Part 12
The Indians around Plymouth laughed at the little red-headed white captain because he was so small. He was so quick-tempered that they named him “Little-Pot-That-Soon-Boils-Over.” Once when a tall, wiry Indian north of Plymouth insulted him, the fiery little captain had all he could do to control himself. Standish and three other white men had gone up to that place for the purpose of punishing the Indians who were threatening the whole colony with death. Watching his chance, the white captain sprang upon the big Indian chief who had sneered at him, snatched the savage’s own knife, and killed him with a single stab. The other white men dispatched their Indians. The account of this brave deed of the Captain of Plymouth was reported among the Indians far and near, and the Pilgrims had long years of peace because the red men had gained a wholesome respect for Myles Standish, whose name they now changed to Sword-of-the-White-Man.
JOHN WINTHROP, A PURITAN MAKER OF MASSACHUSETTS
John Winthrop can not be called a boy’s hero; yet he was a hero, and his life was strange and interesting. He was a son of a good Puritan family in England. When a young man he met Oliver Cromwell, who became Lord Protector of England. He was acquainted with John Milton, the blind Puritan poet who wrote “Paradise Lost,” one of the greatest poems in the English language. John Winthrop had also to transact certain business with Cromwell’s cousin, John Hampden, the great English patriot who opposed King Charles when he sought to impose taxation upon the people without their consent.
Young Winthrop was married the first time when he was seventeen, and his son Henry was born when the young father was eighteen. In 1629, the father decided to go to America where he could worship God as he thought best. He and four hundred men and women set sail from England in a fleet of small ships, intending to join the settlement at Salem, started a year before. One of these ships was the _Mayflower_, in which the Pilgrims of Plymouth had sailed nine years before.
On their second morning out from England they spied eight ships coming behind them. The captain of the _Arabella_, the ship on which Winthrop sailed (as he wrote in the logbook or journal of the voyage),
“caused the gun-room and gun-deck to be cleared. After noon we still saw those eight ships to stand towards us. Having more wind than we, they came up apace. We all prepared to fight with them, and took down some cabins which were in the way of our ordnance [cannon] and out of every ship were thrown such bed matters as were subject to take fire. We drew forth our men and armed them with muskets and other weapons and instruments for fireworks. To try it our captain shot a ball of wildfire fastened to an arrow, out of a crossbow, which burnt in the water a good time.
“The women and children were removed into the lower deck that they might be out of danger. All things being thus fitted, we went to prayer upon the upper deck. It was good to see how cheerful all the company appeared; not a woman or child showed fear.
“It was now about one of the clock, and the fleet seemed to be within a league of us; therefore our captain, because he would show he was not afraid of them, and that he might see what was to be done before night should overtake us, tacked about and stood to meet them. And when they came near, we perceived them to be our friends.
“So every ship (as they met) saluted each other and the musketeers discharged their small shot; and so, God be praised, our fear and danger was turned into mirth and friendly entertainment. Our danger being thus over, we espied two boats fishing in the Channel. So every one of our four ships manned out a skiff, and we bought of them great store of excellent fresh fish of divers sorts.”
The voyagers were seventy-six days--nearly eleven weeks--crossing the Atlantic. They had passed through storms, but when, early in June, they sighted America, Winthrop wrote in his journal:
“We had now fair sunshine weather, and so pleasant a sweet air as did much refresh us; and there came a smell off shore like the smell of a garden. There came a wild pigeon into our ship, and another small land bird.”
In four days the _Arabella_ was anchored in Salem Harbor. The poor little settlement welcomed some of the newcomers with “a good supper of venison pasty. In the meantime most of our people went on shore upon the land of Cape Ann, which lay very near us, and gathered store of fine strawberries.”
“Salem, where we landed, pleased us not,” wrote one of the men on board to a countess in England. Winthrop, who had been elected governor of the colony they were to found, looked about for a better place to settle, and decided on a site they called Charlestown, on the Charles River. Although they had left England because of their obstinate and foolish king, Charles the First, they named rivers and towns for him, and one of their earliest churches was called King’s Chapel. When no one was allowed to think for himself, or even to wear such clothes as he saw fit, it would have been regarded as almost a crime to speak a word against the king, no matter how much he deserved a bad name.
When Governor Winthrop came back from Charlestown to Salem, he wrote in his journal: “We went to Massachusetts to find out a place for our sitting down.” By “Massachusetts” he meant only that part of the country along Boston Harbor, about fifteen miles south of Salem. Just after his return, his eldest son Henry, who had come over on another ship, arrived at Salem. That very day the young man started with several of the ship’s officers to visit some Indian wigwams. In his journal the father describes what happened:
“They saw, on the other side of the river, a small canoe. He would have had one of the company swim over and fetch it, rather than walk several miles on foot, it being very hot weather, but none of the party could swim but himself; and so he plunged in, and, as he was swimming over, was taken with a cramp a few rods from shore, and drowned.”
“My son Henry! My son Henry!” wrote the bereaved governor to his wife in England. “Ah, poor child. Yet it grieves me much more for my dear daughter. Yet for all these things (I praise my God) I am not discouraged.”
Henry, the son of John Winthrop’s first wife, had been married in England. He had come without his bride to the western wilds to build a little home before sending for her.
Heartsore but not dismayed, Governor Winthrop took his followers and tried to make the settlement at Charlestown, now part of the great city of Boston. But their sufferings were not over. As at Jamestown, on the James River in Virginia about twenty-five years before this, the settlers were ill with malaria and some of them died.
Then a strange old hermit, who had lived about twenty years alone on a tree-topped hill on the other side of the river, came to see the new governor, and invited him to come over the river and build his town on the hill which had been named Three-mount, Tri-mountain, or Tremont. So Winthrop and his people moved once more and named the new place for the city of Boston in England. The old hermit proved to be William Blackstone, a minister from old England. On the Three Mounts he tilled a small farm which extended down into the now historic Boston Common. He had brought from England his library, and spent his time reading, farming, and raising apples. He had left England because he would not worship according to the legal forms there. But he did not like the way the Puritans wished him to worship, either. So he moved away from Boston as soon as he could dispose of his house and other real estate.
Blackstone also had been kind to the Indians. His influence did much toward keeping the red tribes friendly with the white settlers of Boston. On the highest of the three mounts was placed a sort of lighthouse or beacon which sailors could see far down the harbor. This gave the name of Beacon Hill to that part of Boston. On this hill the State House has since been erected. This building has a great dome covered with gold-leaf which glistens in the sun and can be seen for many miles around. “All roads lead” to the dome of the State House in Boston, as the spokes of a wheel come together in the hub. Because of this fact, a humorous writer gave Boston the title of “The Hub of the Universe.”
Though the Indians gave the early settlers very little trouble, the wolves which howled around the settlement were alarming, and sometimes dangerous to the little children. Sometimes a bear would come ambling into “Boston Town.” The people’s cows were pastured on the Common. This made some people who wished to make fun of Boston claim that the narrow, crooked streets of that city were laid out by the cows, as they wandered down from the Common to drink at a certain spring.
Sometimes the town suffered from disease and famine. One day, when Governor Winthrop had divided his last cupful of cornmeal with a starving beggar, he appointed a day of fasting and prayer to God for food. On the very day set for this fast, a ship arrived from England with provisions, and the people had a feast instead. Another time when the people did not have enough to eat, an Indian chief named Chickataubot came and presented the governor with a great quantity of corn. As with the Indians, so with the white settlers at first, it was either feast or famine.
The people of Boston were kinder to the Indians than to the white men who failed to agree with them in religion. They banished the Baptists and hanged the Quakers. Besides Roger Williams, they drove out a good woman named Anne Hutchinson, because she argued too well against some of their beliefs. This gifted woman and her family were murdered and scalped by Indians in the log cabin in which they lived after they were banished from Boston.
Governor Winthrop finally sent for his wife and his other children. One of his sons became governor of Connecticut. John Winthrop was twelve times elected governor of Massachusetts. More than once he was chosen deputy governor. He was good to the poor and unfortunate. In this he was far in advance of his time. It was said that he kept his private purse open for the public. Once, when he found that a man was stealing wood from his pile, he laughed and said he would stop that. He did so by inviting the man to come in the daytime and help himself to all the wood he needed. But the man never came again.
Cotton Mather, one of the greatest of Boston preachers, said of Governor Winthrop that he was--
“The terror of the wicked, and delight of the sober, the envy of the many, but the hope of those who had any hopeful design in hand for the common good of the nation.”
ROGER WILLIAMS, A MINISTER WHO LIVED THE GOLDEN RULE
When the Pilgrim Fathers left Europe in the clumsy little ship, the _Mayflower_, they came to America to have freedom to think and act as they believed right in matters of religion. Many men in England who wished to have their own religious beliefs were called Puritans because they wished to purify the Church of England from things which they thought were wrong. King James of England had announced that they must all worship in the ways of the Church of England or he would “harry them out of the land.”
Puritans and other people who would not conform to the service of the Church of England were called Nonconformists. The group of Nonconformists who went away from their own country in 1620, to come as strangers to America, were called the Pilgrims. They came to America in the _Mayflower_, and landed on a big boulder in the edge of the harbor at a place they named Plymouth. Companies of Puritans sailed from England a few years later and landed on the shores of Massachusetts Bay, some at Salem, and some at a place they named Boston, for another town in England. John Winthrop was the leader of this last company, and was made governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony.
The Puritans soon found that there were some of their number who did not believe just as they did. It seems strange now that those who had come from England just to find a place where they could worship God in the way they saw fit could not let others do the same. They came to do what their consciences told them was right, but they would not let others think that any other way was right.
So when members of the Society of Friends, called Quakers, came, dressing differently and thinking it wrong to fight and treat the Indians cruelly, the Puritans sent them away. If the Quakers came back to Boston after being sent away, they were hanged on the Common. A man who did not think what his neighbors believed was likely to have a hard time of it. For any one to dress differently from others was considered a great offense. It was the same all over the world, especially in England. The first man who tried to wear a silk hat in London was chased through the streets. The mob battered his hat and tore his clothes, and he barely escaped with his life.
Therefore, when Roger Williams, a bright young minister from England, came to preach in the first church of Boston, the people soon found that he believed in a different form of baptism from theirs, and some were angry enough to wish to kill him for being a Baptist. So he left Boston and went to live at Plymouth. The preaching of those days was not so much about doing good and living by the Golden Rule as about certain fixed beliefs. This often led to angry arguments, and some good people became very violent. On this account Roger Williams soon had to leave Plymouth. Then he went to Salem and built a little church there which is still standing, about three hundred years old. Here the young minister kept on preaching what the leaders thought were strange and wicked teachings. It was decided that such a reckless preacher should be arrested and sent in chains to England to be tried, and imprisoned or put to death. But Roger Williams heard of this decision and did not wait to be arrested. When the captain and his men from Boston came to the Salem minister’s house, they found that he had left there three days before.
When the people of Boston, Salem, and Plymouth next heard of Roger Williams, he was settled on Narragansett Bay. The Indians there received him gladly, for he had been one of the few white men who treated them kindly, as William Penn, fifty years afterwards, dealt with the Indians along the Delaware River.
Williams and his friends built a group of log houses and named their settlement Providence, because they believed that, in the providence, or care, of God, they had found a safe retreat among the savages from the severity of the pious Puritans of Massachusetts. Quakers and other religious people, who were driven from the Puritan colonies, came and settled near Roger Williams. Even here the people of different beliefs quarreled over religious matters, and good Pastor Williams had all he could do to keep them from fighting and injuring one another.
Soon the savage Pequot Indians tried to persuade all the Indian tribes to join together and kill at a stroke all the white men who had come over the Great Water and taken from the natives certain parts of their country. When the white men of Boston and Plymouth heard of this they sent and begged Roger Williams to use his good influence with his neighbors the Narragansetts, a large and powerful tribe, to prevent them from joining in the plot to murder all the white men--as the Indians could have done if all the tribes had joined together and attacked all at once.
Here was a chance for Roger Williams to get even with those who had wished to kill or imprison him and who had driven him from place to place. But the minister of Providence returned good for evil. Taking his life in his hands, he went to the Indian village. The Pequot braves were there in the wigwam of Canonicus, the Narragansett chief,
trying to persuade him and his tribe to take part in a war against the “palefaces.” Roger Williams was a hero. He stayed with those Indians, sleeping with them at night without showing the least sign of fear, though he very well knew that a savage Pequot might stab him in his sleep.
The Providence minister was successful. Canonicus refused to join with the Pequots. Because the Narragansetts stayed out of the war, other tribes also kept out of it. The Pequots went ahead, but the white men defeated and destroyed them. By his conduct at this time of need, Roger Williams set both red men and white a noble example. He taught them all by his life that a true Christian loves his enemies and does good to those who treat him badly. The man who founded the town of Providence and the state of Rhode Island was the friend both of white men and red because he lived the Golden Rule.
LORD BALTIMORE, CALVERT AND CLAIBORNE, THE THREE FATHERS OF MARYLAND
George Calvert, of Kipling, England, was such a fine man that he was beloved by king and people alike. King James gave him the title of “Sir” George Calvert, and made him Secretary of State. As the king and the church in England were Protestant, Sir George felt it his duty to give up his royal honors when he became a Catholic. But King James’ son, Charles the First, instead of taking Calvert’s rank away from him, made him “Baron” Baltimore. A baron is higher in position than a knight, who is called “Sir.”
A few years after the Pilgrims came to America and settled at Plymouth in order to worship God as they thought right, Lord Baltimore asked permission to make a settlement for himself and the Catholics of England who were persecuted because of their religion. The first place chosen by him for a Catholic settlement was in Newfoundland. But though the climate was lovely and cool there in spring and summer, the settlers found it so cold in winter that they had to go back to England. King Charles then granted Lord Baltimore another great tract of land much farther south, between the English settlement at Jamestown and that of the Puritans at Plymouth in New England. Lord Baltimore named this region “Mary Land,” in honor of King Charles’ wife, the queen of England.
As all the other English settlements in America were Protestant, the party had great trouble in securing supplies and getting started for the New World. Before they were quite ready, the first Lord Baltimore died, and his eldest son, Cecil Calvert, who then became Lord Baltimore, inherited Maryland as part of his father’s estate. But some of the land granted to Lord Baltimore had been settled years before and was claimed by the colonists of Virginia. On account of this, young Lord Baltimore had to stay in London to look out for his rights in America. Therefore his younger brother, Leonard Calvert, was sent to act for him as governor of Maryland.
At last the voyagers sailed away in two ships, the _Ark_ and the _Dove_. There were one hundred and twenty-eight passengers, not counting servants and children. There were others on board who, not having money, bound themselves by law to work for a certain time in America to pay their passage across the sea.
The two ships were caught in a terrific storm on the way and the _Dove_ was not to be seen anywhere. After many days of hoping against hope, those on the _Ark_ gave up for lost the _Dove_ and all their friends on it. Then the _Ark_ sailed on alone, stopping, after many weeks, at one of the islands of the West Indies. While they were anchored there their sorrow was turned to joy, for the _Dove_ caught up with them. It had been driven out of sight by the fierceness of the gale and had found refuge in a harbor near by.
The two sister ships now sailed northward and entered the mouth of the Potomac. Of this river Father White, one of the company, wrote:
“Never have I beheld a larger or more beautiful river. The Thames seems a mere rivulet in comparison with it; it is not disfigured by any swamps, but has firm land on each side. Fine groves of trees appear, not choked with bushes and undergrowth, but growing at intervals as if planted by hand, so that you might easily drive a four-horse carriage through the midst of the trees.”
Governor Leonard Calvert had heard so many stories of the fierceness and cunning of the Indians that he did not land at once. After the two ships had cruised about the rivers and the bay awhile, he decided to settle at the mouth of a small river, which they named St. Mary’s, and built a group of cabins, calling this place St. Mary’s also.
They were quite surprised to find their Indian neighbors friendly, bringing corn and provisions, and showing them all they could about planting and trapping and hunting. The settlers soon learned that the Indians were friendly because they wanted the white men to help them when they went to war with their savage enemies. The red men thought the strangers’ “firesticks” (guns) worked magic, like lightning and thunder from above. The children of young Maryland saw much to entertain and sometimes to frighten them. When the Indians painted themselves with red, black, and yellow stripes, they looked even uglier than before. The white people had heard of the savages’ war dances and scalp dances, but they now found the natives had also their corn dances, something like a harvest or Thanksgiving festival.
The Maryland colonists were kind to the tribes and gained their friendship, as Champlain had done and as William Penn and the Quakers of Philadelphia were to do about fifty years later. The Indians in and around Maryland learned to believe in the goodness of the people of the Baltimore colony.
Most of the trouble Governor Calvert had in settling Maryland was with a white leader named Claiborne, who had settled on the largest island in the bay. He claimed that this land, which was named Kent Island, was part of Virginia.
Governor Calvert visited Jamestown, and the governor of that colony said that the island was part of Lord Baltimore’s land. Then Claiborne announced that Kent Island was not only separate from either colony, but that it belonged to him. He had made friends among the Indians, far and near, and began to boast that he was going to drive all the other white people out of that country.
The Marylanders went to work like so many beavers, building a fort and other defenses to be ready for an attack. When they heard that the people on Kent Island had fitted out a large sailboat as a man-of-war, Governor Calvert fitted up two pinnaces, or small boats, and mounted a cannon in each. Then the men of Maryland sailed for Kent Island and captured it, after a battle in which several persons were killed. After this there was no more trouble with Claiborne, and since that time Kent Island has belonged to Maryland. Lord Baltimore held the rights over Maryland by a grant from the king, somewhat as William Penn afterward came to own Pennsylvania. Although Cecil, Baron Baltimore, was never able to visit his property in the New World, his name was given to Baltimore, the greatest city of Maryland, and Anne Arundel County was named for his wife.
The purpose of the colony was not all religious. Trading and business were also the objects of those brave settlers, and some of the most successful merchant princes have sprung from that old Maryland stock--“the best out of Old England.” The women of Maryland have been far-famed for their beauty. There is good reason for naming the loveliest of climbing roses, “Baltimore Belles.”