled the two together, and after straining the results through Winslow's handkerchief and combining it with some roasted corn, they fed the mixture to Massasoit. He drank at least a pint of the broth and soon had his first bowel movement in five days.

Before fading off to sleep, the sachem asked Winslow to wash out the mouths of all the others who were sick in the village, “saying they were good folk.” Reluctantly Winslow went about the work of scraping the mouths of all who desired it, a duty he admitted to finding “much offensive to me, not being accustomed with such poisonous savors.” This was a form of diplomacy that went far beyond the usual exchange of greetings and gifts.

That afternoon Winslow shot a duck and prepared to feed Massasoit the promised pottage. By this time, the sachem had improved remarkably. “Never did I see a man so low ... recover in that measure in so short a time,” Winslow wrote. The duck's meat was quite fatty, and Winslow said it was important to skim the grease from the top of the broth, but Massasoit was now so hungry he insisted on making “a gross meal of it”—gobbling down the duck, fat and all. An hour later, he was vomiting so violently that he began to bleed from the nose.

For the next four hours the blood poured down, and Winslow began to fear that this might be the end. But eventually the bleeding stopped, and the sachem slept for close to eight hours. When he awoke, he was feeling so much better that he asked that the two chickens, which had just arrived from Plymouth, be kept as breeding stock rather than cooked for his benefit.

All the while, Indians from as many as a hundred miles away continued to arrive at Pokanoket. Before Winslow's appearance, many of those in attendance had commented on the absence of the English and suggested that they cared little about Massasoit's welfare. With this remarkable recovery, everything had changed. “Now I see the English are my friends and love me,” Massasoit announced to the crowd; “and whilst I live, I will never forget this kindness they have showed me.”

Before their departure, Massasoit took Hobbamock aside and had some words with the trusted pniese. Not until the following day, after they had spent the night with Corbitant, who now declared himself to be one of the Pilgrims' strongest allies, did Hobbamock reveal the subject of his conversation with Massasoit.

Plymouth, the sachem claimed, was in great danger because of Weston's men at Wessagussett, who had upset the Massachusetts so much that the Indians had decided to wipe out the settlement. But to attack Wessagussett would surely anger the Pilgrims, who would take revenge for the deaths of their countrymen. The only solution, the Massachusetts had determined, was to launch raids on both English settlements.

But the Massachusetts had just forty warriors; if they were to attack Wessagussett and Plymouth simultaneously, they needed help. Massasoit claimed that they had gotten the support of half a dozen villages on Cape Cod, as well as the Indians at Manomet and Martha's Vineyard. An attack was imminent, Massasoit insisted, and the only option the Pilgrims had was “to kill the men of Massachusetts, who were the authors of this intended mischief.” If the Pilgrims waited until after the Indians had attacked Wessagussett, it would be too late.

It was alarming to learn that they were, in Winslow's words, “at the pit's brim, and yet feared nor knew not that we were in danger.” After more than two years of threatened violence, it now appeared that the Pilgrims might have no choice but to go to war.

◆◆◆ As Winslow, Hobbamock, and John Hamden hurried back to Plymouth to tell Governor Bradford of the plot, Phineas Pratt, one of the leaders of the sorry settlement of Wessagussett, was beginning to think it was time to flee to Plymouth.

Their sufferings had become unendurable. They had nothing to eat, and the Indians were terrifying them. The warriors, led by a pniese named Pecksuot, gathered outside the wall of the Wessagussett fort. “Machit pesconk!” they shouted, which Pratt translated as “naughty guns.” An attack seemed at hand, so the English increased the number of men on watch. But without food, the guards began to die at their posts. One bitterly cold night, Pratt reported for guard duty. “I [saw] one man dead before me,” he remembered, “and another [man dead] at my right hand and another at my left for want of food.”

Word had reached the settlement that the Massachusetts planned to attack both Wessagussett and Plymouth. sachem Obtakiest was waiting for the snow to melt so that his warriors' footprints could not be tracked when they left one settlement for the other. “[T]heir plot was to kill all the English people in one day,” Pratt wrote. He decided to leave as soon as possible for Plymouth. “[I]f [the] Plymouth men know not of this treacherous plot,” he told his companions, “they and we are all dead men.”

With a small pack draped across his back, Pratt walked out of the fort as casually as he could manage with a hoe in his hand. He began to dig at the edge of a large swamp, pretending to search for groundnuts. He looked to his right and to his left and, seeing no Indians, disappeared into the swamp.

He ran till about three o'clock in the afternoon, camped for the night, and by three the next day, he had reached the site of what would become the village of Duxbury, just to the north of Plymouth. As he ran across the Jones River, haunted by the fear that the Indians were about to catch up to him, he said to himself, “[N]ow am I a deer chased [by] wolves.” He found a well-worn path and was running down a hill when up ahead he saw an Englishman walking toward him. It was John Hamden, who had recently returned from Pokanoket with Edward Winslow. suddenly overcome by exhaustion, Pratt collapsed onto the trunk of a fallen tree. “Mr. Hamden,” he called out, “I am glad to see you alive.”

 

◆◆◆ Hamden explained that Massasoit too had told them of the plot against Plymouth and Wessagussett and that Governor Bradford had recently convened a public meeting to discuss how the plantation should proceed. It was irritating to the Pilgrims to know that they had been put into this mess not by anything
they
had done but by the irresponsible actions of Weston's men. The one bit of good news was that thanks to Winslow's efforts at Pokanoket, Massasoit was once again on their side. There was little doubt what the sachem expected of them: They were to launch a preemptive strike against the Massachusetts.

The fact remained, however, that so far no Indians had even threatened Plymouth. If they were to start an attack, it would be based on rumors—and they all knew from experience how misleading the rumors could be. Then again, with a sachem as trustworthy and powerful as Massasoit telling them to act, what more justification did they need? Yes, they decided, their future safety depended on a swift and daring assault.

William Bradford decided that standish should make an example of “that bloody and bold villain” Wituwamat and bring back his head to Plymouth, “that he might be a warning and terror to all of that disposition.” standish had been itching to settle a score with Wituwamat ever since the Massachusett warrior had snubbed him at Manomet. The captain put together a force that included Hobbamock and just seven Englishmen—any more and the Massachusetts might suspect what the English were planning. They would sail for Wessagussett pretending to be on a trading mission. Instead of launching a full-scale attack, they would, after secretly warning Weston's men, “take [the Indians] in such traps as they lay for others.”