The Mayflower and the Pilgrims' New World* (10 page)

The Pilgrims paused to discuss what they should do next. They had brought wheat, barley, and peas with them aboard the
Mayflower
for planting in the spring. Most European settlers in a similar situation would have had enough faith in their own, supposedly superior, technology that they would have had no use for a buried bag of Native seed.

But the Pilgrims were not the usual European immigrants. For one thing, they were desperate. Due to the sad state of their provisions, as well as the lateness of the season, they knew they were in a survival situation from the start. Hence, they were willing to try just about anything if it meant they might survive their first year. They decided they had no choice but to take the corn. The place where they found the buried seed is still called Corn Hill.

The decision to steal the corn was not without risks. They were, after all, taking something of obvious value from a people who had done their best, so far, to avoid them. The Pilgrims might have decided to wait until they had the chance to speak with the Indians before they took the corn, but the last thing they had was time. They told themselves that they would pay back the corn's owners as soon as they had the chance.

They poured as much corn as would fit into a kettle, which they hung from a tree branch, and with two men shouldering the burden, they started back to the
Mayflower.
They planned to retrieve the rest of the corn once the shallop had been completed. They also hoped to explore more of the two creeks. If some earlier European visitors had thought the location suitable for a settlement of some sort, perhaps it might serve their own needs.

By dusk it was raining. After a long, wet night spent within a quickly constructed barricade of tree trunks and branches, they continued on to the north only to become lost, once again, in the woods. Deep within a grove of trees, they came across a young sapling that had been bent down to a spot on the ground where a Native-made rope encircled some acorns. stephen Hopkins explained that this was an Indian deer trap similar to the ones he'd seen in Virginia. As they stood examining the device, William Bradford, who was in the rear, stumbled upon the trap. The sapling jerked up, and Bradford was snagged by the leg. Instead of being annoyed, Bradford could only marvel at this “very pretty device, made with a rope of their own making, and having a noose as artificially made as any roper in England can make.” Adding the noose to what soon became a collection of Native specimens and artifacts, they continued on to the harbor, where they found a welcoming party on shore headed by Master Jones and Governor Carver. “And thus,” Bradford wrote, “we came both weary and welcome home.”

◆◆◆ It took another few days for the carpenter to finish the shallop, and when it was done on Monday, November 27, yet another exploring mission was launched, this time under the direction of Christopher Jones instead of standish. As the master of the
Mayflower,
Jones was not required to help the Pilgrims find a settlement site, but he obviously thought it in his best interests to see them on their way.

There were thirty-four of them, twenty-four passengers and ten sailors, aboard the open shallop. The wind was out of the northeast, and the shallop had a difficult time getting away from the point within which the
Mayflower
was anchored. After being blown to the opposite side of the harbor, they spent the night tucked into an inlet that is now part of Pilgrim Lake. As the temperatures dipped to well below freezing, their wet shoes and stockings began to freeze. “[s]ome of our people that are dead,” Bradford later wrote, “took the original of their death here.”

◆
A drawing of John Smith's shallop, which was used to map Chesapeake Bay in 1608 and would have been very similar to the Pilgrims'.

By morning, there were six inches of snow on the ground, and by the time they'd sailed south back to Pamet Harbor in modern Truro, they were so frostbitten and numb that they named the inlet Cold Harbor. Jones decided to explore the northern and largest of the two creeks by land. But after several hours of “marching up and down the steep hills, and deep valleys, which lay half a foot thick with snow,” the master of the
Mayflower
had had enough. At fifty years old, he was certainly the eldest of the group. some of the Pilgrims wanted to continue, but Jones insisted it was time to make camp under several large pine trees. That night they feasted on six ducks and three geese “with soldiers' stomachs for we had eaten little all that day.”

Cold Harbor, it was decided, was too shallow for a permanent settlement. Giving up on any further exploration of the two creeks, they went looking for Corn Hill the next morning. The snow made it difficult to find the stores of buried corn, but after brushing aside the snowdrifts and hacking at the frozen topsoil with their cutlasses, they located not only the original bag of seed but an additional store of ten bushels. For Master Jones, this was just the excuse he needed to return to the warmth of the
Mayflower
's cabin. He decided to take the corn, along with several men who were too sick to continue on, back to the ship. Once the corn and the sick men had been loaded aboard the shallop, he set sail for Provincetown Harbor. The shallop would return the next day for the rest of them.

standish was once again in charge. The next morning, he led the eighteen remaining men on a search for Indians. But after several hours of tramping through the woods and snow, they had found nothing. The Native Americans moved with the seasons—inland in the winter, near the water in the summer—which meant that the Pilgrims, who were staying, for the most part, near the shore, were unlikely to meet many Indians during their explorations of Cape Cod.

On their way back to the harbor, standish and his men found “a place like a grave, but it was much bigger and longer than any we had yet seen.” There were boards positioned over the grave, suggesting that someone of importance had been buried here. They “resolved to dig it up.”

They found several additional boards and a mat of woven grass. One of the boards was “finely carved and painted, with three tines ... on the top, like a crown.” This may have been a carving of Poseidon's trident, suggesting that the board originally came from a ship—most probably the French ship that had wrecked on this coast in 1615. Farther down, they found a new mat wrapped around two bundles, one large and one small.

They opened the larger bundle first. The contents were covered with a fine, sweet-smelling reddish powder. Along with some bones, they found the skull of a man with “fine yellow hair still on it, and some of the flesh unconsumed.” With the skull was a sailor's canvas bag containing a knife and sewing needle. Then they turned to the smaller bundle. Inside were the skull and bones of a small child, along with a tiny wooden bow “and some other odd knacks.”

Was this a castaway from the French ship and his Indian son? Had this particular sailor been embraced by the local Indians and died among them as a person “of some special note”? Or had the Indians killed and buried the sailor “in triumph over him”?

The Pilgrims had left Holland so that they could live like Englishmen again. But here was evidence that there were others in America who must be taken into account. Otherwise, they might share the fate of this yellow-haired sailor, whose bones and possessions had been left to rot in the sand.

 

◆◆◆ Later that day, just a short distance from Cold Harbor, standish and his men found some Indian houses whose occupants had clearly left in a great hurry. The description of what they found, recorded in a brief book about their first year in America cowritten by William Bradford and Edward Winslow, is so detailed that it remains one of the best first-person accounts of an Indian wigwam, or wetu, that we have:

Among the Indians' clay pots, wooden bowls, and reed baskets was an iron bucket from Europe that was missing a handle. There were several deer heads, one of which was still quite fresh, as well as a piece of broiled herring. As they had done with the graves of the blond-haired sailor and Indian child, the Pilgrims decided to take “some of the best things” with them.

◆
A modern-day re-creation of a Wampanoag wetu.

Looting houses, graves, and storage pits was hardly the way to win the trust of the local inhabitants. To help pay for the damage they'd already done, they decided to leave behind some beads and other tokens for the Indians “in sign of peace.” But it was getting dark. The shallop had returned, and they planned to spend the night back aboard the
Mayflower.
They had to get going, and in their haste to depart, they neglected to leave the beads and other trade goods. It would have been a small gesture to be sure, but it would have marked their only act of friendship since their arrival in the New World.

 

◆◆◆ The explorers learned of some good news once back aboard the
Mayflower.
A son named Peregrine had been born to susanna and William White. But a death was soon to follow the baby's birth. Edward Thompson, the Whites' servant, died on Monday, December 4.

since Truro's Pamet Harbor was not going to serve their needs, they needed to find another settlement site. The pilot, Robert Coppin, had a rather hazy memory of a “good harbor” with a “great navigable river” about twenty-five miles across Cape Cod Bay. The reference to a large river suggests that Coppin was thinking of the Charles River and the future site of Boston. After much discussion, it was decided to pick up where they had left off and follow the shoreline of the Cape south, then west, and eventually north. Under no circumstances were they to venture beyond the harbor described by Coppin, which he called Thievish Harbor, since an Indian had stolen one of his company's harpoons when he was there several years earlier. For the Pilgrims, who had so far stolen a good deal of corn and Native artifacts, Thievish Harbor might be just the place to settle.