Part 2

“And this had like to have prooved their finall sentence, and being there confirmed by Act of Parliament, to after ages for a President: But that one with a ravenus voyce, begunne to croake and bellow for revenge, and put by that conclusive motion, alledging such deceipts might be a meanes here after to exasperate the mindes of the complaininge Salvages and that by his death, the Salvages should see their zeale to Iustice, and therefore hee should die: this was concluded; yet neverthelesse a scruple was made; now to countermaunde this act, did represent itselfe unto their mindes, which was how they should doe to get the mans good wil: this was indeede a spetiall obstacle: for without (that they all agreed) it would be dangerous, for any man to attempt the execution of it, lest mischiefe should befall them every man; he was a person, that in his wrath, did seeme to be a second Sampson, able to beate out their branes with the jawbone of an Asse: therefore they called the man and by perswation got him fast bound in jest, and then hanged him up hard by in good earnest, who with a weapon, and at liberty, would have put all those wise judges of this Parliament to a pitifull _non plus_ (as it hath been credibly reported), and made the cheife Iudge of them all buckell to him.”[18]

The work from which this extract is taken was published in 1632; in 1663, thirty-one years later, appeared the second part of the famous English satire, Hudibras. Butler, its author, had come across the New English Canaan, and the very original idea of vicarious atonement suggested in it entertained him hugely. He appropriated and improved it, adapting the facts to his own fancy, until at last the story appeared in its new guise, in what was the most popular English book of the day:

Our Brethren of New-England use Choice malefactors to excuse, And hang the Guiltless in their stead, Of whom the Churches have less need; As lately ’t happen’d: In a town There liv’d a Cobler, and but one, That out of Doctrine could cut Use, And mend men’s lives as well as shoes. This precious Brother having slain, In times of peace, an Indian, Not out of malice, but mere zeal, (Because he was an Infidel), The mighty Tottipottymoy Sent to our Elders an envoy, Complaining sorely of the breach Of league held forth by Brother Patch, Against the articles in force Between both churches, his and ours, For which he craved the Saints to render Into his hands, or hang, th’ offender; But they maturely having weigh’d They had no more but him o’ th’ trade, (A man that served them in a double Capacity, to teach and cobble), Resolv’d to spare him; yet to do The Indian Hogan Moghan too Impartial justice, in his stead did Hang an old Weaver that was bed-rid.[19]

The really amusing part of this episode, however, yet remains to be told. When it was rescued from oblivion, through the wit of Butler, in 1663, the reaction against Puritanism was at its height, and everything which tended to render the sect, so recently all-powerful, either odious or ridiculous, was eagerly sought for and implicitly believed. New England, and especially the province of Massachusetts Bay, was out of favor. So striking an exemplification of Puritan justice was not to be disregarded. The whole absurd fiction of Morton and Butler was, therefore, not only accepted as historical truth, but the bastard tradition was solemnly deposited at the door of the good people of Boston and Plymouth:--and so the Weymouth hanging passed into history hand in hand with the famous Blue-Laws of Connecticut. There is, however, something irresistibly ludicrous in picturing to oneself the horror and dismay with which the severe elders of the Plymouth church would have contemplated the saddling of their fame before posterity, on the ribald authority of the New English Canaan and of Hudibras, with the apocryphal misdeeds of Weston’s vagabonds. But so it happened, and nearly a century and a half later the absurd fiction was gravely recorded in his history by Governor Hutchinson, as a part of the early annals of New England.[20]

But it is necessary to return to Weston’s colony. We left it face to face with famine, deserted by its leader, and in terror of the savages; in the wish to propitiate whom the starving, shivering outcasts had just hung one of their own number in front of their palisade. Even this, however, did not appease the Indians, who were now thoroughly restless and had begun to conspire together all along the coast for the simultaneous destruction of both the infant settlements. It was just one year since the Virginia massacre, and that tragedy seemed about to be re-enacted in New England. Intimations of the impending danger reached the Plymouth and the Weymouth people at about the same time; coming to the former through a friendly hint from Massasoit, and to the latter from the talk of an Indian woman.

The Indians were now watching the Wessagusset settlement very closely. In spite of their terror, the settlers, however, lived on in a reckless way, mixing freely with the savages and taking no precautions against surprise.[21] But one at least of their number was thoroughly alarmed, and had resolved to make his escape to Plymouth. This was Phinehas Pratt, one of the seven who had come on in the shallop during the previous May in advance of the body of the enterprise. The journey he now proposed to himself was both difficult and dangerous. It was March, and he was insufficiently clad and weak for want of food; he did not know the way, nor did he even have a compass. The Indians, probably in furtherance of their half-matured conspiracy, had gradually moved their wigwams closer and closer to the settlement. Pratt’s first object was to steal away unobserved by them. Very early one morning, therefore, preparing a small pack, he took a hoe in his hand and left the settlement as if he were in search of nuts, or about to dig for shell-fish. He went directly towards that end of the swamp nearest the wigwams. Getting close to them he pretended to be busy digging, until he had satisfied himself that he was unobserved; then he suddenly plunged into the thicket and began to make his way as rapidly as he could in a southerly direction. The sky was overcast; the ground also was in many places covered with snow, which greatly alarmed him, as it seemed likely to afford an almost certain trail in case of pursuit. Fortunately for him he at once lost his way, or he must soon have been overtaken. He hurried along, however, as fast as he could, until late in the afternoon, when the sun appeared sufficiently to give him some indication of his course. He at length came to the North River, which he found both deep and cold; he succeeded in fording it, however, and, as night began to fall, found himself too weary to go further, weak from cold and hunger and yet afraid to light a fire. Finally he came to a deep hollow in which were many fallen trees; here he stopped, lit a fire and rested, listening to the howling of the wolves in the woods around him. At night the sky cleared and he distinguished the north star, thus getting his bearings. He resumed his journey in the morning but found himself unable to proceed with it, and so returned to his camping place of the previous night. The succeeding day, however, was clear, and he started again; this time more successfully, for by three o’clock in the afternoon he got to Duxbury and recognized the landmarks; soon afterwards reaching the settlement, thoroughly exhausted, but in safety. He thus finished a perilous journey, for the pursuers were not far behind him. The next day they appeared on the outskirts of the settlement and assured themselves of his arrival. They had lost his trail, and, following the more direct path, had missed him; but nevertheless he had, as he himself expressed it, “been pursued for his life in time of frost and snow as a deer chased by the wolves.”[22]

He now delivered his tidings and was cared for, but found the Plymouth settlement fully awake to the danger. The council had already the subject under advisement, and, the day before Pratt’s arrival, had decided upon war. Their proceedings were vigorous. Captain Miles Standish was authorized to take with him such a force as was in his judgment sufficient to enable him to hold his own against all the Indians in the neighborhood of Boston Bay, and go at once to Wessagusset. He did not apparently place a very high estimate either on the numbers or the valor of his opponents, for he selected only eight men,[23] and with them was on the point of starting when Pratt arrived. The next day, March 25, 1623, the wind proved fair, and so the little army got into its boat and set sail.

Reaching Weymouth Fore River on the 26th, after a prosperous voyage, Standish steered directly for the Swan, which was lying at her moorings near the settlement. Greatly to his surprise he found her wholly deserted,--there was not a soul on board. A musket was fired as a signal, which attracted the attention of a few miserable creatures busy searching for nuts. From them Standish learned that the principal men of the settlement were in the stockade; so he landed, and, after some conversation with them, promptly began his preparations. The stragglers were all called in, and every one was forbidden to go beyond gun-shot from the stockade. Rations of corn were issued to all out of the slender stock which the prudent Plymouth people had reserved for seed, and something like discipline was established. The weather was wet and stormy, delaying final operations, but the Indians, nevertheless, seeing Standish on the ground, began to suspect that their designs were discovered. Pecksuot, their chief, accordingly came in and had an interview, Hobbamock, a friendly Indian who had accompanied the expedition, acting as interpreter.

This was one of the very famous Indian talks of early New England annals; not only was it chronicled in all the records of the time, but it has since found a place in poetry, so that to-day the speech of the savage Pecksuot to the doughty Miles Standish is most familiar to us through the verses of Longfellow[24]:--

Then he unsheathed his knife, and, whetting the blade on his left hand, Held it aloft, and displayed a woman’s face on the handle, Saying, with bitter expression and look of sinister meaning: “I have another at home, with the face of a man on the handle; By and by they shall marry; and there will be plenty of children!”

This figurative language both Standish and his Indian interpreter accepted as meaning war. At the moment, however, no act of overt hostility took place on either side. Standish was not ready. His plan was to strike, but when he struck he meant to strike hard. He proposed, in fact, to get all the Indians he could into his power and then to kill them.[25] The day after the knife interview he found himself with several of his men in a room with four of the savages, among whom were Pecksuot and Wituwamat. Suddenly Standish gave the signal and flung himself on Pecksuot, snatching his knife from its sheath on his neck and stabbing him with it. The door was closed and a life-and-death struggle ensued. The savages were taken by surprise, but they fought hard, making little noise but catching at their weapons and struggling until they were cut almost to pieces. Finally Pecksuot, Wituwamat and a third Indian were killed; while a fourth, a youth of eighteen, was overpowered and secured; him, Standish subsequently hung. The massacre, for such in historic justice it must be called, seeing that they killed every man they could lay their hands on, then began. There were eight warriors in the stockade at the time,--Standish and his party had killed three and secured one; they subsequently killed another, while the Weston people despatched two more. One only escaped to give the alarm, which was rapidly spread through the Indian villages.

Standish immediately followed up his advantage. Leaving some Indian women, who happened to be in the stockade, in charge of a portion of his own men and of the settlers, he took one or two of the latter and the remainder of his own force, and started in pursuit. He had gone no great distance when a file of Indians was seen advancing. Both parties hurried forward to secure the advantage of a rising ground near at hand. Standish got to it first, and the savages at once scattered, sheltering themselves behind trees and discharging a flight of arrows at their opponents. The engagement was, however, very brief, for Hobbamock, throwing off his coat, rushed at his countrymen, who incontinently fled to the swamp; one only of the party being injured, a shot breaking his arm. Further pursuit was unavailing, so Standish returned to the stockade, from which he caused the Indian women to be dismissed unharmed.

The Weston people now discovered that they had had enough of life in the wilderness, and wholly declined to tarry any longer at Wessagusset. Standish asserted his readiness to hold the place against all the Indians of the vicinage with half the force of the Weston party, but they were not Standishes, nor did they feel any call to heroism. So, the choice being given to them, they divided,--one portion, on board the Swan, following Sanders to the coast of Maine, while the rest accompanied Standish home and cast in their lot among the Plymouth people. Standish supplied those on board the Swan with a sufficiency of corn whereon to sustain life, and saw them safely leave the harbor and bear away to the north and east; then he himself, carrying with him the head of Wituwamat, to ornament the Plymouth block-house as a terror to all evil-disposed savages, sailed prosperously home.

Thus in failure, disgrace and bloodshed ended the first attempt of a settlement at Weymouth. Ill-conceived, ill-executed, ill-fated, it was probably saved from utter extirpation only by the energetic interference of the Plymouth people. And these last not unjustifiably indulged in some grim chuckling over the speedy downfall of those who had thought to teach them how to subdue a wilderness.[26] Three men only remained behind at Wessagusset. One of these had domesticated himself among the savages; the other two, in defiance of orders, had straggled off to an Indian settlement where they had been left by a companion on the day of the engagement. All three were put to death by the savages, probably with that refinement of cruelty which distinguished Indian executions; for, afterwards, in speaking of their fate, one of the savages said, “When we killed your men they cried and made ill-favored faces.”[27]

When good old John Robinson, at Leyden, heard of the Wessagusset killing he was sorely moved. He wrote out to his flock a letter of gentle caution in respect to the rough ways of Captain Miles Standish, who, though the aged pastor loved him, he yet intimated was one perchance “wanting that tenderness of the life of man which is meet.” He also referred to the Wessagusset settlers as “heathenish Christians,” and exclaimed in reference to Pecksuot and Wituwamat, “Oh! how happy a thing had it been if you had converted some before you had killed any.”[28] Nevertheless, rough as he was, the Plymouth people then stood in greater need of stern Miles Standish than of gentle John Robinson. The times were not meet for works of conversion, nor were Pecksuot and his friends favorable subjects therefor. In the light of the Virginia experience of 1622, and of the New England terror during the war of King Philip, posterity must concede that the severe course of Miles Standish here in Weymouth, in March, 1623, was the most truly merciful course. The settlers had demoralized the Indians. They had at once inspired them with anger, with dislike and with contempt. Any sign of faltering on the part of the Plymouth people would have been fatal. Had they abandoned Wessagusset to its fate, the settlers there would have been exterminated, and the savages, maddened by a taste of blood, would have turned upon Plymouth. The woods would have rung with war-whoops and the feeble colony could scarcely have survived the ordeal of blood treading hard on that of famine. Standish crushed out the danger in the incipient stage. By ruthlessly murdering seven men he re-established the moral ascendency of the whites, and so saved the lives of hundreds. He stopped the war before it began, and deferred it to another generation. In so doing, the Puritan captain revealed the instinctive sagacity of a true soldier,--he struck so that he did not have to strike twice:--he cowed the savages at Weymouth, and for years peace was secured for Plymouth.[29]

All this took place in March, and, shortly after, the unfortunate Mr. Weston arrived on the coast of Maine, seeking news of his colony. He there heard of its ruin and, with one or two men, started in a small boat for Wessagusset. His ill-fortune pursued him. Overtaken by a storm he was cast away near where Newburyport now stands, and barely saved his life only to fall into the hands of the savages, who stripped him to his shirt. He succeeded, however, in finding his way back to the fishing stations in Maine and thence to Plymouth. The people there received him kindly, and loaned him some beaver-skins on which to trade: and again he returned to the eastward. There he found his smaller vessel, the Swan, and some of his people. Afterwards he seems to have been both very adventurous and very unfortunate. He made frequent voyages to Virginia, and now and again flits vaguely across the page of Plymouth history,--in debt, in trouble, in arrest. Finally he returned to England, where, long afterwards, during the wars of Cromwell, he died of the plague at Bristol.

But Wessagusset was not destined long to remain a solitude. Deserted in March, it was again occupied just six months later; for, in the middle of September, 1623, Captain Robert Gorges, a son of that Sir Ferdinand whose name is so prominent in the early annals of New England, sailed up the Fore River, and landed at Weston’s deserted plantation. His enterprise was of a quite different character from that which had preceded it. He held a grant from the Council of New England, covering a tract of land vaguely described as lying on the north-east side of Massachusetts Bay, as what is now known as Boston Bay was then called, and covering ten miles of sea-front, while stretching thirty miles into the interior. He was also commissioned as Governor-General, and authorized to correct any abuses which had crept into the affairs of the company in America; for the more effectual doing of which he was further provided with a grand admiral and a council, of which the Governor of Plymouth for the time being was _ex officio_ a member. His jurisdiction was of the largest description, civil, criminal and ecclesiastical, for he also brought with him in his company one Mr. William Morell, a clergyman of the Church of England, holding a commission from the ecclesiastical courts of the mother country, which authorized him to exercise a species of superintendency over the churches of the colony. This whole expedition seems, in fact, to have been organized on a most ludicrously grandiose scale, probably to meet the views of its commander, who had recently seen some service in the Venetian wars and was now nourishing ambitious visions of an empire in the wilderness. The establishment of Episcopacy in New England had long been a favorite idea with Sir Ferdinand Gorges,[30] and now, when he sent his son thither, he provided him not only with a council and an admiral, but also with a primate. This company was, however, composed of a different material from that of Weston’s. It was made up of families, as well as of individuals, and contained in it some elements of strength.[31] The party disembarked just as the autumn tints began to glow through the forest, and busied themselves with the erection of their storehouses. Captain Gorges meanwhile notified the Plymouth people of his arrival, and Governor Bradford prepared to answer the summons in person. Before he could do so, however, Gorges started on a voyage to the fishing stations in Maine; but, encountering some rough weather on his way, he put about and ran into Plymouth in search of a pilot. He remained there some fourteen days, and then, instead of resuming his voyage, he returned to Wessagusset by land. Upon reaching his seat of government he, for the first, and, so far as appears, for the last time, made any use of his great civil and military powers by causing Weston, who had turned up in Plymouth Bay, on board the Swan, to be arrested and sent with this vessel around to Weymouth. His own ship, meanwhile, remained at Plymouth, where, on the 5th of November, her company occasioned a great disaster to the unfortunate colonists. The weather was cold, and a number of seamen were celebrating Guy Fawkes’ day before a large fire in one of the houses, when the thatch ignited, and, for a brief time, it was a question whether the general storehouse, and with it the Plymouth colony, were not to be destroyed. Fortunately only three or four houses were burned, but it is curious to reflect how much more heavily the loss of those few log huts bore on the Plymouth of those days than did the great conflagration of two centuries and a half later on the Boston of ours. At any rate it seemed to sicken Captain Robert Gorges and his party, for, shortly after it, he retired to England, thoroughly disgusted with the work of founding empires in the New World.[32] With him returned the larger part of his company, but not the whole of it; nor, indeed, does Weymouth seem ever again to have been abandoned as a settlement. While some of the party went to Virginia, others remained at Wessagusset, and Mr. Morell took up his temporary abode at Plymouth. This gentleman appears, indeed, to have been not only a man of education and refinement, but also to have been possessed of discretion and good sense. For a wonder he, an ecclesiastic, remained at Plymouth nearly a year with a letter in his pocket conferring on him great powers, and yet he neither sought to exercise any authority, nor did he intrigue or stir up any trouble. On the contrary, he quietly minded his own business, and beguiled his leisure hours in the composition of a very good Latin poem descriptive of the country.[33] He made of it, too, a very bad metrical translation. The piece is curious, but now scarcely repays perusal.[34] With the country he was charmed, but not so with the natives who inhabited it. Indeed, he seems to have been impressed with America much as Bishop Reginald Heber was, long afterwards, with India, for he described his diocese in language similar to that used by the latter dignitary:

“Though every prospect pleases, And only man is vile.”

A few very brief extracts will give a sufficient idea both of the spirit of his poem and of the otherwise than smoothness of his versification. It is Weymouth itself, perhaps, that he thus describes:--

“The fruitfull and well watered earth doth glad All hearts, when Flora’s with her spangles clad, And yeelds an hundred fold for one, To feede the bee and to invite the drone.

* * * * *

“There nature’s bounties, though not planted are, Great store and sorts of berries great and faire: The filberd, cherry and the fruitful vine, Which cheares the heart and makes it more divine. Earth’s spangled beauties pleasing smell and sight; Objects for gallant choice and chiefe delight. * * * * *